Vietnam: History is now being rewritten
Word of Life
Ministry Updates
Ministry Updates
Vietnam: History is now being rewritten
Many of us remember the country because of its bloody war during the 60’s and 70’s. Political reforms have facilitated great economic growth, but have also opened up the way for revival in this communist-ruled nation. A revival that has its roots in Russia.
We meet up with Fam, the pastor of Word of Life in Hanoi, in one of the city’s newly built residential areas. He is sitting comfortably leaning back in a leather sofa with a glass of juice on the table in front of him. Spread around this light and airy apartment, leaders from the church are conversing quietly with each other. Only one of them speaks English, but many speak Russian, since most of them have lived in Russia for many years.
Fam is a short and stocky man with a broad face, dark hair and narrow eyes. He has a humble look in his eyes and he speaks with a calm and gentle voice.
“At Christmas 2009 we had a corporate prayer meeting with other Protestant churches in Hanoi. 12 000 people took part and 2 000 received Jesus. For the authorities that meeting was a shock”, says Fam.
“They’d never imagined that the Protestants were that strong, and that we could assemble so many people. After that they’ve been relating to us quite differently.”
The following year the church tried to arrange a Christmas celebration again. They gathered three thousand people outside a building they had hired, but the police came and stopped them from going in.
The pastors of the church then asked the people to get on their knees to pray, which resulted in nine of the pastors being arrested. Some of them were severely tortured in the prison, a number of them passed out and one of them had to spend two weeks in hospital afterwards.
“The authorities have always believed that Christianity is something American, and historically the Protestant churches have come from South Vietnam, where the Americans have a strong presence. But we all come from Moscow, a city with which the Communists in Vietnam have a good relationship, and that confuses them”, Fam explains.
Since the 50’s Vietnam has been a Communist country and offers very limited freedom. The party watches over everything that might threaten its dictatorial policies. The authorities’ stance towards Christians has been very restrictive throughout history and many have had to pay a high price for their faith.
Like many of his friends Fam met Jesus in Russia. After the civil war – or “The American war”, which is what many call it – Vietnam had a big debt to the Communist mother country in the north. Due to a lack of funds but a large surplus of poor proletarians they solved the situation in true comrade spirit and sent across cheap labourers by the hundreds of thousands to Russian factories. Many were also sent to be educated at Russian universities.
Fam belonged to the latter category and in 1993 was sent by the Vietnamese authorities to study in Moscow. Through some Christian Russian students he got to hear about Jesus and a group of Vietnamese students were saved on the campus where he lived. They began to have meetings of their own and also visited various churches around the city. One day they were invited to a conference with Pastor Ulf Ekman in the Ismailova sporting complex. “We’d never seen anything like it – we felt straight away that this was something special”, Fam remembers. The Vietnamese got in contact with the Swedish missionaries from Word of Life who began to visit the student campus, teaching them from the Word of God. Later they joined the Word of Life church in Moscow, where they also attended Bible school. |
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“I believe God sent us to Moscow so that we’d get saved and trained as well as receiving the vision for how God wants to build His Church in Vietnam”, says Fam.
In 2002 a little group led by Fam moved to the capital Hanoi, where they began to work with a small group of believers.
They had as their base a small church that was already in existence, with a pastor who had suffered much persecution for his faith over the years. He was also the one who ended up in hospital as a result of the abuse following the Christmas meeting – though it by no means made him slow down as far as spreading the Gospel. He has rebuilt the upper floor of his house, and this is where Word of Life in Hanoi now conducts its Sunday services, as well as 2nd year Bible school.
The little group grew and in 2004 they had 400 members. Christian Åkerhielm, Word of Life’s Missions Director, went there to visit them.
“It was wonderful having Christian here”, says Fam.
“He’d been our pastor in Moscow and now he was prophesying during the meetings in Hanoi that a big centre for the whole nation would grow up here in the capital, and that the Vietnamese revival would begin here in the north.”
And this is just what’s happening now. Today they have 1 200 members, holding meetings in and around Hanoi. Other churches around the country invite them to hold conferences and they are seeing the work steadily growing and developing.
“Our activities have no legal basis, which is why we cannot meet in big halls. Instead we’re building a network church with a joint leadership and meet in different places. We even run a Bible school where we train people who in turn can start new churches.”
Right now they’re running a Day Bible school with around a hundred students, as well as an Evening Bible school outside Hanoi with about 20 students from the countryside. They even have a 2nd year class with forty students who are all preparing themselves to start new house churches.
The population of Vietnam is divided into ethnic Vietnamese, who live along the east coast, and ethnic minorities in the western mountain ranges, where many are enduring hard treatment and oppression from the authorities. There have been several revivals among these minority groups. Today there are thousands of Christians among them, but the teaching is minimal and the leaders few, on account of the fact that the Vietnamese military has closed off the borders to their areas.
“The ethnic groups of the east are included in our vision. We want to reach them with the Gospel”, says Fam. One of the pastors in the church travels at least once a month to one of these people groups and preaches to them. The work is heavy, as he has to walk from village to village along the rough, mountain roads after making the journey to the area on a moped. “The authorities are very strict with those they allow in, since the only ones who want to go there are preachers and drug dealers”, Fam continues. |
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Vietnam is a vast country with a population of 84 million and a history marked by Indo-China’s many conflicts. For many hundreds of years they’ve been dominated by their big, north-eastern neighbour – China. They were once a French colony and they’ve been a pawn in the power struggle between Russia and the US.
But since 1950 the Vietnamese have won wars against France, China and America. The last war cost the lives of one eighth of the nation’s population and a brutal, Communist rule – along with American post-war sanctions – has had the country bound in poverty. This has also contributed to the introduction of brutal Communism in the neighbouring countries Cambodia and Laos.
In 1994 America lifted the sanctions which enabled the nation to enter into a time of historic growth, governed by reforms brought into effect by the Communist party in 1986. Today the nation has a well educated population in the big cities and an economic growth rate that’s the highest in the world. Tourism is on the increase and Vietnam is the world’s third biggest exporter of rice.
One of the real pearls of this country is the coastal city of Ho Long, at the top of the north-eastern end, near China. It’s a popular tourist resort and also a place where Word of Life has seen great church growth. This too originated in Russia.
“In 1986 I was sent to Russia along with thousands of other Vietnamese”, says Tuan.
We’re sitting on the quay in Ho Long enjoying the evening sun. It’s warm, and behind us the boats are quietly sailing past while the fisherman and the seafarers are getting ready for the night. Many of them live with their families in simple wooden boats, forming little communities along the piers, where the light from the boats reveal that food is being cooked and that people are watching TV in their little cabins.
“We went on employment contracts to work in Russian factories. I thought Russia was Paradise, but I was wrong. It was very heavy work and it was rough and cold.”
The contract was for six years, but when the Soviet Union crumbled at the beginning of the nineties the work opportunities for the Vietnamese ceased to exist. They were poor and had to manage as best they could.
Long resorted to selling drugs to an explosively increasing number of young drug addicts in Russia.
“It was very lucrative. We travelled to countries in Central Asia to buy drugs which we brought back with us on the train”, he tells us.
But after a couple of years the police got wind of his activities and it was becoming dangerous. On top of that, his conscience was troubled when he realised that his customers were dying, one after another. This led him into a personal crisis which God used to open him up for the Gospel.
“I met a Russian who said that only Jesus could help me. I had a wife and two children to support but didn’t want to sell any more drugs.
Tuan was given a New Testament and read it through in a few days. After that he looked up his Russian friend, who led him in a prayer for salvation.
“God’s love filled me and transformed my character”, Tuan continues. He was still living in Russia, and had a business, but over the years a strong desire grew of going back home to preach the Gospel. One of his long-standing friends had got saved and gone home, and finally Tuan picked up his family and did the same. “My friend had a little group of two or three believers. We began to preach together each day, travelling around the villages. Now the work has grown to involve 400 people. They send their members to the Bible school in Hanoi and those who get trained up are given responsibility for new house-groups. One of those who’ve been saved is a fisherman named Luat, who is attending year 2 at the Bible school whilst at the same time working as a fisherman and looking after cell-groups in and outside of Ho Long. He lives with his whole family on a fishing boat. “I was living like most other people around me”, he says during the Bible school lunch break. He is a small man bearing the marks of a rugged life at sea. |
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“I was occupied with black magic and worshipped our ancestors, as many people do here. As a result of this my daughter Hong became possessed. She went mad, and for a period of three years she could be seen aimlessly walking the streets. We knew it was because of demons, but had no idea what to do about it. We tried making sacrifices to pacify them, but to no avail.”
Luat got saved and then his whole family as well. Five days later his daughter was free and is now attending 1st year Bible school.
“It’s a miracle! When she was possessed she could neither read nor write, but now she’s restored to normal.
Back in Hanoi we’re travelling by cab out into the countryside. In a typical Vietnamese dwelling, consisting of many floors above a small ground level, the owner has converted the upper floor into a church, something that has become common among the Word of Life leaders. This is where the Evening Bible school is being run.
In a stiflingly hot room about 50 simple farmers have gathered for worship and teaching. With obvious devotion they are singing songs with familiar tunes but foreign text. After that they listen to the Word of God and receive prayer for innumerable diseases.
The pastor is a tall young man who felt the call of God to go to Word of Life’s Bible school. Now he is one of the leaders of the work.
Many of those wanting prayer are women who have suffered abuse from their husbands over many years. One woman has big bumps on her head from all the blows, and she gets healed from the pains in her head. Another one has wounds on her elbow and is weeping loudly after her husband has abused her with a brick.
“Wife-abuse is a big problem in Vietnam”, the pastor explains.
“The men drink up the household budget, make sacrifices to their ancestors and many are demon-possessed and have spiritual visitations. Many of those who come to Bible school have strong testimonies about deliverance and restoration of families. Several married couples at the Evening Bible school, as well as at the school in Hanoi, have experienced God’s restoring power. The Gospel breaks in with great power in places where there’s much darkness.”
The revival has only just begun in this nation, but there is a sense that this is the beginning of something that will grow to historic proportions. The Vietnamese revival begins in Hanoi, the prophecy says, and will spread throughout the land so as to affect the neighbouring countries in Indo-China.
Just wait and see!
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