The Last Supper
When I, and three other western orphanage volunteers, were asked to the house of Lan, a Vietnamese woman we work with at the centre, were very flattered. We didn’t know the girl well but she seemed friendly and eager to learn English so we agreed and arrived at her house one Friday evening after work.
We were totally unprepared for two things. Firstly, the apparent honour that we were bestowing on a Vietnamese family, with our high status presence. And secondly, how religious our hosts were.
Although Vietnam’s major religion (90%) is the unique ‘Three’ religion (Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism), there is – thanks to the French colonial influence – a considerable spread of Catholicism, especially in the south. Our host family on this Friday night turned out to be extremely pious Catholics with an effervescent love for Jesus and his mum. Their front room was plastered with pictures of the holy family and of one of girl’s brothers who is a priest.
A tour of the rest of the house revealed that our friend from work, who’d seemed perfectly normal, was sleeping in a room more suited to a bride of Christ. A full-size representation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper sat over the door, posters of Jesus and Mary like pop stars on the wall, a shelf full of relics and candles – she even had a Virgin Mary screensaver on her computer. And the internet homepage was www.vietcatholic.net
Lan told us proudly that she attends Mass every day and sing in the choir on Sundays. She asked us what religion we were and our Irish friend Quimby admitted to being a Catholic too. “How often do you go to Mass?” she was asked and the admission of “Maybe once a year,” met with shocked horror.
Now, some of my best friends are Christians, but at this point we started to feel a bit odd. All she could talk about was religion and we worried that to her we were infidels and she’d dragged us out to District 11 so she could convert us.
So, over the cripplingly enormous and very tasty spread of Vietnamese tidbits the girl’s (Lan’s) mother had provided, (and obviously after grace has been said) we attempt to draw conversation away from religion. How many siblings has she? Does she have a boyfriend? Does she enjoy her work?
It’s going quite well until her seemingly innocuous request to “Guess how old I am.” We give up. “The same age as Jesus,” comes the irrepressible reply.
After this we’re out of ammo. It’s hard enough to be preached to in your own country and language but providing the raw materials for an in-house Vietnamese missionary is too much. We western non-believers – and even the slightly apathetic believers – aren’t used to joy for Jesus being thrust down our necks with the spring rolls. And I’m afraid that – unlike the mounds of those (which were delicious, see picture) – it wasn’t very gratefully received.
And when we could handle no more God, we took an example from the Lord himself and rose, putting down the photo albums of the priest brother’s special day, and thankfully heading out again into the immoral world of HCMC. Amen!
