Rejoicing in our Lord’s resurrection, we celebrated a Vietnamese International Night as part of the 175 Jubilee Year Program. We had the help of three Vietnamese Sisters who are staying in the provincial house during their tertianship. After practicing, we said a prayer and sang a song in Vietnamese during the vespers on Easter day. For supper, we cooked together traditional Vietnamese food, ‘Bánh tráng,’ and ‘Bánh xèo.’ Sisters at the provincial house had looked through recipes from different countries on the congregational website and picked Vietnamese ones because we are generally familiar with that cuisine, and most importantly, we had the Vietnamese tertians with us.
Bánh tráng, a type of spring roll well known in Korea but quite different from the original, brought us both familiar and new aspects of culinary culture. When practicing prayers and songs in Vietnamese, we experienced some of the difficulties and challenges our three tertians must have been facing over the past few months due to the differences in our languages. After supper, they presented a simple recreational program to the community along with the two novices who are preparing themselves for the first profession.
We were happy and grateful to celebrate our first international night with our Vietnamese sisters. We wish our tertians, who are returning to their home country soon, a sense of our one hope and one mission spirit.
by Dreamhost