A parishioner partakes in a buffet style meal following the bilingual (English and Lao) Sunday service with her bible at the First Laotian Baptist Church in Dallas on Aug. 2.
Its pews can hold no more than 200 people.
And yet some church members travel as far as 120 miles each Sunday just to hear a service in their own language.
The Dallas Morning News reports that the only Laotian Baptist church in Dallas has also found a larger mission – to help support an orphanage and a church’s in-house medical clinic in Laos.
For the refugees at the church, many with faces now aged and framed with glasses, raising money to bring rice and school supplies to these orphans each year allows them to hold on to their Laotian roots. In a way, they say, it also allows them to give thanks to God for their life in America.
“That long time ago, I used to come ask for. Now, I give to them,” said Bobby Phothisen, a refugee at the church. “It broke my heart. Now it’s my turn to give back.”
Every year since 1999, the church’s pastor has revisited the country where he had once lost hope. It was Pastor H, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retaliation by the Laotian government, who first brought the idea to his congregation to help support the 570 kids at an orphanage school in Luang Prabang, Laos.
As he handed hungry orphans a paper bag with ramen cups and soap last year, Pastor H said, he remembered 40 years ago, when he, too, held out his hands to plead for food.
When Communists took over his home country of Laos four decades ago, he was forced into abuse and starvation at a prisoner “re-education” camp in the jungle.
He saw people shot and killed. He ate snakes to stay alive.
He managed to escape under the threat of death, but even as a refugee in Thailand, he suffered from so much hunger and loneliness that he wanted to commit suicide.
“I have heart for my people in Laos. I face a part of myself,” Pastor H said. “So many people in America know the word ‘hungry’ but don’t even know what hungry means. I went to bed hungry. When I got sick, I didn’t have medication. That’s why I have heart for this.”
Unlike other major Asian groups, Laotians are few in number, a “minority within a minority.” They have no community centers or Lao language classes in the Dallas area.
In the 2010 census, 232,130 people in the U.S. and 15,784 in Texas identified as Laotian or part Laotian. This year, the Lao people commemorated the 40th anniversary of their exodus from their Communist country.
Though they see a need for more resources for area Laotians, this church of about five dozen members provides a sense of community, even if it’s only once a week from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Every Sunday after church, adults converse and serve metal tins of potluck food while children run around the hall and play video games. Just being able to share homemade Laotian dishes – plates like sticky rice, papaya salad, rice noodles with cilantro and egg – can be comforting.
“When you eat something it takes you back, that takes you to your core roots,” said churchgoer Andy Davong, who’s working to found an organization to provide services for Laotians. “Those little intangible things make a lot of difference.”
Laotians are overwhelmingly Buddhist, but Pastor H turned to Christianity after meeting a group of Christians at the Thai refugee camp where he lived. He started going to church with them and, for the first time in a long time, felt loved.
“(The pastor) called me Brother H,” he said. “He said, ‘I love you. We love you. This is your family here.’ He didn’t even preach, and I cried. Because as a simple guy, I was looking for someone to love and care for me. And more food.”
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