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84. Nout Thipphavong, Friend of Refugees
In a moving address to several hundred junior highers at a Baptist church conference in Kansas City last April, Nout Thipphavong, pastor and former refugee, shared snippets of her life's journey: She grew up in a privileged child-hood in Laos but became an impoverished political refugee in two foreign countries. She was reared in the animistic Buddhism of popular Lao religion but became a follower of Christ. And she has grown from a novice Christian to an internationally respected religious leader and pastor.

Nout (rhymes with "root") arrived in the United States in the mid-1980s when she was just slightly older than those in that teenage audience. Like millions of other Southeast Asians, her family fled their home and country due to oppression and economic hardship fostered by the political upheaval of the post-Vietnam War era.

They settled in California, where other family members had preceded them. Nout remembers the "neighbor love" of a Laotian church in San Diego: "They sent people every night to read the Bible and pray and ask us if we needed help to go to the market or government offices."

She soon re-established contact with a young man whom she had grown to love in a Thai refugee detention center, and they married in 1986. The young couple moved from California to Pennsylvania where her husband, Phokham Thipphavong, had been sponsored by a Brethren in Christ congregation. "The church took care of everything for us: a car, how to shop for groceries, and teaching us English and the Bible," she recalls. "We had nobody else. Just the people from the church."

"At first we didn't understand them. But I was given a Thai Bible that I could understand. I saw how the Christian people cared for us truly from their hearts. I thought, The Christian way is the right and true way." Nout and Phokham embraced Christianity and were baptized in December 1987.

Shortly thereafter, they joined relatives in Kansas City and associated themselves with a small group of Lao-American Christians, most of whom had been sponsored by Prairie Baptist Church, a suburban congregation in Kansas City, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches, U.S.A. (ABC). In 1991, Prairie Baptist, in conjunction with the ABC's program of new church development, sponsored a daughter congregation, the Lao American Church (LAC). There Laotian is the "first" language, and "sticky rice" is served during the Lord's Supper. Nout and Phokham quickly blossomed and assumed leadership roles in the LAC. They received theological training through Midwestern Baptist Seminary's certificate-level program and were installed as licensed copastors in January 1992. Five years later, in March 1997, the congregation ordained Nout to serve as pastor (possibly the first and only Laotian woman to be ordained to Christian ministry) while Phokham continued in a part-time capacity.

In the summer of 1996, a refugee camp along the Thai-Lao border was being closed down, consigning thousands to be numbered potentially among the internationally "homeless." Don Bosco Community Services of Kansas City looked to area churches for sponsorship assistance for Lao families. Whereas Prairie Baptist had resettled hundreds of Laotian refugees between 1975 and 1992, this time, the daughter congregation was asked and answered the call for help.

In September 1996 the first two families arrived in Kansas City; two other families have arrived since.

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November 17 1997, Vol. 41, No. 13