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Born in Vietnam, Phil Nguyen has served in Mideast helping military By HILLARY WHITCOMB Saturday, July 21, 2001 Worldwide journey brings minister to local church Once a teen-age Vietnamese refugee, later "Father Phil is stepping right in, doing a great job," said Walter Jones, president of the Corpus Christi Foundation. "I've heard great reports from everybody because he's such a people person. You can't not like him -- he's real friendly." Nguyen replaces the Rev. Bill Duncan, who is studying canon law at Washington's Catholic University. "Throughout my college and high school, I was exposed to a lot of volunteer work," Nguyen said, mentioning his participation in soup kitchens and rehabilitative health care. "When I graduated from college, I thought, 'This (the ministry) is the only profession where you can be involved in people's lives." As a priest, he says, he sees all the major events in people's lives: birth, marriage, death and everything in between. He started his Holland ministry June 15 and called it a big adjustment. However, "parish ministry is nothing new to me. The only thing that's new is the size of the parish (about 1,400 families) and I'm the only priest." Nguyen, 41, was ordained in 1987 in the Grand Rapids diocese and ministered in parishes downtown, in Kentwood and in Ada before deciding he wanted a change. He opted for the military and was commissioned a captain in the Air Force in 1993, serving as a chaplain all over the world. "Why walk when you can fly?" he said with a smile of his choice of branch. He has spent the past eight years in places such as Texas, Colorado, Italy, Florida, the Azores, Iceland and the Middle East. "It's a different ministry," he said of the chaplaincy. "There's a great shortage of priests in the military. Their needs are equal if not greater (than civilians' needs)." Nguyen said he joined the military to experience a different kind of life than parish ministry offered. His chaplain duties included counseling, lots of paperwork and lots of visiting with service people. "A lot of those guys who fix airplanes day and night, nobody sees. So we go out there to be with them. It's called the ministry of presence," he said. Nguyen said chaplains deploy right alongside the troops, offering much-appreciated visitation and counseling to servicemen and servicewomen away from home, without their families. "I was the only Catholic chaplain in the Middle East sometimes, but there were other Protestant chaplains," Nguyen said. Usually one or two chaplains are stationed in deployment areas, he continued, and never more than five. Stationed in Kuwait, he filled in for the Army and Navy, too. Celebrating Masses Thursday through Saturday, he'd travel by Humvee and airplane to the worshipers. |
The military, he commented, was more fun and more exciting than he had expected. But he also found an unexpected spiritual depth among those he served. "They see death in their lives, they see war, and that's maybe why they become a little more spiritual," he said. His experience of deployment in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was one example of a difficult situation. The reality of their position set in quickly for the troops sitting on the ground, looking straight at the Iraqi border, Nguyen remembered. He said the Middle East was the place he felt the strongest sense of unsettling anticipation for what could happen next. Many of the troops found it a strain to sit for months on end with nothing to do, away from a daily routine with the threat of fighting right in front of them and no opportunity to relax their guard, he said. He felt similar tension and unease in Korea. "A lot of guys used that time to get more religion," Nguyen said, "and some went to the opposite extreme." Dangerous circumstances were nothing new for Nguyen, however, who was born in Vietnam in 1960. Please see JOURNEY, A9 "I left Vietnam on the day the war ended. I was one of the first boat people that came out," he said. The 15-year-old Nguyen spent three months in a Hong Kong refugee camp before a family in Grandville sponsored him, bringing him to West Michigan. After nine months with the family, he moved in with an uncle in the area. "His parents didn't know he was alive for two years," said Jones. Nguyen's parents, who now live in Wyoming, came to this country 10 years ago. He was the sponsor to allow his parents and seven siblings to immigrate, having received his own U.S. citizenship in 1982. His first brother arrived here in 1990. "I feel I've fulfilled my duty as an American and served the country, and now it's time to settle. I got to a point in my life where I needed some stability, and that's the reason I came home," he explained. Nguyen added that his father has been sick lately, and he wants to be in the area. "He's been here 10 years, and the last eight years, I've been gone," he said. He said Our Lady of the Lake was definitely a good placement for him, being close to his parents and in a parish that's growing and busy. Bob Stander, president of the church's pastoral council, said the parish is happy to have him as leader. "He has a youthful quality about him, which the young people pick up on," Stander said, describing the priest as a good athlete, an avid soccer player and an enthusiastic motorcycle rider. "I think the new thing he will bring to our parish is an additional connection to the youth, which our parish (will use and build on)." "He's just a very modern-day, connected-to-the-folks priest. He has a lot of fun with humor," Stander added. Nguyen said he has been riding a motorcycle for 14 years and, while he has a car for winter, he usually prefers to ride to work instead of driving.
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