Mennonite
Central
Committee

Summer workers help preserve Hmong culture, welcome new Hmong families

Marla Pierson Lester
September 1, 2006

At Hickory Hmong Mennonite Church in this town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, MCC Summer Service workers helped ensure the Hmong language and culture is passed on to children and youth and assisted new Hmong families as they adjusted to the United States.

Aranya Khoklasutcai and Mee Xiong are two of 83 MCC U.S. Summer Service workers who served their home communities this summer. The Hmong are an ethnic group from East and Southeast Asia. Many in the congregation came to the United States from Thailand.

Hickory Hmong Mennonite Church has about 14 families, with more than 50 members. About 20 people, mostly children, attend the Hmong classes.

Many young people in the church are losing fluency in the Hmong language, Xiong said. They are born in the United States and speak English in school. Even if they speak Hmong to their parents or grandparents, in time they often lose the finer points of the language.

Khoklasutcai and Xiong are working to help members preserve that language.

For Khoklasutcai, speaking and understand Hmong is vital "so we won't forget about our culture and where we come from, where we used to live and how hard we had to work to come to the United States."

The language is also a link to the older generation. Young people, she said, need to know how to write, read and speak in Hmong so that they can translate for an older generation that doesn't speak English.

Xiong also helped translate from Hmong to English for families who have recently arrived in the United States.

"I like to talk to people," Xiong said. "I want other people to know how the United States is, so they won't be left out or anything."

She wanted to aid families much the way her uncles and cousins in Fresno, Calif., helped after she and her family arrived from Thailand in the 1990s. "They taught us everything," she said, recalling how they assisted in matters from running appliances to finding jobs.

Both Summer Service workers also helped lead youth and children's activities for the church.