Hien’s gentle demeanor and soft voice belie the boldness of her Christian witness. While her husband, Cai, was imprisoned in northern Vietnam because of his faith, Hien, a mother of three, was questioned by police who taunted her with a lie.

“Your husband gave up his faith, and now he is no longer a Christian,” they told her. “What are you going to do? Are you going to give up your faith now?”

This Hmong woman lives in a remote mountain village, where such tactics are often necessary to spread the gospel.

Unshaken, she replied, “I will only believe that when I hear it from my husband. But no, even if my husband gives up his faith, I won’t refuse Christ.”

Hien’s steadfastness and Cai’s perseverance in prison were undergirded by a commitment to Christ that had been tested through many trials.

Good News from Buffalo Traders

With a population in Vietnam of more than 1 million people, the Hmong are one of the larger ethnic minorities in the country. Most live in the mountains of northern and central Vietnam, but large Hmong populations are also found in Laos, Cambodia and China.

Like most Hmong, Cai and Hien were animists, worshiping the spirits of their ancestors as well as spirits believed to inhabit the world around them. They consulted fortune tellers and witch doctors to ensure their health and success, but they were told that their ancestors had done wrong in the past and there was no way to avert misfortune.

“We had a lot of oppression from the dark, evil spirits,” Cai said. “[They] tortured us and punished us.”

Then, they found a glimmer of hope on the internet. “While we were in the depths,” Cai said, “we heard that there is a God, the Christians’ God, who is a powerful God. But we didn’t know how to come to him.” The Lord showed them in an unexpected way — through Good News delivered by water-buffalo traders.

In 2021, a group of Hmong Christians sensed God calling them to share the gospel in northern Vietnam, so they used their business as traders to get into villages unnoticed. When the traders entered Cai and Hien’s village, Cai and his friends told the buffalo traders they were living under the curse of evil spirits. The traders, in turn, took the opportunity to tell them about Jesus Christ, the God who could liberate them from spiritual oppression.

Despite their losses and ongoing threats, Hien and Cai (faces covered for security) have a joyful vision of transforming their village and region with the gospel.

After the buffalo traders returned to their home village, they called Cai and continued to share the gospel with him and Hien. Over time, they and five other families placed their faith in Christ. And soon afterward, under cover of darkness, Cai and Hien tore down the spirit altar in their home and burned everything connected with their former beliefs.

When neighbors noticed the couple’s altar missing, they knew something had changed. At first, Cai remained quiet about his faith. “I [had seen] the severe persecution of other Christian families when they opened up their faith to others,” Cai said, “so I was very careful in sharing the gospel with other people.”

Still, Cai and Hien wanted to be faithful to Christ. “We knew that other Christians had been persecuted,” Cai said, “but in our situation it is still much better to believe in Christ so that we have him to help us in our life.”

“We accepted Christ, and we wanted to worship God,” Cai explained, “but we didn’t know how to worship God.”

They soon learned that keeping quiet about their faith was no guarantee of peace with local authorities. When the village’s chief witch doctor learned that their shrine was missing, he sent someone to their home to rebuild it against their will.

As soon as the worker had left, Hien tore down the altar again and threw it into a fire. She and Cai were committed to living for Christ. And the first step, they decided, was to join other Christians in their village in publicly expressing their faith as a church.

Registered but Persecuted

Cai, Hien and the other new believers weren’t sure what it meant to be a church, but they were eager to learn.

“We accepted Christ, and we wanted to worship God,” Cai explained, “but we didn’t know how to worship God.” At first, the Christians began meeting early in the morning or late at night to avoid the watchful eyes of government officials. “They controlled us so tightly,” he said. “They followed us everywhere.”

The Christian families soon decided that the best way to gain more freedom was to register with one of the official Christian denominations in Vietnam. They thought government registration would put local officials at ease, ensuring them that the Christians were following the law and being good citizens.

It had the opposite effect. The registration was accepted at the provincial and district levels of government, but it prompted an angry backlash from their village’s local government. Cai, Hien and the other Christians were repeatedly summoned to meetings and interrogations during which authorities demanded that they renounce their faith and return to ancestor worship.

When the authorities’ demands didn’t yield results, they began confiscating the families’ property — land, seeds, even recently harvested produce. They stole wood that a family had collected in the forest to expand their home, they roped off a field Cai had already planted and sent soldiers to harvest the crops, and they stole a pig that Cai and Hien had raised for more than a year and slaughtered it for a spirit festival.

Many minority groups like the Hmong receive land grants, financial support and other government assistance to help them survive. The authorities stripped these families of any assistance, claiming the Christians and their “foreign” faith are disloyal to the Vietnamese people.

“Whatever we had received up until that time, they took away everything,” Cai said. “It is not only that you cannot join the program or that they take your right to receive anything new, but they take away what you had before. If they helped you buy a buffalo or a tree to plant in the field, they took the buffalo, the trees, everything.”

Police searched the Christians’ houses, looking for even the smallest evidence of wrongdoing or of withholding anything they believed should belong to the community. Then the situation grew even worse.

“They disconnected us from the electrical system,” Cai said. And the night after the power was cut, someone threw a large stone onto their thatch roof, breaking part of the structure and terrifying their children, who were 3, 4 and 6 years old at the time.

“Whatever we had received up until that time, they took away everything,” Cai said. “It is not only that you cannot join the program or that they take your right to receive anything new, but they take away what you had before.”

The other Christian families suffered similar treatment. One Christian reported that soldiers sexually assaulted his 18-year-old sister and his sister-in-law during their search. Police refused to consider their complaint, saying the Christians no longer belonged to the village and were therefore not entitled to protection.

Accepting Imprisonment

Local leaders were not satisfied with cutting off the Christian families from the community and robbing them of their livelihoods. They had a special punishment in store for the three men who had tried to register their church.

On Oct. 26, 2022, police arrested Cai and two other Christians. They were held for more than two months before being formally charged, and their families received no information regarding their whereabouts or well-being.

“Before our arrest, we were already living through a very difficult time,” Cai said. “They did all kinds of evil things to us even before we went to jail. But when I was taken to court and into the prison, it was even more difficult for us. I was in jail, my wife didn’t know what happened to me, and I didn’t know what was happening to my wife and my children at home. That was a very dark and scary time for us.”

Eventually, the three men were charged with theft.

“The chief of the village told the judge that we took the rice and the field from the villagers,” Hien said. “When I was attending the court hearing, I asked, ‘Who are the villagers that we are taking the rice from?’ They said, ‘In general, you are taking it from the people.’”

The village chief argued that the Christians did not have a right to government support. Therefore, any government-supplied goods they possessed — even those they had received before becoming Christians or those they had grown or gained from their own work and investment — were considered “stolen” from the people of the village.

The three men asked for legal representation, but their request was denied. And when they asked to see evidence and to cross-examine witnesses, that too was refused.

“When we asked who we stole from or what other things we had done,” Cai said, “[the village chief] could not give even one piece of evidence. Still, he asked the judge to put us in prison for five years.” After their eventual conviction, the judge sentenced each man to one year in prison.

Cai knew he could appeal to higher courts or human rights organizations, but another thought was competing with his desire for justice. “We talked to each other, and we said that we could not win them over by arguing with them,” Cai said. “So, we decided that we would accept the loss and go to prison so that the Lord will shine through us. We had no one to help us, humanly speaking, but God is with us. The Lord will help us during our time in the prison. We said that we will lose so that the Lord will win.”

Cai was imprisoned about 130 miles from his home, so Hien was finally able to visit him regularly. Although Cai was relieved to see and hear from his family again, their visits did not always ease his mind. He knew that Hien, now raising their three children alone, was ostracized from the community, living without electricity and struggling to acquire basic needs.

“The thing I worried about the most was that my wife and my family would give up their faith if they were too scared,” Cai recalled. “I needed to follow Christ and I was not going to change. From my side, I knew that, but I was worried for my wife and for my family outside.”

“We will lose so that the Lord will win.”

Some of the Christians fled across the border into Laos, urging Hien to follow them, while others suggested she abandon her faith. Then, Hien began to hear the authorities’ lies — that Cai had recanted his faith in prison — repeated by other villagers. But Cai need not have worried for Hien.

“Even if [Cai] stays in prison, we believe in Jesus and have eternal life,” she told doubting friends. “If he is free here and doesn’t believe in Jesus, we don’t have eternal life. What is more important? We want to have eternal life, so we can accept [any suffering] in our life.”

As Hien awaited her husband’s release, she taught her children to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. “I explained to my children that their father was in the prison because he had become a Christian, but God was with him,” Hien said. “I told my children, ‘Now we will stay together and God will be with us, and God will help to release your father soon.’ God is with me even when I am suffering, and God understands me. That is why I don’t cry or feel sorry about it.”

Hope and a Future

In November 2023, Cai — the last to be released — was set free after 13 months in prison. The Christians in his village, however, remained in the same oppressive situation they were in when he was arrested: They had no land, no electricity and no access to community services or protection. Some of the families had been refused birth certificates for their children, and Cai and Hien’s children were denied enrollment in the local school. Nevertheless, they were happy to again worship God as a family.

Cai said his faith in Christ has been strengthened by the persecution, giving him a bold vision for his community. “The Hmong people [who are Christians] in the area where I live are persecuted,” he said, “and they flee to Laos, they flee to the south. But I don’t want to leave, so that I can be a witness to other people about Christ and win other people to Christ in this area. I don’t know what kind of persecution is coming to me, but I told God that I will stay. I pray that God will help me to do that.”

Cai asks for prayer that their small church, which meets in his home, will continue to serve God and that he will have the opportunity to be a witness to other villagers in the area, including those who persecute his family.

The families of the three men who were imprisoned continue to gather for prayer and fellowship, looking for opportunities to tell their neighbors about Christ. (Faces covered for security.)

“I strongly believe that physically they can persecute me, they can harm me, they can do anything to me,” Cai said, “but spiritually they cannot do anything to me. I have God with me, and I will be with God. I know that after this life on earth, I will be with him in heaven forever.

“The people who are persecuting me don’t know that, and they don’t know God,” he continued. “That is why they persecute me. My hope and my prayer are that I will continue to suffer the persecution ... [and] that many people in the land where I am living now will become Christians in the near future.”

Equally committed to her faith in Christ, Hien’s courage and generosity surprised some of her hostile neighbors. In order to feed her family, Hien regularly harvested wild roots and fruit in the forest. And despite the great needs of her own family, she tried to gather enough to support an older woman in the village who did not have anyone to care for her.

“My hope and my prayer are that I will continue to suffer the persecution ... [and] that many people in the land where I am living now will become Christians.”

“She said by living with love for the others, we can win them to Christ,” said a front-line worker. “Instead of selling [the food] to get money, she wanted to give it to [the lady] to show kindness. So, in her difficult situation, she is still thinking of helping the others.”

Hien has a passion to share Christ with others and wants to help Cai get formal Bible training. Aware of the hardships a life of Christian ministry could hold for them, she summarized the longing she and her husband share: “We want our lives to shine so that the other people in the villages can know Christ.”

With Permission:

The Voice of the Martyrs

https://www.persecution.com/2024-10-cai/?_source_code=EM24J1