Seeds of faith planted in Saigon bloom in Wichita

How Vanessa Banh came to the United States, experienced snow and tornadoes, and eventually pursued a fuller spiritual life

Vanessa Banh had learned – the hard way – not to ignore that voice.

Perhaps the most memorable of those lessons came a few days after Christmas 2012 when she was attending a weekday Mass at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Wichita.

“I had just received Holy Communion, and all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit spoke to me,” she said. “I clearly heard ‘Go back to school and get your theology degree.’ I was so scared.”

It made no sense. She had undergraduate degrees in social work and general studies from Wichita State University and had spent the past 28 years working for Kansas Social Rehabilitation Services. 

In that job, Banh had earned a reputation for helping new Vietnamese immigrants, thanks in part to having walked in those shoes herself. “I assisted with interpreting documents and acclimating to American culture,” she said. “Additionally, I was an assistant English teacher at the Wichita Indochinese Center and ESL Tutoring School. I highly empathized with those who were navigating a new country.”

Not only was Banh doing important work, but other hurdles appeared even taller. As a 52-year-old state employee with 28 years on the job, she was on the verge of qualifying for early retirement. If God really was calling, she mused, surely he could wait on hold for a couple of years.

One other major consideration made the answer not only “no,” but “no, no, no, no.”

Her husband, Steve, was a lifelong Buddhist who had tolerated his wife’s increasingly intense faith – she had been a fairly lukewarm Catholic as a 19-year-old bride, but later would progress toward faithful Sunday Mass attendance right on toward becoming a regular at daily Mass – but she was pretty sure he would balk at giving up one of their family’s two full-time incomes. 

“I prayed, ‘Lord, it’s very difficult. I just don’t see any way to do that,’ and decided to tune him out,” she said. “But it’s funny, he would not let me sleep. Night after night it was in my head ‘Go back to school. Get your theology degree.’”

Still unsure, she turned to a trusted few she believed to possess the charism of discernment. On separate occasions, each of them prayed over her and came to the same conclusion: The impulse came from God. 

“They said ‘Vanessa, don’t be afraid. If the Lord wants you, he will work it out for you and handle everything. Just go with it,’” Banh said.

She went with it and the advice proved sound.

On the day she prepared to break the news to Steve, Banh had steeled herself and silently pleaded for divine help. “Before I opened my mouth, I prayed ‘Holy Spirit, I need you to do all the talking,’” she recalled. “I told my husband, ‘The Lord’s calling me to get my degree in theology. I am going to go back to school.’ He just laughed and seemed to think I was kidding.”

Even after Banh’s husband realized she was serious, he accepted her decision, which gained surprising momentum after a friend encouraged her to apply for one of Newman University’s two Leadership Scholarships.

“I didn’t even know where to begin, but the Lord kind of laid it all out every step of the way,” Banh said. “The scholarship paid for tuition, books, and everything else except for maybe parking and computer use.”

A few years later, shortly after she earned that M.T.S. in theology, the familiar voice spoke again.

“I was wondering ‘Lord, what am I supposed to do now?’” Banh said. “I heard him again. He said, ‘Chaplain.’ I said ‘What’s a chaplain?’ I was lost.”

Saigon life

The very idea that Banh would ever pursue higher education – let alone two majors and a master’s degree – would have shocked her younger self. Even in Vietnam – before she arrived in the United States knowing little more English than “hello,” “goodbye,” and “thank you,” – Banh had struggled in elementary school.

“I had a speech impediment, was so slow at learning, and was terrible with math,” she said. “I was held back one year.”

Banh was the fourth of six children, with parents who divorced when she was very young. As a single mom, Banh’s mother, Suzanne, allowed the long hours she worked at a noncommissioned officer’s club on a U.S. military base to push her practice of the faith to the margins. 

“Mom was working all the time, earning money to raise six children,” Banh said. “We went to Mass as a family on Christmas and Easter, but that was not her focus.”

Banh learned the fundamentals of the faith and how to pray at her Catholic school in Saigon, she recalls, but her conception of living the faith was less about a relationship with a loving God and more about walking the straight and narrow. 

“The nuns gave us a strong foundation,” Banh said. “You had to behave in Catholic school; there was no messing around.”

And even if Banh was mostly well-behaved, her academic discipline consistently fell short. “I wasn’t studious at all. Half the time I was in la-la land,” she said. “I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood and just wanted to play hopscotch or other games with them.”

Suzanne, meanwhile, had progressed from the NCO kitchen to interacting with the clientele. “Mom was young, beautiful, and skilled,” Banh recalled. “Soon she was waiting tables and occasionally tending bar.” 

That allowed her to meet the man who would eventually become Banh’s stepfather, James, a U.S. Air Force head chef stationed in the country during the Vietnam War.

Her mother accepted James’ marriage proposal shortly before he completed his tour of duty in Vietnam, and as the engaged couple prepared to move to the United States, James tried to persuade his fiancé’s children to come with them.

“My stepfather treated me like one of his own,” Banh said. “With my mom translating, he said ‘Come to America and you will have a future.’ He told me everything about the United States was so beautiful, rich, and full of opportunity.”

James made a similar pitch to her siblings, and although they all eventually immigrated, Banh was the only one among them to leave with James and Suzanne.

Wonder and terror

The 12-year-old kid who had never seen snow before thought there might be something to her stepfather’s promises about American splendor when they arrived in Buffalo, New York, in March 1973. Their first stateside stop was to visit James’s parents. During that visit, as they were walking outside together, Banh marveled as cold, white flakes descended from the sky. “Mom said ‘It’s snowing,’ and I said ‘Wow, how beautiful.’ I tried catching it in my hand to taste and smell it.”

Even after they were cozy inside the home of her new step-grandparents, Banh spent much of that week often pulling aside the curtain and peering out the window in wonder.

After a week in Buffalo, they relocated to a new mobile home on 47th Street, near Wichita’s McConnell Airforce Base, where a few months later Banh encountered other unfamiliar weather. 

She was home alone on a summer afternoon when her mother called in a panic, ordering her to flee immediately and take shelter in a neighbor’s house. “I had no idea what a tornado was or the intensity it could have,” Banh said.

She tried to obey. “I ran to the front door, however, the wind was violently strong and the door did not open,” she said. “I used all my might and it felt like I was getting pushed back. After a while, I gave up.”

She cowered in the mobile home as the wind whistled and the structure around her shook like an amusement park ride. Then came a tremendous crash.

“When the tornado was over, my parents returned home right away and found me sitting on the floor, just shaking,” Banh said. “They led me out of the home. We looked around and the neighborhood was severely hit. I noticed the back of our mobile home was damaged because part of another mobile home landed on ours. We discovered that the neighbor’s home I was supposed to be at suffered significant damage. She was injured and had to be hospitalized. It was a miracle that I did not end up being at her place.”

Her new life also was lonelier than she had anticipated. Her Saigon neighborhood had been full of kids her age to play with. Even after Banh started classes that autumn at a public school in Derby, her lack of English proficiency landed her in a fourth-grade class, although kids her age were in the sixth or seventh grade. “For the first year or two, it was like I was deaf and mute,” she said. “People tried to speak to me, but since I didn’t understand, I couldn’t respond. The teacher must have told them I don’t speak English, so they left me alone.”

But the teacher, Mrs. Greteman, did not. She set about teaching Banh English by preparing flashcards that paired pictures with their English words. As Banh began to memorize them and formulate rudimentary sentences, Mrs. Greteman expanded the tutoring, picking Banh up twice a week for summer sessions.

“I am so grateful for her; she has a really kind, compassionate heart,” Banh said. “She saw me struggling and got Mom’s permission to take me to her home in Derby, where she built up my vocabulary. I improved enough that the school moved me up.”

Unfortunately, by the time she was attending Wichita East High School, she understood English well enough to know when she was being mocked – even though much of that was clear in any language. “Some of the kids in high school were so mean,” she said. “Kids kept touching and pulling my hair in PE. One girl would always mess with me – I think she was kind of crazy – touching my head and imitating my accent while her followers laughed.”

Nevertheless, Banh continued, doing well enough in her classes that her history teacher, Mr. White, urged her to take the ACT and apply for college. That is how she found herself graduating from WSU a few years later with degrees in general studies and social work. 

She married Steve, who she met at East High, and after graduation, began her career as an eligibility case manager for the state.

“I knew I was good with people and wanted to help them, so that’s where God put me,” she said.

The early 1980s saw an influx of Vietnamese immigrants, and soon she was a household word in the Wichita area’s Vietnamese community. “People knew to call Mrs. Banh for assistance,” she said. “They would tell me what they needed and I would try to find the resources and connect them, make appointments for them, or help with paperwork.”

And yes, as faith began to play an ever-more-prominent part in her life, that began to shine through, such as when a new immigrant woman called her, frantic because she had dropped her wallet at a grocery store. 

“I asked if she knew the St. Anthony prayer,” she said. “She didn’t, so I sent it to her and told her to trust in God.”

Faith flowers

Officially joining Wichita’s All Saints Parish in the late 1980s marked a turning point in Banh’s spirituality. “That’s when the Lord inspired me,” she said. “All Saints is my home. It’s a wonderful mixture that includes people of Hispanic, Laotian, Philippine, Vietnamese, African, and many other heritages.”

Although he was a Buddhist, Steve often joined her at Sunday Mass. As Banh’s passion for her Catholic faith burned brighter, she was drawn to visit dozens of shrines and holy sites, and her husband often accompanied her. From Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Our Lady of the Snows in Illinois, to Fatima in Portugal and Lourdes in France, Steve was at her side.

Banh became an increasingly integral part of parish life at All Saints, such that when she applied for the Leadership Scholarship at Newman to pursue that theology degree, a few of her key references came from within the All Saints leadership. 

And maybe it was appropriate that she would go on and put her theology degree to use in a job that often had her walking the halls of Via Christi St. Joseph, a building within shouting distance of her parish. 

The voice, the one she had learned to heed, had told her to become a chaplain, even though chaplain was one of those unfamiliar English words. 

“A friend of mind had become a chaplain at Wesley and I ran into her after Mass at All Saints,” Banh said. “She asked what I was doing, and I said ‘I keep hearing ‘chaplain’ in my head.’ She’s like, ‘Oh, I can help you.’”

Soon Banh was interning in Wesley’s chaplaincy program, and shortly thereafter, Via Christi Health hired her. “I worked there back and forth between hospital locations. I mainly worked at St. Joseph, about 90% of the time, and would float over to St. Francis as needed, about 10% of the time.”

When she started the job, Banh said her only goal was to follow where God led. “Chaplains see anything and everything and everybody,” she said. “Maybe someone is in the hospital because of a heart attack and with someone else, it’s substance abuse. But you also can always expect to see something new.”

Not that new is always good. As the mother of two grown daughters, Angelina and Angelique, one particularly wrenching memory stands out in Banh’s mind from her chaplaincy internship.

“You never think you will have to bury your children, but I met with a woman whose daughter passed away on Mother’s Day,” Banh said. “I tried to hold back the tears, but she was crying. I sat and talked with her for a long time just to console her and do whatever I could.”

Banh has endured her own sorrows, which include Steve’s unexpected death in 2017. Even so, that loss carries with it the joy of seeing him become a Catholic in the last years of his life. Not only had he accompanied her to Mass and those Catholic sites, but Banh perceived her husband was drawing closer to the Lord through his mother.

“He established a connection with Mother Mary and loved her deeply,” she said. “My husband wore a Miraculous Medal. Slowly but surely, she helped soften his heart and interceded for his conversion.”

After Steve became Catholic, Banh said she saw his heart expand with generosity, which included a new openness to charity work and a subtly evangelistic spirit. “He would help the poor by offering donations and would lend a hand for various tasks,” she said. “Additionally, he would encourage his coworkers and family members to learn more about Catholicism. Eventually, his brother, James, converted as well.”

Steve passed away one morning on his way to work, and while the suddenness of his death prevented him from receiving anointing or viaticum, “Once our family got to his location, we prayed the rosary together,” Banh said. “It took many years for his conversion; however, with God all things are possible. We just have to trust in the Lord and go by his timing, not ours. I am very grateful.”