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Sewing out of gratitude | Offenbach

Offenbach – A big pile of thank you letters is on the table before Hung Trinh. They come from a wide variety of nursing homes in Offenbach, but also from the diakonia table or tea room.
          BY PETER KLEIN

To date, Vietnamese Catholics have sewn and distributed more than 1,500 face masks to charitable organizations or to the neighborhood, as Chi Vu reports. The computer scientist has made around 100 masks with the help of her children and her husband.

The Catholic Vietnamese celebrate their services at intervals of several weeks in the St. Anna Church in Frankfurt-Hausen. Many of them are therefore also active in their respective local communities. Pastor Dominik Manh Nam Tran looks after ten congregations that are spread across the dioceses of Mainz, Speyer, Limburg and Freiburg. He drives around 5,000 kilometers a month. Elsewhere, too, he suggested sewing face masks. “We Vietnamese came to Germany 40 years ago and were surprised by the warm welcome. This gratitude is deep in our hearts, ”he says of his motivation.

Around 20 families from the Rhein-Main area take part in the campaign and have divided the work. Some cut the stencils, others sew and still others distribute them to institutions.

Chi Vu tells how she and her family were pulled from the South China Sea by the rescue ship Cape Anamur in 1980 as an eight-year-old and how around 10,000 other Vietnamese were brought to Germany. After the Communists’ invasion of southern Vietnam, many wanted to leave for a safe neighboring country. But the boaters were mostly little fishermen who had never gone further out than in their fishing grounds. Correspondingly many died or wandered helplessly in their boats until rescue ships arrived and helped them.

Chi remembered that she had tried sewing years ago and still had leftovers. She immediately sat down at the sewing machine and realized: It is not that simple. Meanwhile, the community members shop together on the Internet and try to use only cotton. It was also difficult to get a straight seam on her simple sewing machine. So she got an industrial sewing machine. It is an opportunity for her to give something back to society, as she says.

In total, only eight percent of Vietnamese are Catholic, reports Hung Trinh. But their influence is much greater, since almost all schools were Catholic during the French colonial period. Today the schools are state-run, but are staffed by Catholic teachers. He is not a Catholic himself, but learned about the campaign early on from friends and immediately got his old sewing machine out of the cellar. At first it was difficult because he was inexperienced. In the meantime, he too has acquired an industrial sewing machine. His wife sews the ribbons on the masks, which is too small for the 63-year-old.

The community also supports each other otherwise. When there were nowhere else to buy rubber bands, they found a so-called rubber material that is otherwise used by associations. Cut into strips and cooked, it becomes more elastic and could be used as a replacement.

As long as there is still need, the community members want to continue sewing. Interested institutions can contact Hung Trinh on z 0179 7218380 or Pastor Dominik Manh Nam Tran on z 0151 21080828. However, they ask for your understanding if not every wish can be fulfilled immediately. After all, they have to work, many in the home office. Sewing takes place in the evening and at the weekend.

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