New Life in a New World : Catholic festival draws 40,000 Vietnamese from across U.S. to a small town in Missouri for celebration of life in America.

As dusk falls, promising relief from the sticky heat of an August day in Southwest Missouri, the fragrance of incense blends with the smoke curling up from barbecues on which sizzle thit heo kho , a sweet-and-sour pork, and ga nuong , chicken marinated in fish and soy sauces.

Just across the street, on the lawn of the white frame home of Charlie Rogers, a local car salesman, a young Vietnamese-American woman styles her long hair with a hand dryer plugged into an extension cord fed through the front door.

Rogers’ yards, front and back, have, overnight, become a little tent city, accommodating about 150 of the overflow from the neighboring seminary, where 35,000 to 40,000 Vietnamese Americans have converged on Carthage for the annual Marian Days festival.

They come to the seminary of the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, says Brother Alfonso Khiet, to thank God for their freedom and their comforts. In Vietnam, he says, Catholics must “lead a hidden life.”

They also come to have fun.

“Best food in town!” promises a hawker outside one of 18 food tents staffed by volunteer fund-raisers from parishes across the country. “Live music inside!” counters another.

“American capitalism,” observes Joseph Do, a former Carthage seminarian who left the order and is now in the Navy at Jacksonville, Fla. He returns each year.

Do, 30, like many here, is a former boat person, who fled Vietnam in 1975. He speaks with a hint of a drawl, and his sense of humor is as well developed as his English vocabulary. Introducing himself, he laughs and says: “I’m the only Joe Do you’ll meet. I have a lot of problems when I call the bank.”

For some Carthaginians, Marian Days is a highlight of the year. They come to sample the egg rolls and sweets and noodles prepared in enormous vats and woks in makeshift field kitchens.

From folding chairs on their lawns, they watch the traditional parade honoring the Madonna, which isn’t a parade, exactly. It is more a procession through the streets of Carthage, then back up the wide esplanade leading into the seminary grounds. Behind placards identifying hometowns--San Jose, Wichita, Des Moines, Garden City--thousands walk silently. Reeboks peek out from beneath the trousers of native costumes.

What began 14 years ago as strictly a religious celebration has evolved into a gigantic family reunion where Vietnamese-Americans find relatives and friends who have relocated in cities from coast to coast. Today it is a happening, complete with roadblocks and portable toilets and round-the-clock police surveillance. The city pays $8,000 of the $18,000 bill, the seminary brothers the rest.

“Most youngsters come for the fun of it,” explains Bruce Hoang, 23, of Santa Ana, who shrimps in Mississippi during the season. “The older people go for religion. The guys are looking for the gals.”

Hoang and his cousin, Hung Tran, 24, a student who lives in Westminster, tell a story repeated over and over here, of escaping South Vietnam in 1975 in small boats, being picked up in international waters by American ships.

Now, Vietnamese ways are being abandoned in favor of American slang and dress. Youngsters here tend to bypass the Vietnamese food tents in favor of the Knights of Columbus tent, which offers hot dogs, hamburgers, cotton candy and popcorn.

Festival rules and regulations, prominently posted, specify no intoxicants or drugs, no gambling, no quarreling and absolutely no “obscene” rock or heavy metal music. And decent clothing must be worn. To the young, that means jeans and shorts, to the very young, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bartman T-shirts.

But the old women cling to tradition, preferring the graceful tunic-over-trousers, the ao dai, and the khan sep , the doughnut-shaped hat.

Rules or no rules, no one seems too worried about the cold beer being served surreptitiously outside tents that are staked flap-to-flap. What is ca kho (dried fish) without beer?

By the thousands, the faithful pray amid the pomp and pageantry of solemn candle-lighted Masses. The brothers guard against the festival becoming commercial, too secular. For example, professional entertainers are not welcome, although an exception was made this year for popular singer Kim Anh, who lives in Westminster. “She converted,” says Brother Alfonso.

Sixteen years have passed since the early wave of this immigrant population left Vietnam, yet their homeland is not forgotten. At closing ceremonies, two clusters of colorful balloons are released, one carrying aloft and out of sight the pale blue-and-white Marian flag, the other the red-and-yellow flag of South Vietnam.

It is symbolic, explains Joe Do, of prayers being carried to heaven, offering the country and the people of Vietnam to God through the protection of Mary.

From the elevated stage, a little boy in a beach volleyball T-shirt watches wide-eyed, then whistles. “That thing’s goin’ up high, man!”

“It’s not important the number of people who come here, only the number who come here to find peace in their life,” says Brother Alfonso.

Still, the numbers keep increasing. Already, festival planners are anticipating that the 15th festival next August will be the biggest gathering ever. It will mark the 75th anniversary of the Miracle at Fatima, Portugal, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to three children.

The four-day festival, says Brother Tan Minh Dang, is a once-a-year opportunity “to come together, to share our culture” and to “pray for peace” both globally and within Vietnamese-American families; their cohesiveness is being tested severely.

They come in RVs and in campers. They pitch tents. They sleep in cars. The early birds stake out spots under the tall maples and pines, seeking protection from the 100-degree heat.

Celebrants come from 50 parishes in 25 states and Canada. The largest delegation is from Texas, the second largest from California, which sent about 6,000, many of whom have made a 26-hour car trip. Orange County has the largest Vietnamese-American population in the country, followed by the cities of San Jose and Houston.

Uncomplainingly, celebrants queue up for everything, including confession, which is heard at portable confessionals set up on the lawn. One brother jokes about crowded conditions, “Some people, to take a shower, they have to wake up at 2:30.”

Says Brother Alfonso: “The Vietnamese culture and the American culture, they’re very different. American life is so comfortable. When you’re suffering, God is close to your life.”

A sign, in English, on the grounds offers this reminder: “Let Your Family Be the House of Prayer.”

In the evenings, at the base of the towering statue of Mary, the young meet to talk, to sing, to exchange addresses. In years past, about 10 couples that met here have been married.

Everywhere, there are reminders that some Vietnamese values endure. Older children take charge of toddler siblings. Young girls wash dishes in a drainage ditch, where the seminary brothers have rigged up a row of spigots.

When campers head home, they leave the grounds as tidy as they found them. Except for a few pull-off tabs, Charlie Rogers says, “You would never really know they were here. You get 35,000 native-born Americans together, you’re going to have a hell of a mess.”

Not all of the young are in tune with what is happening here. Minh Dinh, 23, a bank teller from San Jose attending her first festival, says: “People down here are so totally different from California . . . In the store, people would, like, stare at us. The kids would say ‘hi’ and their parents would go, ‘Don’t talk to her! . . .’ ”

She has two other complaints: It is too hot and “so religious.” She shrugs and concludes: “We just like the city life.”

A trio of older women seated beneath a tree includes Tam Minh Nguyen from Houston. She has come precisely because it is so religious. She explains: “My friend’s daughter was very sick. He come here and then (she was cured). My husband is very sick. Open heart surgery. My American boss told me to come and pray for him.”

In the chapel of Our Lady of Fatima, the heat is stifling. Elderly women, in their ao dais , fan themselves during a Mass for the sick and suffering. Before the exquisite Madonna, which is carved from an oak tree at Fatima, they kneel and light votive candles. A photograph of a sick child has been placed at the Madonna’s feet.

In front of a nearby tent, two small boys are playfully exchanging kung fu kicks.

A cool drizzle, a welcome break in the weather, falls on an evening Mass honoring martyred Vietnamese saints. The flock takes refuge under a sea of multicolored umbrellas.

Celebrating the Mass is Bishop Leroy Matthiesen of Amarillo, which has seen an influx of Vietnamese. “At first we thought you were kind of strange,” he says at the start of the service. “But we learned to love you very much.”

At midnight, under the glare of lights in the seminary gymnasium, those who are not camping--many of them the elderly--try to sleep on mats and blankets spread on the floor, some shielding their eyes with fans.

Thi Minh Pham, 52, is happy to be here. She arrived in Houston just two months ago. Her husband, a police captain before the Communists took over, had spent eight years in a “reeducation camp.” Now, he must look for a job in America. But whatever, she says, “It’s a hundred times better than with the Communists in Vietnam.”

The Communist government has persecuted Catholics and has driven the religion underground. Although Buddhism is the country’s dominant religion, one-fifth of the Vietnamese refugees in the United States--about 180,000--are Roman Catholic.

Old women, seated cross-legged, giggle like girls at a slumber party, talking animatedly in Vietnamese. Despite the hour, Nu Thi Tran, a diminutive 75-year-old from Fullerton, is too excited to sleep.

She has come to Marian Days with her “adopted” daughter, Hue Thi Nguyen, 55, and the latter’s Amerasian child, Chau Nguyen, 25. Chau has never seen her father, who was an American soldier. “He left right before the Tet offensive,” she says. “He left his address, but we lost it.” She is learning English, while working as an electronics assembler in Garden Grove.

The two younger women had been given shelter by Nu Thi Tran when they reached America a year ago, after six months at a refugee staging area in the Philippines.

A widow for 40 years, Nu Thi Tran is the mother of eight children, all living in Southern California. Fullerton-to-Carthage is just a little excursion; two years ago she traveled to Rome for a canonization ceremony for Vietnamese saints.

She missed one or two Marian Days festivals, she explains through an interpreter, because she “had to stay home and keep the grandchildren,” freeing their parents to come. She laughs as she recalls, “One time I was stuck with 25, all hungry at the same time. They all cry. I cry. Now I’m taking turns.”

She throws her head back and laughs again, enjoying her own story. Her teeth are stained dark with beetlenut juice.

These are people who have suffered hardships and heartbreak, yet they laugh easily. On entertainment night, they roar at a spoof of a Chinese soap opera that features a princess in drag as one of a pair of doomed lovers. They tap along to the rhythms of The Lips, a Vietnamese-American band from Denver. They love a skit satirizing Vietnamese courting customs of a century ago.

Kim Anh, in a diaphanous white ao dai , touches them with an emotional rendering of “Saigon the Beautiful.”

She says later: “No matter where Vietnamese go, they always remember Saigon in their hearts.”