Religious Groups Lending Immigrants Helping Hand : Fellowship: Churches, synagogues, mosques play key role in welcoming newcomers. Many Asian congregations hold services in native tongues.

In a development that hearkens directly back to the early decades of the century, many Orange County churches, synagogues and mosques are playing a significant role in welcoming immigrants to the United States, offering services ranging from job and citizenship counseling to language training.

Numerous single-nationality Asian congregations--Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese--are echoing the sounds made by an earlier generation of American immigrants, by holding most or all of their services in members’ native languages.

Numerous single-nationality Asian congregations--Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese--are echoing the sounds made by an earlier generation of American immigrants, by holding most or all of their services in members’ native languages.

The Vietnamese Christian Church in Santa Ana is a 123-member congregation renting quarters at the First Christian Church of Santa Ana on 17th Street. Every Saturday night and Sunday morning, congregants gather in a sanctuary there to hear their pastors and share their Pentecostal faith.

“We’re a small church,” said Pastor Tuan Phuc Ma. “But, everyone here helps those who are new to the country share in what we already have.”

Members aid newly arrived Vietnamese in renting apartments, learning to drive and applying for welfare, said Assistant Pastor Paul Xuan Vo.

“Our goal is to bring those who do not know Christ to Christ. The way to do that is through love,” Vo said.

The church has two Sunday school classes for youths, one for children under 14 and another for those who are older. The classes are taught in English by Vietnamese instructors.

Few bicultural congregations have as high a percentage of immigrants as the Islamic Center of Orange County, which is composed almost entirely of first-generation Americans. Although the 1,500 families formally affiliated with the center represent only a fraction of the county’s estimated 25,000 Muslims, the Garden Grove facility is the heart of that multinational community.

The center’s Orange Crescent School has 300 students, with enrollment not confined to members of the congregation. More than 600 young people attend classes on the weekends, and another 100 are taking after-school classes during the week. There are Arabic language classes for adults during the week.

Communal meals are served following services on Friday and Sunday, and there are informal athletic contests on the center’s fields on Sundays. A number of shops serving foods prepared according to Islamic law have sprung up near the center.

The center’s other services range from lay counseling to organizing a late December tour of holy places in Saudia Arabia.

Other congregations, with smaller numbers of transplants to the United States, are also active in the acculturation process.

At St. Irenaeus in Cypress, where several weekend masses are offered in Spanish, Fred Navarro and three colleagues provide free immigrant counseling every Saturday afternoon, these days focusing on the family unification phase of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s amnesty program for undocumented residents. But he also helps immigrants with problems ranging from answering correspondence to finding medical assistance, mostly to Latino and Filipino members.

At Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton, about 25 families of Russian Jews have been given free temple memberships, in addition to help with food and housing and, in some cases, used cars and jobs at the businesses of congregants. “We’re not adding Soviet immigrants to the welfare rolls,” Rabbi Haim Asa said.

When Yaffa Alayev’s family arrived in Orange County in 1989 from Tashkent, Beth Tikvah and Rabbi Asa were waiting.

“From the first day we felt like we were home,” said Alayev, a concert pianist now working as a keyboard operator. “They helped us with just about everything.”

Asa welcomed the family of four from the pulpit at their first Sabbath services. The congregation, together with the Jewish Family Service, helped the Alayevs get a job, a Social Security number, medical care, furniture and schooling for their children. One woman came to their home for four months, tutoring them in both English and Hebrew without charge.

“We met a lot of wonderful people” through the synagogue, Alayev said.