Hope Vietnamese Baptist Church
.
Cam Tu Le is the pastor of the Hope Vietnamese Baptist Church that meets at Temple Baptist
Church on Sunday afternoons.
Pastor Cam grew up as part of a Christian family in South
Vietnam that endured
persecution from non-Christian people. He served in the South Vietnamese Army, as an
officer. When the Communists took over their country, he spent two years as a
Prisoner of War.
Pastor Cam and his family were sponsored by the United
States Government to resettle in the USA as refugees in January 1991.
They felt God wanted them to start a church in Portland. They started the
church with three persons; he, his wife and his son. Soon after they
shared the gospel with a family of six, who accepted Christ. That family
agreed to use their apartment as a meeting place for a church. After 4
weeks in the apartment they had 30 conversions. When the apartment became
too crowded, God prepared Temple Baptist for them to share their facility to
meet together. Pastor Cam met with people from the Columbia Conference in 1994,
discussed and found way to start a new church in Northeast Portland named
Vietnamese Hope Baptist Church. Targeting Vietnamese new comers, the church grew
quickly grew to 150 and became self
supporting within three years. Pastor Cam sensed that his work for the
Lord in Vietnam was not finished, "All my life, nothing has been more
important than to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to lost people," he
says. In 1997, Pastor Cam and his family began sending support money to
the struggling churches of Vietnam. Several CBC churches joined in the
effort, and 89 house churches, reaching 6,300 people, have been started
since.
On December 12, 2002, the ladies of the Temple Quilter Group presented
to Pastor Cam and Hanh Thi, a beautiful quilt the group made.
The majority of the text above and the photo on the left was
copied from VISIONorthwest-volume. 6 - No. 5. Nov. Dec. 2002.
Columbia Baptist
Conference newsletter formerly known as The Conference Call.
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