Sister Ngoc-Ha Pham
Current Location – Family ministry
Ngoc-Hà Pham was born January 9, 1964 in Sài Gòn, (Saigon) Viêt Nàm (Vietnam) to Sa Nguyen and Ly Pham (D). She had 4 sisters: Lien Nguyen, Chau To, Anh Duong and Loan Pham and 5 brothers: Chi, David, Duc, Long and Thu. Ngoc-Hà was the youngest daughter in the family. She graduated from Escondido High School, Escondido, CA in 1983.
Sister Ngoc-Hà Pham’s devout Catholic parents had raised most of their family in the north of Viêt Nàm. In 1954, the north came under communist control and the family fled south to escape religious persecution.
In 1975, her peaceful existence was shattered when Sài Gòn fell to the communists. Ngoc-Hà and most of her family boarded a U.S. military transport jammed with people who were flown to safety. “Where is Mom?”, Ngoc-Hà asked her sister who replied, “Mom will join us later.” Later was ten years away. Her mother had been waiting at the airport for two of her sons to arrive but Sài Gòn airport was bombed and destroyed the next day; there were no more flights.
The Pham family stayed in Fort Chafee, Arkansas, until they were sponsored by a Catholic parish in Mason City, Iowa. After four years they moved to Escondido, CA. When her mother and brothers finally came and the family was reunited, Ngoc-Hà shared with them her desire for religious life, and they supported her choice. But nursing came first.
Ngoc-Hà worked her way through college and earning a degree in nursing from Miracosta College in Oceanside, CA and from Palomar College, San Marcos, CA. and worked as a nurse at Palomar Medical Center. When her father became ill with cancer, she nursed him until he died, ten years after the family had been reunited.
One day Ngoc-Hà prayed to know God’s will for her. The next day, on a table where she worked in the hospital, she spotted the January, 1996 Maryknoll Magazine and read the article, “Viêt Nàm Visit.” She clipped the vocation coupon from the magazine and sent it to the Maryknoll Sisters. She delayed responding to the Sisters’ reply for over a year.
As Ngoc-Hà and part of her family traveled back to Viêt Nàm, she mused, “As I traveled from the south to the north of Viêt Nàm, along with its beauty I could see the poverty, the suffering, the harsh life. My vocation was confirmed.” In 2000, Ngoc-Hà finally answered the Maryknoll Sisters invitation to join them.
Noc-Ha entered the Maryknoll Sisters August 5, 2000 at their Center in NY. She pronounced First Vows August 11, 2002 at the Center, NY and Final Vows August 15, 2009 in Escondido, CA.
In orientation, besides studying at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Sister Ngoc-Hà spent her summers working as a nurse, assisting a Mexican doctor in Anapra, Mexico.
She received her first mission assignment January 1, 2003 to El Salvador. She worked in a clinic in San Salvador treating people living with AIDS and also doing preventive education. In Soyapango, she started a Peace Library for children, a space free from the violence that was all around them.
On June 1, 2010, she was assigned to China.