It was 1957 when my father, Mr. Vu Duc Tho, met Mr. Fred Allen for the 1st time.

The address of Saigon Church, where they met, was 155 Trần Hưng Đạo Bld., in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam

This was one of the oldest Protestant churches that belonged to the CMA (Christian & Missionary Alliance) denomination.  In one of the services at this church, my father saw one "American" sitting in the back row. At that time, very few Australians came to Vietnam, so my father thought Mr. Allen was coming from the USA. Although being fluent in French, my father couldn't speak English very well, but when the service was over, he came to talk with this American, and managed to understand that Mr. Allen was a missionary coming from Australia.

As a fervent believer in God, my father had very high regard of all servants of God. He assumed Mr. Allen was one of the CMA missionaries, and invited him to have dinner a few days later, at my home.

As a nine-year-old kid, I was very curious about this tall foreigner who had a short mustache reminding me of the Charlie Chaplin films that I had seen before, so I approached the dinner table and hid behind my father's chair to watch him.

The man noticed my presence, and waited until I showed my face to roll his eyes, and fixed his gaze on me. 

Then somehow, I began to see his ears wiggling back and forth, which was very interesting to me, and I liked him at one !

Even now, I still love and respect the first 2X2 missionary to Vietnam, Mr. Fred Allen, as my dear teacher.

During a period of about 15 years, off and on, Mr. Allen was my English teacher. Even when I was in college, when there were difficult words or sentences, I went to him for the best answers.

Mr. Allen used Essential English as the textbook to teach me and other students. At the end of each class, he would have us write a dictation which he just read from memory, and this was one of the things I admired him most about his knowledge.

The English pronunciation that Mr. Allen was teaching us was more like the one used by Americans and the English people, quite different from the accent that many Australians was using when I was visited this country in 2005.

I visited Mr. Allen often when my brother Vu Ngoc Chau was staying with him.

Sometimes I was asked to stay for a meal. Mr. Allen went to the market and prepared the food himself, of course with the assistance of my brother.

One of the things I learned from him in preparing food was he didn’t peel the skin of Japanese squash (a kind of flat shape pumpkin) like the Vietnamese used to do. The squash was just cleaned, and cut into pieces before being put into the pressure cooker with beef and other vegetables. Before coming to the two- bedroom house that Mr. Allen was renting, I had never seen a pressure cooker, so I was quite impressed with its magic function……(to be continued)


VTH