Like many other young men from the northern provinces, 27-year-old Peter (not his real name) headed to Ho Chi Minh City to find work. Once he was there and had found a job, when work was done for the day, he and his friends would meet and drink heavily every night.

“We knew alcohol abuse could severely damage our health, but we still drank to forget that we missed our family. We had nothing to do and no friends in this city,” he says.

“I gave it up three years ago, after I started going to a prayer service for migrant workers.”

Peter recalls that he was especially inspired to change his ways by these verses from Corinthians:

“Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.”

“Now I go to pray after work,” he says, “even though my friends are still drinking next door.”

Marie Nguyen Thi Thu Ha and her sister are also regulars at the evening sessions. “They help to deepen our faith and keep us safe from gambling, drinking, drug abuse, prostitution and premarital sex,” she says.

They are part of a group of around 300 migrant workers who attend prayer meetings held in their own boarding houses, under a scheme that the city’s Saint Paul’s parish has been running for 10 years. Divided into small, manageable units, the groups pray together, study the Bible and share their experiences and problems. Some of them also take the human values courses that the parish offers.

Peter is now actively involved in organizing the meetings. “We want to give people opportunities to practice their faith and express their solidarity with one another in a city where people run after consumerist values and feel desperately lonely,” he says.

As well as scheduling the meetings, Peter and his co-workers help by erecting altars and handing out Bibles.

“Some of the boarding house owners don’t allow them to be used for prayers,” says lay leader Joseph Nguyen Van Chuong, “ so we simply find other places to pray.” Joseph has noted that the popularity of the program is growing.  “Now we get many non-Catholic workers attending and even volunteering to read the Bible,” he says.

His fellow leader, Dominic Doan Quang Minh, says that gambling, drinking, drug abuse and prostitution are widespread among the city’s migrant worker community. “But in recent years,” he says,  ”fewer and fewer Catholic migrants are reported to be taking part.”