Sister Uyen Vu wakes up every single day at 3:30 a.m. She sits in a chapel for at least one hour of prayer — to anchor herself.
“That is my time with God,” Vu said.
Then, Vu goes to the gym and prays while she walks on the treadmill. After her exercise, she makes her way to 6 a.m. Mass to pray with her team members.
By the time Mass has ended, Vu will start to make her rounds to patients, doctors, team members and sisters at three different hospitals: Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center, Our Lady of Lourdes Heart Hospital, and Our Lady of Lourdes Women's and Children's Hospital.
Sister Uyen Vu, left, and Sister Catherine Luu at a Ragin’ Cajuns home game in October 2022.
Vu is the Franciscan Services Coordinator for the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady in Lafayette, Louisiana. She has been with the Missionaries for 32 years. Vu and her family came to New Orleans on Sept. 7, 1989, after 18 months in different refugee camps in Malaysia and the Philippines.
Vu was born and raised in a Catholic family in South Vietnam, along with her younger brother and sister. Her father was in a Communist prison for almost 10 years.
She doesn’t like to say she is “in charge” of anything, but Vu’s various responsibilities at The Lake hospitals are to lead Mass, pray on the hospital intercom, visit patients, facilitate prayer through music, offer the blessing of hands to new team members at orientation, plan feast days and special events for the hospital and much, much more.
Vu does not plan her day. “God schedules for you,” she said.
After Vu makes the rounds through the hospitals — providing prayer and communion and spiritual comfort to patients — she sits back in the chapel and plays a recording of her 5-year-old niece reciting the rosary.
She is home by 5:30 p.m., then calls in to do the 7 p.m. prayer over the intercom at the hospital and says the rosary over Zoom at 7:15 p.m.
“I’m just so into what God wants me to do,” Vu said. “I just follow that guidance, that spirit into me.”
They arrived a day before Mother Mary’s birthday (Sept. 8). Vu joined the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady soon after.
“I continue to fall in love with what I do,” Vu said, “And I feel led to do this work by the loving care and guidance of Mother Mary and the grace of God.”
What are some of the unique, special projects you work closely on at the hospitals?
I like working collaboratively with other team members. It is truly amazing. I just feel so happy when I’m here — being with the team members and patients. We were put together to make God’s love become more prominent.
Sister Uyen Vu (holding the guitar on the right) with the Our Lady of Lourdes St. Bernadette Clinic team for the 2022 May Crowning commemoration at the clinic on St. John Street.
My main ministry is to pray for all team members and patients. Besides that, I have a lot of little duties.
Since COVID, I developed the prayer on intercom. What I cannot do is be in three or four different places at once, but I can call in a deliver prayer over the intercom.
I create and deliver prayer cards for patients, family members as well as team members. We have prayer boxes throughout our campuses. People put in their prayer requests, and we collect them.
At the healing Mass — we have it every day — we take the prayers up to the altar and after the priests prays over them, we burn the prayers.
I want to be present, and I want them to know that the sisters and I ... our main duty is to pray for all of our team members and their family members.
Do you have a favorite interaction or story from working with patients?
Patients who come to Lourdes know that that they will receive both physical and spiritual care because we are Catholic, faith-based ministry.
They feel safe here. They trust in the work of our health care providers, and they join in the collaboration with providers in their care.
I feel that in my heart. The spiritual healing is so important. It also enhances the physical healing for the patient. That’s how I see it.
Sister Uyen Vu blesses the hands of Tyler Miller, NP, at the grand opening of Our Lady of Lourdes Physician Group Primary Care at Youngsville in June 2024.
There are hundreds of healing stories from patients whom I had the privilege to journey with and I believe that Jesus is always at work within patients, family members, and me.
A former team member contracted a severe case of COVID. After several days on the ventilator, she was not making progress. The family decided to let her die peacefully by removing the ventilator so she could be at peace.
We prayed fervently, and she regained consciousness and the ability to breathe on her own. She eventually got well.
Today she is fully recovered.
We had several patients who were sent to inpatient hospice care so they could die peacefully but they regained their health and eventually got well.
I also had the privilege to journey with other patients and, although they did not get well physically, they became peaceful and accepted death with deep conviction that they would be with Jesus, Mother Mary and all the Saints in heaven.
These patients then achieved their goal to be healed spiritually.
How do you feel when you help patients or lead them to spiritual healing?
I cannot find the perfect words to thank God enough for being here.
It is a great honor, and I feel blessed and privileged to serve in the hospital setting because I am working in the business of both spiritual and physical healing for everyone that I encounter.
We are God’s instruments of peace one way or the other. God placed us together to make his love known even more.
I always feel like the team members are what makes this ministry possible because they are concerned. They care. And their faith in God is an inspiration to me.
I think working in the environment that so emerged in the spiritual realm around, you cannot help but feel that peace, that holiness and that healing overflow through the team members — through your providers.
Physicians even join me for prayer when I walk around. That makes my heart so full.