A large image of the Buddha greets visitors to Chua Lien Hoa, a temple founded in 1987 to nurture the growing number of Vietnamese refugees who had been relocating to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region. The temple has a large worship space and a separate building that contains a kitchen, dining hall, and childcare center that serve the two hundred members. The group also tries to provide transportation, food, and clothing to the thousands of Vietnamese migrants in the area, although members acknowledge that they struggle to keep up with the internal and external demands on the popular temple. One sign of the popularity of the temple and the relative paucity of its resources can be found in the parking lot, which cannot accommodate the swelling numbers of weekly visitors. Many have to park at remote lots and hike back to the modest temple grounds. 

The temple's spiritual leader is the monk, Thich Chan Hy, who received his formal training in Vietnam. The temple is also home to several other Vietnamese Mahayana monks. And, as at the three other Vietnamese temples in North Carolina, the services those monks preside over are conducted in Vietnamese, and they consist primarily of chanting and meditation, although the monks also spend some time during those communal rituals discussing Buddhist history. On Sundays at noon, while the adults are in the main worship space, children and youth congregate in another building, where lay volunteers introduce the refugees' children to Buddhism. Following the adult service and the children's lessons, a meal is served in the dining hall. That provides a time for the congregation to socialize, and, as at most other Asian-American Buddhist temples, Chua Lien Hoa is as much as cultural center as a worship site. 
JA