"When you have sickness and headaches, we call the shamans to do a religion party to help you out," she said through a translator. "They wear black cloth over their face, go to the other world, ask the ancestors to heal you."f+t

Tom Lee, 44, the recent convert and one of the most involved members of the Hmong congregation, often serves as a translator during church services held in a cinder-block classroom Sunday mornings. He comes from a long line of shamans.

For many years, he was a practicing Buddhist. Then, two years ago, two missionaries came into his yard in Palmer. He was building a chicken coop, and they offered to help.

"The next time they come, I was cutting the wood," he said. "We chopped down a couple of trees. They keep dropping by. The next time we could sit down and talk about the gospel."

Lee and his wife decided to join the church because it is so supportive.

"If I ever run into some kind of disaster, they may be able to help me out, because I don't have family," he said.

"Being baptized is like coming to America."

To be successful in the United States, which he believes is a Christian country, you have to convert, he said.

"People that stay in this land has to accept the gospel. If they don't, I believe they will not get to prosper."

In Hmong households visited by missionaries, the children are usually the best English speakers. The parents may convert, but the grandparents don't. The children live in many worlds, serving as translators between their elders and the English-speaking world and moving between LDS tradition and their grandparents' Old World faith.

"The kids are much more receptive to what we teach," Bennion said.

One of the biggest challenges for the missionaries is to convince the Hmong that divine messages come from interior, not exterior, sources, he said.

Members of the LDS Church believe in the Holy Ghost, which guides the faithful on the right path. Hmong believe a shaman communicates advice from dead relatives and can provide remedies for spiritual and physical healing. Relations with a shaman can be the hardest thing for the converted to give up, and some don't entirely.

"It's so ingrained, they continue to participate in things like that," Bennion said. "Part of our work is to help them keep the part of their culture that's good, like the costumes and the dances are beautiful. That's awesome. ... But we want to help them let go of some of the other things that aren't in keeping (with LDS doctrine)."

"At times I feel sad for them because I know they are going to give up something they have done for a long time, but I know they are going to get something better."

Not everyone welcomes the union of the LDS faith and Hmong. Mark Pfeifer, the Texas-based editor of Hmong Studies Journal, studies Hmong in the United States. Everywhere there are Hmong, there are members of the LDS Church, he said. The missionaries' language skills help them to gain inroads in the communities.

"I have only met a few non-Hmong who were able to get fluent," he said. "They were all Mormons."

Asking the Hmong to give up ancestor worship is like asking them to give up being Hmong, he said.

"People need to be respected for their traditional religion," he said.

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E-mail: jomalley@adn.com