When retired dairy farmer Tony Vanderwal
of Abbotsford, BC boards a plane for Vietnam this fall—yet again—no doubt many
of his friends will tell him the same thing they’ve said many times before:
“You’re crazy. Why don’t you just go to the beach or buy an RV?”
But to Tony, his work in Vietnam is worth
much more than a vacation in some tropical paradise or a gas-guzzling
retirement home on wheels. After working hard to establish his family and
business, Tony is determined to invest whatever time he has left helping those
less fortunate than himself.
“When I was a kid, I was awful poor. I
only got a grade six education,” he says, and laughs. When Tony
first arrived in Canada in 1951, all he and his new bride Nicki had was
thirty-eight dollars. But the Lord blessed them richly over the years. “Today,
to be honest, I’m well off. But who gave it to me? I always prayed like Solomon
for God to give me wisdom, and God blessed me as such. So I think it’s more
than responsible to use what he has given me to do his work.”
For Tony and Nicki, that work has involved
everything from helping Vietnamese farmers learn better agricultural practices
to, more recently, providing help for handicapped and orphaned children, who
receive little or no help from the Vietnamese government. Right now, they are
working in conjunction with Global Aid
Network (GAiN) and the Abbotsford Rotary Club to provide school supplies
for a school that will be built in Vietnam by the Lever Company.
The Vanderwals feel a particular call to
help the handicapped, because, in Vietnam, they are often treated as
second-class citizens. Says Tony: “When you’re handicapped, your wages are
handicapped, too.”
But Tony has more in mind than simply
helping to provide for people’s physical needs. He also sees his work with
handicapped children as an ideal way to reach out with the gospel to their
families, who are the children’s primary caregivers. As he helps minister to
the children, their families are often drawn in, giving them a chance to hear
the gospel as well. This is particularly important in a country like Vietnam,
where 80% of the population are Buddhist. Trying to convert the older people is
nigh impossible, says Tony. They’re too set in their ways. But with children,
there’s still hope.
Working in a communist country that is
antagonistic to Christians also presents some challenges. For one thing, Tony
is constantly faced with crooked government officials looking for bribes. And
when he doesn’t comply, things can get a little difficult, like when an
official “lost” Tony’s visa at the airport recently, forcing Tony to pay a
large sum of money to get it back. Tony also runs a risk whenever he hands out
Christian literature, which he says he does “right, left, and centre.” But he’s
not too worried about potential retributions.
“When they see an old guy like me, they
don’t worry too much about him.”
But for the most part, Tony finds people
in Vietnam are very friendly and thankful for the help, and he has no problem
finding volunteers for the projects he is involved in. Some women will teach
all day at their regular jobs and then teach for free in the evenings at a
special school for handicapped children and orphans.
Prior to his first trip to Vietnam in 1994
(which was made at the invitation of a Vietnamese-Canadian friend) Tony was
very active in his local church. He even served on the church board, where he
took part in decisions to send money overseas, but he never got personally
involved in missions. Since going to Vietnam, however, Tony has found
tremendous fulfillment working hand-in-hand with the people he is helping. Over
the past seven years, he’s been over to Vietnam twice a year, on average, and
he’s not finished yet.
“You
can only do so much in your life,” Tony says. Realizing this, he and Nicki have
decided to focus his remaining years on Vietnam, where he knows plenty of work
still needs to be done.