Mobile blessings

Ministry: The gift of transport breaks down cultural and political barriers | Anita K. Palmer

Schoendorfer (center) delivers the goods in Vietnam.

Larry Remp is a businessman from Ohio. His friend, Nguyen Hoang Vu, is a former underground pastor in Vietnam. Last November, communist officials in the Vietnamese city of Nha Trang shocked both men when they publicly acknowledged Vu's existence as a Christian pastor. Just a few years prior, Vu had faced imprisonment for preaching the gospel.

"It was incredible," said Remp, who has been traveling to Vietnam for 18 years to support His Place, the once-secret theological training facility that he and Vu established in 1990. What prompted the acknowledgment of God in a country with a history of repressing religion? A 40-foot shipping container full of odd-looking wheelchairs.

The wheelchairs came from Free Wheelchair Mission (FWM), a $5.4 million nonprofit charity based in Irvine, Calif., that manufactures simple but rugged wheelchairs for less than $50 each.