Vineyard Church Sends Wheelchairs to Vietnam

By JOSELYN KING
WHEELING — Some mountain bike tires attached to a plastic lawn chair can mean new life to someone in an impoverished country who doesn’t have access to a wheelchair.

It can get a physically challenged person up out of the dirt, and perhaps away from the snake bites they otherwise wouldn’t be able to avoid, said Chris Figaretti, a pastor at the Vineyard Church in Wheeling. It can also allow them to leave their homes and socialize with friends and family.

Figaretti’s words last spring inspired the 900 members of his congregation to donate more than $115,000 to the Free Wheelchair Mission, an organization that builds low-cost wheelchairs and ships them to foreign countries at a cost of less than $50 each.

On Thursday — All Saint’s Day on the Christian calendar — Figaretti will be part of a four-person group leaving to take a shipment of the low-cost wheelchairs to Vietnam. Joining him will be Don Shoendorfer, founder of Free Wheelchair Mission; Shoendorfer’s wife, Laurie; and Steubenville resident Larry Remp, a friend of Figaretti’s who makes frequent humanitarian visits to Vietnam.

The group plans to spend two weeks in Ho Chi Minh City and make trips into the surrounding rural areas.

Figaretti said he first became interested in the Free Wheelchair Mission after learning about Shoendorfer and his story.

While in Morroco in 1980, Shoendorfer had seen a disabled woman crawling across a dirt road there. He realized then there was a need for wheelchairs in impoverished countries, but obtaining and shipping expensive wheelchairs from the United States wasn’t a realistic answer.

An engineer, Shoendorfer crafted a low-cost wheelchair from mountain bike tires and a plastic lawn chair. Such chairs could be made and shipped for less than $50 each.

The Free Wheelchair Mission then began in 1999 and has since distributed “thousands of wheelchairs,” according to Figaretti.

Figaretti contacted the organization to ask if there was any way his church could help the cause, and within a week representatives came to address the congregation and tell of their efforts throughout the world.

Figaretti asked each person present if they would donate $50 for the cost of one wheelchair. In the end, more than $115,000 was collected from a church that has a membership of not more than 900, he said.

Figaretti will be blogging all during his trip, and those interested can log in at chrisinvietnam.com beginning Thursday.

Shoendorfer, meanwhile, will be coming to Wheeling in early December for a number of engagements.

He will speak at the Vineyard Church on Dec. 1-2 and at Wheeling Rotary on Dec. 4.