Hope to Walk. Waynesboro team taking prosthetic legs to Vietnam

Five people from Waynesboro’s Otterbein Church, with financial backing from other members of the congregation, are ready to make a huge difference in the lives of 100 amputees in Vietnam.

The team includes two men with unique connections to Vietnam, one a helicopter pilot who went there to “kill and destroy” in 1968 and one who came to the United States from Vietnam in 1984 when he was 13.

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“It’s a highlight of my life to have been instrumental to bring the players together with this amazing device … to see it materialize is the fulfillment of a dream,” said U.S. Army veteran Joe Baginski, author of “Vietnam Redemption … Full Circle.”

“Walking again changes everything,” said Dr. Stephen Bui of Advanced Foot and Ankle Care, PC, in Wayne Heights. He did a lot of organizational work to coordinate this trip with clinics, missionaries and medical personnel while in his native country on another project a couple of months ago.

Dirk Small, Otterbein’s pastor of Local2Global Service and Outreach, his wife, Julie, and Baginski’s wife, Jenny, round out the local contingent. They will leave Oct. 17 with four others from Hope to Walk for the 3 ½-week trip.

In their checked bags, they will carry components of low-cost, easy-to-assemble prosthetic legs they will custom fit to amputees at locations throughout Vietnam. They’ll also visit the capital of Cambodia to explore future sites.

How can a $250 prosthetic leg change a life?

About 35 million people in the world need prosthetic devices, but don’t have access to them, according to Hope to Walk, based in Blacksburg, Va.

Traditional prosthetics costs tens of thousands of dollars and are out of reach for someone who might make $5 a day.

Hope to Walk founders Phil Johnson and Dr. Michael Mabry invented $250 legs created out of wood, PVC pipe and fiberglass, along with 3D printing.

“They are light-weight, functional and strong,” Bui said. “In my opinion, they’re comparable to ones we have here.”

The legs allow adults to work, help their families and escape isolation. They make it easier for children to attend school, play with others and, as they grow, get replacements.

“It’s all about taking care of underprivileged people and allowing them to walk,” Bui said.

Hope to Walk also creates jobs and bolsters local economies by teaching people to manufacture legs in the countries volunteers visit.

It is a game changer when an amputee goes from a wheelchair to walking, Small said. A Hope to Walk videographer will capture those moments on the trip.

Small is excited about the prospect of sharing links to photos, videos and recipients’ stories with members of the Otterbein congregation who had an “overwhelming response financially” and raised $25,000 for 100 legs.

Small’s job is to involve people from the church in unique missions, to get them “out of the church and live out their faith in the world … to care about the least of these around the world.”

In addition to leg kits, the team also will distribute 100 radio-sized, solar-powered digital Bibles, known as “proclaimers.” They are in four different languages so “people can hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their tribal language.”

How is this trip especially meaningful for a Vietnam War veteran?

“I’m 77 years old and I have had a heart for the Vietnamese people,” Baginski said.

He and his wife, Jenny, were the ones who got Otterbein connected with Hope to Walk as part of his “Full Circle” Vietnam journey.

An online description says the book “shares his process of real healing for his war-wracked soul which was brought about as he returned to Vietnam after 43 years. In ‘Vietnam Redemption ... Full Circle’ Joe takes the reader with him as he travels full circle from being a young impressionable warrior, ready, willing and able to kill and destroy his Vietnamese enemy to a compassionate ambassador of peace and mutual understanding with his former Vietnamese enemies.”

The transformation and healing were precipitated by a 2011 missions trip to distribute Bibles in Vietnam during which he met a young North Vietnamese woman whose uncle had been killed in the war in an area where Baginski served.

“Do you realize I might have killed him?” Baginski asked, and she replied, that the war was “so long ago.”

Still, he apologized and asked her to tell her parents he was sorry for the harm done. That opened a Pandora’s Box of feelings for him, leading to the book and his continued missions work with the Vietnamese people.

This is his fifth trip and Jenny’s second to Vietnam.

They’ve wanted take Hope to Walk there since learning about it in 2016, but lacked the internal contacts.

The couple moved to Waynesboro about eight years ago and the pieces of the puzzle — somewhat delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic — came together with Otterbein’s Local2Global mission and Bui’s connections in Vietnam.

Why does this Waynesboro doctor have a heart for helping the poor?

Bui’s father, who had worked with the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, was considered an enemy of the state, left the country when his son was 3 and the family was stigmatized in the Communist country. Bui, his mother and his sister followed him to the U.S. 10 years later.

Bui is grateful for all the opportunities available to him in the United States, feels it is important to give back and has a heart for helping impoverished people throughout the world, including surgical work in Vietnam.

He was in El Salvador earlier this year for a clean water project that provided water for a whole village.

“My passion is health and wellness … I want to help people help themselves,” he said. He noted Hope to Walk both provides people the ability to walk, helping them to get jobs, and creates jobs for people who make the legs.

He’s an active member of the Rotary Club of Waynesboro and wants to gain the support of Rotary International to spread Hope to Walk around the world.

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Shawn Hardy is a reporter with Gannett's Franklin County newspapers in south-central Pennsylvania — the Echo Pilot in Greencastle, The Record Herald in Waynesboro and the Public Opinion in Chambersburg. She has more than 35 years of journalism experience. Reach her at shardy@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Waynesboro Record Herald: Waynesboro church members will help amputees in Vietnam