A FEW YEARS AGO A YOUNG DERMATOLOGIC SURGEON contacted me with something important to say. Over the phone that day, Vinh Chung told me one of the most amazing stories I had ever heard. This story is so precious to me because, as the president of World Vision US, I work to change the lives, literally, of millions of children every day. But I rarely hear the rest of the story thirty years later. The story of Vinh Chung is what I hope and pray for every vulnerable child.
The story you are about to read is the one I was told. It is the thrilling account of Vinh Chung and his family’s harrowing journey from Vietnam to the South China Sea to the Deep South in Arkansas and eventually to the halls of Harvard. It is the story of a family who faced political persecution, who were forced to leave behind everything they had and take incredible risks to start a new life. Vinh’s family, miraculously, began their new life from scratch, relying on their resilience and determination, learning a new language and starting new jobs. And then Vinh and his brothers and sisters achieved far more than most families ever dream for their children. You’ll also see that Vinh and his family couldn’t have made this journey alone. All along the way good people, and many good Christians, intervened with a helping hand.
In 1979, as the new communist regime in Vietnam consolidated its power, families fled by boat in search of a new home. Yet when the lives of hundreds of thousands of these “boat people” hung in the balance, most of the world decided to look away. Governments, politicians, and citizens wanted to forget the tragedy in the South China Sea.
But World Vision’s president, Stan Mooneyham, believed he must do something. He believed that God hadn’t turned His face from those who were suffering. So Mooneyham wouldn’t allow the world to turn away. When he couldn’t get others to help, he set out onto the open seas himself. Mooneyham believed that God didn’t create any throwaway children—that we cannot look away when people are suffering.
As you read and when you’ve finished reading this book, I hope you’ll reflect on the bigger picture. We live in a world where hundreds of millions of children like Vinh Chung have been driven from their homes in the last two decades.
Even now, at this moment, children are being driven from their homes in places like Syria, Central African Republic, and the Philippines. Today there are twenty million children living in refugee camps, tent cities, and other temporary shelters. And they are not throwaways either.
A few months ago I sat with refugee children from Syria. They had fled their country, forced to leave by the fighting in their cities. Their homes destroyed, their parents killed, they left simply for the chance to stay alive. Now their future hangs in the balance. Will they have the opportunity to grow up healthy and go to school and live ordinary lives?
Vinh’s is the story of one—the incredible potential locked inside one refugee child. But it’s also the story of every child in the world who is poor, forgotten, and abused, a refugee. It’s a story that shows there is no such thing as a throwaway child.
Thirty years ago Stan Mooneyham did something outrageous because he believed that every child is precious and that God has created each of them with potential and gifts and talents. Among our staff at World Vision today, Mooneyham’s resolve still resonates as an example of the lengths we must go to make good on our belief that every child is precious. What he did—to be frank—was reckless. Yet because Mooneyham wouldn’t ignore these children, neither could the politicians who wanted to look the other way.
Mooneyham was only one link in a whole chain of actions that saved Vinh’s life, the lives of his family, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others. It required a number of individuals, often strangers, who decided to do something, including the little Lutheran church in Arkansas that chose to adopt a large family of refugees from Vietnam.
Today, when we read in a newspaper about a famine or we watch as diplomats argue about how to resolve an international crisis, it is easy to think that such troubles are too difficult to fix. It is easy to feel helpless in the midst of a complex catastrophe. But the remarkable story told in this book is proof that we can turn the tide. We can shift the world’s attention to those who are suffering. We may not be in charge of a global charity, but we can write letters to members of Congress; we can raise awareness online and in social media; we can donate to worthy causes.
Whatever you do on behalf of the world’s forgotten, it can make a difference for generations. Today, because a few people did what they could, Vinh Chung is saving lives as a surgeon and as a World Vision donor. He is also now helping to lead our ministry after I invited him to become a board member. It’s only fitting, after all, to have someone like Vinh, who can remind us that there truly are no throwaway children.
Don’t ever underestimate the difference you can make in the life of one person. What if Nelson Mandela had died in a refugee camp, Mother Teresa had been forced into an early marriage, or Gandhi had died as a child for lack of clean water? One small act today can lead to another and another. Like a line of dominoes, where each one plays a minor but essential role, we can each play a part. It may only take one act to save one life that can change the course of history.
—Richard Stearns, Bellevue, Washington