People use many words to describe Binh Rybacki. Christian. Mother. Wife. Executive. Refugee. Award winner.

But none of these express how the people whose lives she has touched feel about her. After she returned to her birth country of Vietnam in 1993 and found children working as street peddlers, beggars, and prostitutes, Binh felt called to improve their lives.

In 1996, Binh and her husband, Jack, members of King of Glory Lutheran Church in Loveland, Colorado, founded a humanitarian organization dedicated to serving the people of Vietnam by showing them hot to help themselves. Through Children of Peace International (COPI), she has built a worldwide network of people who help support the suffering poor in Vietnam.

COPI provides funding for 12 orphanages and schools that serve more than 5,000 children; it organizes medical mission trips to the orphanages and to rural Vietnamese villages; it builds and supports medical facilities, provides scholarships and micro-loans, and facilitates adoptions.

I met Binh when my husband, Dale, and I adopted Vietnamese twins in 1999 with her help. We witnessed the tremendous needs in her native country and saw her work to meet those needs. Because of that, we joined Binh's growing family of fellow workers in Vietnam: dale has traveled on several mission trips there.

What has touched our lives the most, however, is Binh's tremendous faith in God as she has faced struggles in her life and in her work.

Is God real?
When Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, Binh, then 18, and her family were able to escape with the help of the Americans. The family was shuttled from one refugee camp to another until American sponsors offered them the opportunity to move to Colorado. Here, Binh attended Zion Lutheran Church in Loveland, Colorado, with her sponsors.

At first, she had no interest in being a Christian. Her family had been Buddhist for eight generations. Binh also struggled with the idea that there could be a God who would not save her country, who would send her to a foreign land with virtually nothing more than the shirt on her back.

Still, she attended church regularly and heard sermon after sermon. Eventually, to challenge God, Binh decided to be baptized. "If Christ can do something with me to help the world, then Christ must be real," she said. However, as time went on, and she went to the university, married, and had children, she did not actively participate in her church. "I was very comfortable," she says. "I didn't do anything to fulfill my responsibility as a Christian. I signed up to be a substitute Sunday school teacher, which everyone knows will never really be used."

A son's death
In 1987, life changed for Binh. The second of her three sons, Garrett, fell serious ill. "When nothing else is left, then you go to God," she said. "I told God, 'I'll do anything, if you will just let Garrett live.'" But Garrett died, and Binh blamed God. "Who did I hate most?" she asks. "God. I was so busy blaming God for all my sufferings and for caring so little about me. Yet God kept after me. In 1993, God decided that I needed to learn a lesson."

That year, Binh traveled to Vietnam as a translator for a medical team teaching cardiac surgery. Seeing children in the Vietnamese hospital was almost more than Binh could bear. Every child reminded her of Garrett. After one particularly trying day, Binh called her husband and told him that she was coming home. She couldn't stand to see any more children die.

Jack said, "All right, I'll pick you up at the airport. But there's one thing you must agree to: You can't ever tell our boys not to be quitters."

Binh was baffled. Her husband explained, "Binh, you're about to quit. If you come home today, you can't teach our boys how not to quit. If you agree, come home."

Binh stayed for the rest of her scheduled trip. There in the country she had been driven out of, she finally saw God's grace in bringing her family to the United States.

She made her peace with God and dedicated her life to serving Christ. She also found one of her mother's oldest friends, Sister Tan, struggling to care for 27 orphaned children in an old monastery. Binh gave her money to help care for the children. After returning home, Binh continued to send donations to Sister Tan.

Personal sacrifice
Today Binh is involved in the work in Vietnam through the humanitarian organization she and Jack founded, Children of Peace International. She treats each orphan as her own child, offering them love that they may not have received elsewhere.

She comforts the children as the American doctors and dentists she brings to them examine them. She cuts their hair and scrubs and sanitizes their bedrooms. She has placed many children with adoptive families in America, giving them an opportunity for a better life.

Binh, Jack, and their sons, Preston and Spencer, have made personal sacrifices to support the work in Vietnam. The family decided that Binh's salary from her day job would go directly to COPI. They moved into a smaller house. Binh worked all day at her job, then would come home to take care of her family. After the children were in bed, she worked late into the night on projects for COPI.

Binh said she values the support of her family. Jack, in particular, has been a great help. "He helps me whenever I'm ready to quit," she says. "He tells me, 'Sure, you can quit. Anytime you want to. They'll just starve.' He's got this dry sense of humor, you see."

In 2002, Binh was laid off from her day job. She was unsure how she would continue to help the children in Vietnam. She discovered, however, that God had everything under control. She was awarded the Kiwanis International World Service Medal for her work to help children, an award that came with a $10,000 grant.

A better life
The award opened many doors for Binh. Since receiving it, she has served as keynote speaker at many Kiwanis conventions. "I do not go to fundraise," she says. "I go to teach. I do not see my speaking engagements as a vehicle to raise money, but to wake up souls. I always tell people to care for children somewhere. If not in Vietnam, then wherever they are."

Even so, she encounters overwhelming generosity. "God sent that award and the support that came with it just before I lost my entire salary. Now, I am employed solely by God."

Binh also receives support from an international organization that works to stop trafficking of women and children. Thousands of Vietnamese women and children have been trafficked abroad over the past decade, mainly for disadvantaged marriage, child adoption, labor, and sex slavery.

In April 2005, Binh addressed this issue before the United Nations' Eleventh Congress on Crime and Justice in Bangkok, Thailand. She has also met with the Taiwan Department of Criminology to find a way to stop trafficking of women from Vietnam to Taiwan.

While in Vietnam, Binh works to save children from being sold into prostitution, even purchasing children herself. Once, while walking on a beach, she heard a girl struggling and realized the girl was being raped. With no thought for her own safety, Binh confronted the rapist and demanded that he let the girl go. The man struck Binh, breaking her nose. When she told him that he had just struck an American citizen, he ran away. As Binh comforted the 12-year-old girl, she faced another angry man: the pimp. Binh gave the man $53, purchasing the girl's freedom from a life of forced prostitution. The girl has since lived in an orphanage sponsored by COPI.

The young woman who years ago challenged God to do something with her to change the world has learned a powerful lesson. God has changed the world through her as she shares God's love with others. Binh was able to use her personal struggles, first of losing her homeland and later her son, to bring God's hope of a better life to others still suffering today.

Janice Miller lives with her family in Ooltewah, Tenn.

Helping the vulnerable
At the Sixth Triennial Convention of Women of the ELCA in 2005, delegates voted to encourage local Women of the ELCA units to "expand their involvement" in addressing commercial exploitation of children and to work with churches globally to combat this problem. You can find a resource on this topic at www.womenoftheelca.org/resources/dayfulloflight.html

To learn about what Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is doing specifically about the issue of the trafficking of children, go to www.lirs.org/What/children/TCI.htm

For more information about Children of Peace International, visit www.childrenofpeace.org

This story first appeared in the October 2006 issue of Lutheran Woman Today magazine. Used with permission.