Bringing Sunshine to Florida’s Orange Groves

Just beyond the orderly rows of citrus trees, a majestic house casts a long shadow over the tennis court and swimming pool that surround it. The owner of the house, a prosperous owner of a Florida grove, has gone inside to heated comfort. Florida doesn’t have many chilly days, but when they come, it’s better to stay inside and watch football.

A few hundred yards away from the imposing house, a little boy stands in a pool of sewage. Dried human waste covers his bare arms, but he is intent on finding his toy—a boat clumsily fashioned from a discarded Dairy Queen banana-split dish. The boy is the son of migrant farm workers, and few Florida residents give him much thought.

Wayne Vanderpoel is a notable exception. He is a big man, with huge hands that clench and unclench when he describes the plight of the migrants. His words, spoken to a group of well-groomed and prosperous church members, are both a plea and a rebuke. How can we sit in our comfortable homes while others have nothing?

His silvery-gray hair is shorn close to his head, military style. At first glance, the 46-year-old seems as crusty and no-nonsense as a marine sergeant. But he shows a slide that pictures him with a little boy clutching a Christmas toy, and Vanderpoel’s smile is wider than the boy’s.

Much of what Vanderpoel does is to expose comfortable Christians to the great needs of the migrants. But work that begins by providing physical help—some 3,500 migrants are the recipients of it every year—has an ultimate goal of conveying the good news of the gospel.

“You’re welcome to come with us on a run out to the camps,” Vanderpoel tells his audience at the church. “We could use your help unloading the truck.” While most Floridians are only vaguely aware that the migrants exist, those who accompany Vanderpoel’s 30-foot truck down the bumpy roads leading into the migrant camps find their eyes opened to another world.

“What Needy?”

The migrants arrive in central Florida with the first hint of a chill in the late-October air. Tidily planted acres of orange and grapefruit trees are loaded with blossoms that will soon yield a profitable harvest. The workers arrive early because there is no place else to go, and they simply sit and wait on the ripening crops.

They come with many family members and few belongings packed into dilapidated cars. Often six to eight children peer through the car windows as their vehicles are directed toward the ramshackle trailers that serve as home during the picking season.

The trailers have been stripped clean by migrants from years past, and now they lack plumbing, electricity, heat, and window screens. They are merely shells, fit only for keeping off the rain.

In October of 1988 and 1989, many of the trailers were inspected by public officials and demolished because they were deemed “unfit,” leaving hundreds of families without shelter. “I’ll never know why the trailers weren’t inspected and brought up to code in the summer months, when they were vacant,” says Vanderpoel, shaking his head.

The first migrants to arrive move into whatever trailers are available. Those who come later do not quarrel; they will live in their cars. Some will go back to Mexico, where living is even harder.

Several times during the harvest season Vanderpoel drives his truck into the camp. Migrants stop their work and run from the groves to meet Wayne and his wife, Marie, who pull boxes of donated items from the back of the truck. Mothers and small children go through boxes, carefully selecting only the items they can really use. A pair of tennis shoes is good. A boy’s double-breasted suit coat is useless.

The older children stand back, awkward and shy. They are old enough to be embarrassed. Wayne sizes up one teenage boy, finds a pair of pants for him, and silently hands them over.

Vanderpoel has compassion for those from “the other side of the tracks” because he was once there himself. He grew up in an impoverished family, and in the sixties served a five-year prison sentence at Florida State Prison for cashing a bad check. But while he worked on death row, a condemned inmate led Vanderpoel to Christ just before his own execution.

After Vanderpoel was released, he met and married Marie. She encouraged Wayne to get involved in church, and he began to help with children’s ministries. But he sensed there was something more he was to be doing.

As Vanderpoel worked in the insurance business, he met people who were unable to recover financially from house fires. He gathered donations to help them, and he felt God nudging him to begin working to gather donations for the needy on a full-time basis. “What needy?” he wondered, looking at the prosperous Floridians around him on the gulf coast.

Soon Wayne and Marie discovered the migrant workers. Wayne sold the insurance business and Marie quit her job. At first, says Vanderpoel, “I didn’t have the faith to go full-time.” But God’s leading seemed persistent, and he launched out full-time in 1986. Today his Migrant Care Ministries serves in 27 counties of Florida and in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and the Philippines. Since 1987, Wayne has been an ordained minister in the Southern Baptist Church. The Vanderpoels live in Pinellas Park near Clearwater, but their daily journeys to the migrant camps carry them throughout Florida on circuits of several hundred miles each week. They supply food, clothing, limited medical care, Bibles, tracts, and counseling to anyone they find in need. Summer months are spent going to churches to tell about the needs.

“Our ultimate goal is to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” says Vanderpoel. “But if we see a severe need and share Christ without filling that need, we will not find a responsive ear. We believe you should first minister to the physical, medical, or educational need. Then you can present the gospel effectively. Then you will find that you have an open ear.”

Faith and prayer play a large part in Vanderpoel’s planning. “In 11 years, we’ve never solicited funds. We bought an old school bus, put 400,000 miles on it, and when it was too far gone to fix, we sat and waited for three days for God to supply. Then a man sent in $11,000 for our truck.”

Watching God Supply

One Christmas day, the pastor of a small church near a migrant camp called Vanderpoel. The forecast called for a freeze, and the migrants had no heat, no coats, and no blankets. Could Vanderpoel supply?

His boxes were empty. Everything had been distributed earlier in the week. But Vanderpoel could pray, and pray he did. On a sudden inspiration, he called a local radio station and asked if they would broadcast a plea. The announcer laughed. “It’s Christmas Day! People aren’t even listening to the radio.” But the announcer complied and asked listeners to bring blankets and coats to Vanderpoel’s house.

Cars began circling his block, and soon a mountain of material filled Vanderpoel’s garage, including over 400 blankets. Now he had another problem. The church van he was going to use could not hold all the supplies unless he took the seats out. Vanderpoel needed a certain size of socket wrench, which he did not have. The stores were closed. Vanderpoel dropped to his knees and asked God for a wrench.

Thirty minutes later a woman came to the house with a bag of clothing and blankets. “As I was leaving the house,” she explained, “I saw this gadget my late husband used when he worked on his car. I thought, ‘Migrants have cars, too,’ so I brought it along.”

She held out the very wrench Vanderpoel had prayed for. He filled the van and delivered the blankets. Now he carries that wrench with him to help him stay “humble.” “Every time I look at that wrench,” he adds, “I am reminded of God’s faithfulness and power. It’s amazing what God can do.”

By Angela Elwell Hunt, a writer living in Largo, Florida. She is the author of A Tale of Three Trees (Lion).

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