Setting up VPN for family use with openVPN

For security reasons, my Slackware64-current computer is using iptables with everything dropped except for specific computers. Those on my home network are able to connect with my computer, as is my work computer, which has a fixed IP number. I'm trying to also set up access for my laptop, which needs to be able to connect from wherever I may be. After some research, I realized that I would need to create a VPN. I have been following the instructions for setting up openvpn found at https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ne...rvices:openvpn in order to set up both the server (my desktop machine) and client (my laptop).

I have been able to set up the tunnel between the two machines and temporarily allowed ping to work in order to test the connections. This basically gets me through chapter 10 in the document. Since I am only need this to do a ssh/sftp connection from my laptop to my desktop, I haven't gone further yet. Unfortunately, ssh does not connect through the VPN. Do I need to add rules to iptables to let the client do more, configure the server to forward packets beyond the server, or something else?

I am taking a trip in a week and so need to finalize this relatively quickly. Any help is greatly appreciated!