Thoughts from Honduras

(Note from 2025: The view of salvation I had in 2001 has evolved significantly over time  [see Faith Reconsidered].   I believe God is much more “generous” with his love and salvation than most of us give him credit for. But, for historical sake, here is what I wrote in 2001.)   Our youngest son Jake loves to draw us pictures.  His people are beginning to be recognized as people.  He still has to give us considerable explanation of what else is in the picture, and the action involved.   Jake thinks his pictures are great!  Of course we encourage him and tell him they are good, leaving unsaid the qualifier “for a six-year old”.  Jake is adopted.  If we were to have chosen a son based on artistic ability defined as being able to produce great masterpieces, Jake would have fallen short.  Yet, he would have kept on drawing, and would even have entered the competition with high hopes!  He really ha...

We performed our first operation at Hospital Loma de Luz yesterday!     Actually, it was in our temporary operating room in the housing complex.     Dan DeCook, a surgeon from Holland, Michigan, (and missionary kid who grew up in Bangladesh) was here to assist.     We did an inguinal hernia repair with mesh on a 19-year-old guy from nearby Rio Esteben.     Chrysti Reeck, our nurse, “circulated”, and our Honduran “nurse aids” watched with interest.     We gave the patient valium by mouth before the procedure and used local anesthetic.     All went well!     We will see him back in a week. Hopefully this will become a weekly event, since our waiting list is long.  We also soon hope to begin doing gastroscopy (looking into the stomach with a scope that the patient swallows).  As we continue to expand our services, we soon hope to see other surgeries offered via spinal anesthetic!

It was one year ago February 21 that we opened the clinic at Hospital Loma de Luz.     We now have medical records for over 2200 patients.     Many patients have made decisions for Christ. People with chronic diseases, like diabetes and high blood pressure, who before could not afford to visit the doctor or buy their medicine, now are having their diseases affordably and conveniently brought under control, seeing the love of Jesus Christ in action.   This is a year of expansion.  As at least four more doctors and one nurse plan to be working on site this calendar year.  We will see our hours, services and Honduran staff all increase.  We have done our first surgery, opened a lab, and are awaiting our first shipment of glasses for our eyeglass clinic.  Construction proceeds on the hospital building.  We hope by the end of the year to begin occupying the actual clinic area in the hospital, moving from our temporary...

People often ask, “Why isn’t the hospital finished?” or “Why did it take so long to fix your roof?” or “Why does it take all day to get groceries?”   What they don’t understand is that shopping here is not like shopping there!  For example, when I go to town to get stuff to fix up the house, there is no Home Depot or Wal-Mart.  Usually, I need to go to three or four different hardware stores to get everything on the list. Even then I sometimes can’t find what I need.  No one store carries everything.  When we go for groceries, we usually visit at least three grocery stores; one has the best vegetables, another has the best meat, another has granola; plus visit two street markets, one for oranges and another for bananas, pineapples and melons.  No superstores here!   Let me illustrate with my recent quest for black shoelaces.  In The States when you need shoelaces, what are your choices?  You can get them at ...

This description of Balfate written in January 2001 in an email to a writer who was writing an article for a magazine.  A Report on Hospital Loma de Luz for the year 2000 is attached. These were not originally posted in Thoughts from Honduras, but are included here as they give a very detailed snapshot in time.    Sarah   I will try to answer your questions.  Let me know if I don’t give you the info you want.   We live in Balfate, a small town of about 400 which merges with two other villages to form a community of about 1200.  It is located on the north central coast of Honduras, 37 miles east of the city of La Ceiba.  La Ceiba is a good-sized city of 150,000 where we do our shopping and email.  We have to ford three rivers to make the trip, which takes about 90 minutes and requires a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  During the rainy season we often can’t travel by car.  We can, if necessary, take canoes across...

I am getting older!   At this time of year, many people reflect on the past and look to the future.  As the holiday season has ended, the heavy rains, and a round of head colds having put a damper on many of our holiday plans, I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy.  The Christmas decorations are back in their boxes, to await another year.  The “glow” of the season is past.  Things are getting back to normal.  And tomorrow is my birthday.   Recently, while trying to determine the dose of cough medicine, I found myself beginning to experience things that I thought were reserved for the “older population”.  I found myself trying to read the very fine print on those little sample bottles of medicine; first with my glasses, then without my glasses, the bottle about two inches from my right eye, and finally with a magnifying glass.  It is obvious that the inevitable bifocals are just around the corner.   Bec...

If you like those humorous accounts of human success and failure in Reader’s Digest, you may enjoy this.  If not, ignore this!   Visitors often ask what we do in our “spare time” as missionaries, since we currently only have clinic two days a week.  I often want to respond tongue-in-cheek, that we lounge on the beach, drinking piña coladas, and work on our tans.  But, since that wouldn’t go over too well with some people, I hold off. So, however, this is an account of how we used some of our “spare time”.   At the outset, you have to understand the setting.  My only plumbing experience prior to coming to Honduras was a fiasco.  It occurred during surgical residency when I decided to try and save some money and do a “simple” plumbing job myself.  Not only did we not save money, in addition to paying the plumber, we needed to hire a dry-waller to patch the multiple holes in our living room that failed to reveal the pipe...

We knew it was rainy season.  We had been anxious for weeks about the eye surgery team that had been scheduled in November, when the weather is unpredictable, and for the other guests that were staying with us.  Our schedules are flexible, but visitors have planes to catch, jobs to return to, family waiting.   The eye surgery team had wonderful spring like weather with blue skies and moderate temperatures.  I had to show them a video of last year’s heavy rain to convince them that this was indeed rainy season!   Our last three guests were flying out Nov 30.  The weather had become more characteristic, with daily rains, sometimes heavy, but nothing really significant.  Every morning we would listen for the sound of the bus horns in “downtown Balfate” signifying that the buses were still running.  Occasionally, we would even go down to the river before sunset to scout out the conditions if we were planning to attend chu...