August Newsletter

Greetings from the Brownings in sunny San Luis, Honduras!

We hope you are all doing well and enjoying the last few days of summer. We’re looking forward to the cooler weather that we hear comes along in September! The Hospital Loma de Luz ministry (www.lomadeluz.net) continues to move forward. The hospital is currently in the process of getting licensed under new government regulations. There was significant question as to whether the license would be granted, but in July, we were licensed, although the paperwork is not yet in our possession. This was a huge blessing and a huge relief, but there’s still a long way to go! All doctors licensed in Honduras must do 2 years of social service work, so the current challenge is getting the government to allow doctors to do their service work here. Otherwise, the American doctors will have to move to other Honduran cities for 2 years in order to be licensed and no Hondurans could come here for their service work. Working with government regulations and bureaucracy is challenging in any country, and even tougher here. But we know that God is bigger than any government and that his hand is clearly upon the work here! Aside from that, the hospital continues to flourish, serving and sharing the Lord with about 50 people daily.


Interesting Projects
The water pipe spanning a 30-foot deep quebrada.The hospital water system is a constant source of concern and work for the maintenance guys. The water is collected from a mountain stream and pumped about a mile to a 20,000 gallon storage tank, at which point the water is filtered and chlorinated. With that much pipe and wiring, there’s plenty of room for problems. This picture is of the pipe spanning a 30-foot quebrada, or ravine. On this particular day, the problem was broken pipe, and Salvino, one of the permanent Honduran employees, had to shimmy up a nearby tree, rope himself to the tree, and drill holes in the exterior pipe to drain out water that had leaked from the main pipe. Aside from being quite athletic, 50-year-old Salvino has a great love for sharing the Lord. Because there are so many boys and men looking for work, the hospital rotates the construction guys through on 5-week contracts. That means there is a constant supply of new workers, and Salvino faithfully shares the Gospel with virtually all of them. We appreciate his ministry so much and ask that you would pray for him!



English Class
Lots of neighborhood kids ask me if I will teach them English. In reality, I don’t want to teach kids much English, as it just makes them more likely to leave Honduras. This country needs its youth to get educated and stay, rather than leaving for the States. So, rather than teaching a traditional English class, we spend most of our time doing things that are fun for the kids and hopefully have some lasting value. Honduran kids don’t have much opportunity to read, so we spend a lot of time reading books in both languages. We also learn Bible verse songs. I never know who’s going to show up on Thursdays, but it’s always fun!

Guildy Update
As many of you know, Guildy was sick for quite awhile in July and August. She had some sort of viral illness and then got a kidney infection. We are so thankful to report that she is doing much better and is pretty much back to her normal self. Thanks so much for praying for her! It’s so fun to watch her learn new words and skills. Since she’s been feeling better, she thinks it’s hilarious to try to hide from us. This means we have to be extra vigilant about keeping the screen doors locked!

Prayer Requests
We are so thankful for the opportunity to serve and be a small part of God’s work here. Please be praying for us and the hospital ministry:
1. Please pray for the daily operations of the hospital and for fruitful interactions between patients, staff, and doctors. Also pray for the hospital’s interactions with the Honduran government.
2. In any group of believers, unity is important. Please pray for the unity of our missionary community.
3. Please keep praying for our Spanish and our communication with our neighbors.
4. Please continue praying for our health, safety, and protection.

In Closing
Thank you all so much for your support in all forms. Please drop us a line. We want to know what God is doing in your lives and how we can pray for you!

In Christ’s Love,

Josh, Linzy, and Guildy

To Contact Us:
Email: yznil1@yahoo.com
Mailing Address:
Josh and Linzy Browning
c/o Mike and Peggy Yost
Apartado 139
La Ceiba, Honduras, CA

Better......For Real
Well, after being sick with a kidney infection and in the hospital for a few days, Guildy seems to be better for real this time. She still has a couple days of antibiotics, but she is pretty much back to her normal self. Here are a few new pictures of her.

Guildy helping Josh fix a plug in.....

Guildy's most recent obsession is sitting. She sits down on anything that's the right height. So we brought in the block of wood, and she loves it. To think we spend money on expensive toys!

Grandma Linda sent Guildy a new swimming suit. Every girl needs a bikini!

Some Honduran Pictures
I go walking on the road between San Luis and the hospital most mornings, and Sabel, her husband, her daughter Bacilla, and her sister-in-law Maria live in a two room house on stilts about a half mile out of town. Because they are out of town, they don’t have power or running water. They come out to the road or I go down to their house to visit a couple times a week. Sabel and Maria are both 18, and their Spanish is almost impossible for me to understand, but they don’t seem to get sick of me mangling their language and not understanding them. Bacilla is about 6 months old. This picture is of Sabel and Bacilla. Most poor Hondurans never have more than just a few pictures of their families, if any at all. Even people with more money don’t have many family pictures. Sabel doesn’t have any pictures of Bacilla, so at some point, I’m going to print some for her. We don’t have a printer, but we can borrow one I’m sure.



Here are Cinia and Marjori, the neighborhood 4-year-olds.Marjori and her family (Lisandro, Sandra, and Ixel) used to live in the house in the background, right next door to us, but they moved last week to another much nicer house in our neighborhood. We miss not having them right next door. Sandra works as a surgery tech at the hospital and Lisardro works on a power dam construction project a few miles from here. Sandra is a tremendous cook and was always sending over samples of her cooking….tres leche (3 milk) cake, crab soup, mango jam, and on and on. I always tried to reciprocate, but somehow the cookies and stuff I would send over never seemed as exciting as her cooking.

Adelyn Ann
Our dear friends Timbo and Carolyn have a beautiful new baby girl! She was born August 3rd, and last I heard everyone is doing great. Praise God!

Guildy is Doing Better
We're thankful that Guildy seems to have recovered from her nasty week-long bout with fever, puking, and diarrhea. In a recent email, my Mom said that my sick children will be the most worrisome thing in my whole life. I believe her! Anyway, Guildy is pretty much back to normal...eating good, playing hard. She just needs to gain a little weight. But that shouldn't take long. On days that I email, Guildy and I come to Mike and Peggy's house to use their internet. We always come after our lunch, but during their lunch time. Guildy always eats her normal lunch at home and then proceeds to eat at least as much or more with the Yost's. Does that sound like someone's Dad or what?

We Almost Went to Costa Rica
As legal aliens in an unorganized foreign country, we find ourselves at the mercy of ever-changing and often illogical immigration regulations. Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are currently in the process of putting together some sort of free-trade agreement, which would allow their citizens and everyone else to pass through these countries without needing a passport. But like many regulatory actions here, nobody thought it through to consider things like how to collect tax money for crossing borders if no one is stamping passports and what taxes to charge. According to the Prensa (one of Honduras’ newspapers), they are thinking about maybe revoking the whole thing because it is causing so many problems. We hope that is the case.

Up until about a week ago, we could get a 90 day visa when we entered the country and then apply for a 30 day extension when that runs out. After 120 days we would have to leave the country for 3 days. This was pretty simple, as Guatemala and Nicaragua aren’t really that far away. However, with the four nearest countries not stamping passports, we would have to go to Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, Mexico, etc.

Last week, the immigration office in La Ceiba said they would absolutely not be granting any more 30 day extensions. Since our visas were due to expire on the 31st, and since we didn’t want to get nailed with a $50/passport/month fine, we decided to try to make a somewhat unexpected trip to Costa Rica. In retrospect, we now know that when regulations appear to suddenly change, it’s best not to get too excited.

Last Friday, we caught a ride from home into La Ceiba with the Larson’s, one of the other missionary families who are living in Ceiba going to language school. We were going to stay with them over night and ride with them to San Pedro Sula Saturday morning, as they had to go to the airport to help pick up a work team that was coming to the hospital for a couple weeks. Guildy had been acting a little fussy and fevered Thursday night and Friday, but we just thought it was teething, since her eye teeth looked like they were coming in. But Friday afternoon, her fever jumped really high and she had a febrile convulsion, which was absolutely terrifying for us. It only last just a minute, and after we got her cooled down, she was pretty much back to normal. Thankfully, Dr. Jeff (the head doc/surgeon at the hospital here) and his family were in town that day and he just happened to come on the radio calling someone else when she started to have her seizure. So Josh was able to talk to him right away. He came over to the house and checked her out. He called Dr. Romesh (a visiting pediatrician) on the radio, and they talked about it too. They both agreed that it was a simple febrile seizure and nothing to be overly concerned about, other than making sure her temp didn’t jump up again.

Saturday morning Guildy seemed to be doing pretty well. She had just a slight fever, and we figured she was probably getting over whatever she had, so we decided to ride along to San Pedro. We got our hotel for the night in San Pedro, planning to leave the next morning for the two day bus ride to Costa Rica, but her fever jumped up again in the late afternoon. Of course, we were quicker and more aggressive about getting her cooled off, so nothing bad happened that time. We had the name of some other missionaries who live in San Pedro Sula. They aren’t associated with Loma de Luz, but are friends with some of the missionaries here. Anyway, we called them to ask if they knew which hospital/doctors were best. They gave us the name of Dr. Zuniga, who goes to their church. He interrupted his self-proclaimed “exciting evening” of sorting through several duffel bags of donated expired medications. He met us at one of the hospitals and gave Guildy a thorough checking out. He though it was probably roseola, although she didn’t have the rash yet and that she could travel as soon as she was back to normal. (She came down with the rash about a day and a half later, so it turned out he was right.) He ordered a white blood count just to make sure it wasn’t a bacterial infection, and I was pretty nervous when the phlebotomist, this little old man with thick glasses, toddled in. But he did a great job….he was as steady as could be and got blood on the first try. Dr. Zuniga didn’t even want us to pay him, but we paid him his usual charge for an office visit of 500 lempira, about $25. The ER and lab charge was about $50. Anyway, we decided to stay in San Pedro another night thinking she might get better and be ready to go by Monday morning.

Josh Goes Looking for Diapers
Every misadventure has its humorous moments……

We had brought along plenty of diapers for several days of normal diaper use. However, on Saturday night, Guildy got the squirts, nothing severe, but definitely a strain on the dwindling diaper supply. By Sunday morning at about 6, we were down to the last diaper. Here at home, the pulperias open at 7, and if you really need something, you can go to the owner’s house even earlier and just ask. But the big city doesn’t work that way, especially on Sundays. Josh set out at about 7 and didn’t return until after 9. During that time, he experienced first hand a typical Honduran behavior: wanting to be polite, Hondurans will always give you directions, whether they have a clue where you want to go or not. So after walking in circles around downtown San Pedro with the slowly awakening homeless population, he finally got a taxi and got to a grocery store, which didn’t open until 8:30. They still didn’t have the lights on in the store, so he shopped for diapers in the dark. Now all along Josh had been thinking that the taxi drivers were probably ripping us off since we are obviously not locals. In Honduras, taxi prices are set at a base rate by the government. In San Pedro, it is 25 lempiras per person to go anywhere in town. The first taxi in the swarm of drivers outside the grocery store told Josh 40 lemps, and he asked why not 25. That guy growled at him, slammed the door, and drove away. A second taxi driver did the same thing. Josh broke down and paid the third guy 40 lemps. He returned to the hotel room in the nick of time. I was just about to sacrifice a Gran Hotel Sula towel for use as a diaper. Of course, I forgot to tell Josh we also needed wipes. That was a whole nother adventure for later in the day:o)

It turned out Guildy was still sick and had gotten all rashy by Sunday, so we caught the 6 a.m. bus back to La Ceiba on Monday morning. We had never taken the first class bus anywhere, and it was pretty fancy….enclosed driver’s cab, an attendant (sort of like a flight attendant), snacks, a movie, complimentary barf bags (the road is a little windy). We got back to Ceiba and spent the rest of the day at the Larson’s while we sent our passports with Iain (a missionary from Scotland who takes care of a lot of the business stuff for everyone) and Howard. Howard is sort of like the “inside guy” for the hospital. He is Honduran and speaks English very well. He knows where everything is in La Ceiba and how to get it. So we sent our passports off to the immigration office with them along with a letter signed by one of our docs saying we needed an extension because Guildy couldn’t travel and our receipt from the hospital in San Pedro. It turned out that the office which a week earlier was granting absolutely no more extensions, gave us and three other people (without medical excuses) extensions without any questions and promised to give a few more next week. So, like I said, we now know not to get too excited by sudden regulation changes until you know they really mean it.

So, we’re all legaled-up for another 30 days, at which point we really do have to leave the country. We’re hoping that by that time, they will have decided to start stamping passports in the neighboring countries so we can make a comparatively easy trip (it’s only a one day bus ride) to Guatemala.

So that is the story of how we almost went to Costa Rica. Guildy appears to be on the mend today. One of the doctors here thought she probably has some virus very similar to roseola, as her symptom weren't exactly classic roseola. She’s still suffering from some stomach and gut problems, but she's pretty happy and nursing and drinking plenty. She looks pretty thin after 5 or 6 days of not eating much. Please pray that she would heal up quickly.