Scenes From Our Week

Life is always interesting here. So here are a few of the random scenes from our past week.

Chaos on the Road

On Monday afternoon, I was at home and began to hear quite the uproar outside. So I strolled to the edge of the yard and looked down at the road about 25 feet below and had a most amusing time watching the action. Right across the road from us, a gigantic Canadian-backed resort is being built. They are busily filling in acres and acres of swamp one truck load at a time, the process of which pulverizes the road and creates massive dust clouds that envelop our house for about 10 hours a day. Needless to say, we are less than impressed with the project. Anway, Monday afternoon's uproar occured right at quitting time when an empty delivery truck headed back to La Ceiba happened to stop to let a few of the construction workers on to give them a ride back to Balfate (about 3 miles away). But then, not wanting to leave anyone out, every person and their bike who could possible be jammed onto the truck were loaded. As some were loading up, others were sprinting down the road in fear of missing the ride home, and everyone was cheering and jeering the process along. From my vantage point, it looked like ants converging on and preparing to haul away a piece of food or something dead (also a common Central American occurence).

Pastelito Night

On Wednesday night, we went out for pastelitos with our friends Mario and Marcia. Paselitos are tortillas filled with meat and rice, folded in half, and fried. They are salty and wonderful. Anyway, we rode our respective family motos and had a swelll time. Below are Fabian, Manuel, Mario, and Marcia.

Rio Viejo

On Saturday, we took a road trip to the town of Rio Viejo, which is about 20 miles south of La Ceiba. A friend of ours who is currently visiting and working at the hospital for a couple weeks spent a year there 6 or 7 years ago working at a Christian high school. So we got to tour the school, Instituto del Rey, and visit the people who run it. We had actually met them at the grocery store in Ceiba quite awhile back....we run into alot of other gringo missionaries at the grocery store. Aside from getting to see a really great school, we were impressed by the enormous flea population in Rio Viejo. It is several thousand feet up in elevation and much cooler than where we live. Apparently fleas thrive in the cooler climates! Anyway, it was raining too hard to take pictures of the school (or the fleas), but the photos below are from the drive up. The view was amazing!

Well, I think that's it for this week's random vignettes. Who knows what next week may have in store??!!

Fun with Mom

Our neighbor Liz found a little tea set in La Ceiba the other day. Guildy has been enjoying it immensely. She is getting more and more imaginative, so she is constantly cooking and feeding us some sort or pretend food or beverage. As you can see, pants are optional attire when Guildy is the hostess:o)

After about 3 1/2 years of owning the same digital camera, I finally figured out how the automatic timer works. (Incidentally, I also figured out which setting was changed that had caused our flash to not work for the past four months or so.) Anyway, Guildy and I posed for some pictures this after this morning's round of Tea Party. Enjoy!

Guildy in the Rain

These pictures are from the one rainy day we got out of Hurricane Felix early in September. Guildy loves playing on her porch in the rain. We like to call it her cage:o)

The Trek to Naranjito

A couple weekends ago, we hiked up to a little community called Naranjito, which means "little orange." A guy who Josh works with named Aremias is from there, and he invited Josh up for a visit. It was about a two hour hike south of San Luis, which is the town we used to live in. Two other guys Josh works with, Polo and Nahum, came along. They have both lived here for years but had never seen any of the villages in that direction. We took the wrong trail out of San Luis and ended up taking the "scenic route" through several jungle ravines on a hardly existent trail to get the the correct "main" trail. The picture below is Guildy, Josh, Polo, and Nahum on our little cut across trail.

As we hiked higher, some of the switchbacks were pretty impressive. Below is me, Polo, and Nahum.
The view from the top is pretty amazing. This is looking north back toward the Caribbean.
When we got to Naranjito, the first thing we did was go to church. It is a 7th Day Adventist community, so they were having church on Saturday. Below the kids are reciting their memory verses.

We were definitely the featured entertainment for the day, so after church, we went around to all of the 8 houses that make up Naranjito. It was a little like the movie "Groundhog's Day," because the exact same social scene was replayed 8 times. At each house, we had to sit down in their best chairs and then have some sort of food or drink.....orange juice, hot milk, a block of cane sugar. Then, after visiting for awhile, Aremias would take us to the next house. In the picture below, Aremias is sitting with his family in their house.

Guildy and Freddy had a splendid time kicking a lemon around. Apparently Freddy had previously had a splendid time writing on his face with a pen during church:o)

In the course of visiting with people, we learned a little history of the community and area. When you hear about tropical deforestation and slash and burn farming methods, you tend to think it's someone evil doing it. In reality, it's people subsistence farming, growing corn, beans, pineapple, and sugar cane on poor ground that can only sustain a crop for a few years. The Naranjito community has only been there for about 25 years. I that time, 8 families have cleared probably 100 acres of hillsides and continue to chop and burn more every year. Although it's not at all sustainable, it provides a good way of life for people who otherwise would have to try to make a living in the miserably poor economy of the westernized, capitalistic parts of the country.

The families in Naranjito all came from different parts of the country and different backgrounds, so their kitchens and handmade stoves were all different. This was one of the plainer ones. Several of them had big dome shaped ovens similar to something you would see in Italy or Greece.The most adventurous part of the trip was getting home. It rained on the way down, which turned the red clay mountain sides into snot. I was wearing my Croc shoes, which I learned have absolutely no traction under such circumstances. So I pretty much skied down the hill in the most graceful fashion I could muster. Josh did alot better, which was a good thing, since he had Guildy in the backpack. We got home exhausted and hungy, but very glad we had made the trip up to see it.

Owen

We think our nephew Owen is about the cutest kid ever, so we thought we'd share a recent picture of him.

Our friend Dr. Don has a way of summarizing things, and fortunately for us, he often shares his observations with the rest of the missionary community. So here is his summary of our great God's work in our encounter this past week with a Category 5 hurricane.

"We are delighted to be able to write to you...with electricity, water, and a dry house. We received NOTHING BUT SOME HEAVY RAINS. Absolutely nothing. It was "Much ado about nothing" here, though we have the drill down now. We can relax now as we use all of the stored water, unpack our "evacuate-to-the-hospital" backpacks, refile the important papers, and move out all of the books and items we had stowed away in bags!

We feel almost guilty for enlisting all your prayers, like the boy crying wolf, except that...we had the center of a category 5 hurricane heading right at us with 165 mph winds until you started praying.

There have been but 3 Cat 5s hit the USA since 1899. Now you go figure....

Felix dropped in at Nicaragua, headed up into the mountains and passed south of the populated and most vulnerable north coast. It quickly lost its power over a stretch of some of the most unpopulated areas One could design. Not that there wasn't damage, but nothing compared to what was anticipated when you started praying several days ago. This route wasn't even among the 5 projected path models produced by the meterorologists 2 days ago. Coincidence? Or do we have a God who quiets storms and moves mountains - and occasionally one who moves storms and quiets us on the mountains?!

I don't know about you, but I'm in awe. I don't know about you, but we've very grateful. I don't know about you, but our arms are extended in Aleluia!"

And then, here is Don's favorite quote by CH Spurgeon. "Prayer: the slender nerve that moves the muscles of omnipotence."

Thanks to everyone who prayed!

September Newsletter

Loma de Luz News
As always, things continue to move forward at Loma de Luz. Patients are treated everyday. The Gospel is made available to everyone who walks through the hospital doors. Many receive Christ, and many more believers receive prayer and encouragement. The day to day ministry of the hospital truly is amazing.

Lots of people ask us what the hospital needs and how they could help. The web page has recently been updates with prioritized lists of medical and construction supplies individuals and groups could contribute. Check it out at http://www.crstone.org/ under the link “How You Can Help.”

Construction
For years, the hospital’s water system has been a great expense because of high electricity prices. Water is pumped uphill for about 1.5 miles to storage/treatment tanks. The hospital has recently acquired rights to a series of springs located above the current storage tanks. So, a project is underway to build a spring box to catch the water and then run a gravity fed pipe from the spring box to the existing storage tanks. The existing system will stay in place as a backup. The fun part is that the springs are high up in the jungle away from any roads, so the cement, sand, and other materials will have to be hauled for several miles by pack horses. Josh is pretty excited to get to work on it, and it should make for some great pictures!

Other ongoing projects include the Children’s Center, which should be dried in before the rainy season starts in October or November, and constant maintenance work on the hospital and staff housing buildings. A work team from the States is coming next week to paint and do some other maintenance work on our apartment building.

Mike reviewing Children's Center plans with one of the Honduran contractors.

Teaching
School will be back in full swing next week, which I am pretty excited for. Guildy loves hanging out with her various babysitters, and I enjoy the kids I get to teach. My classes this fall are general science, physics, chemistry, pre-algebra, algebra 1&2, and advanced math, so I will have a busy schedule.

Browning Briefs
We are back from our summer travels and getting back in the swing of life here. We spent a week in Mexico in June at a Browning Family reunion, and then spent a few weeks in Montana. Josh came back to Honduras the end of July, and Guildy and I came back about two weeks ago. We had a great time seeing family and friends and came back feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work here.

In front of some Mayan ruins in Coba, MX.

As most of you know, the biggest news in our family is that it is growing! We are expecting a baby the end of December. We had our 20-week ultrasound about 2 weeks ago, and everything looked great. We weren’t able to see if the baby is a boy or a girl, so we will just all have to wait to find out!

Guildy turned two in June, and she is quite the little personality. She loves people and likes to talk about “being a big girl,” which she certainly is becoming. As her talking gets better, we get to see more and more of her personality, and we are constantly amazed at the things she remembers and talks about.

Prayer Requests
A few specific things to be praying for:
1. Permission from the Honduran government for American and Honduran doctors to do their two years of required social service work at Loma de Luz. Otherwise, our doctors could be required to go to another Honduran hospital for two years in order to obtain their Honduran medical licenses.
2.Increased and continuing understanding of Honduran culture for all the missionaries here.
3. Josh is planning to do a Bible study based on the book “God’s Smuggler.” Please pray for those young men God has in mind to be a part of that study.
4. Health, safety, and protection for us and the other missionaries here.

In Closing
Thanks so much for supporting us! Let us know how you’re doing!
In Him,

Josh, Linzy, and Guildy

Support for the Brownings may be sent to:
CornerStone International
PO Box 192
Wilmore KY 40390
1-800-859-4578
carla@cornerstoneinternational.org
http://www.cornerstoneinternational.org/