International Christian Hospice      News Letter     February 2017

Greetings to all of our family and friends!  We can hardly believe 2017 is already well underway!  

This month we traveled to Guatemala and Honduras.  Thank you for your prayers for us and for the ICH ministry as we visited sites in Central America to planned for ministry opportunities this year.   

Guatemala

  

God is leading us forward in partnership with ministry in Guatemala City.   Seteca Seminary is developing a plan with ICH for adding the grief training we offer to their Pastoral counseling program.   Potters House ministry, which is an outreach into the city dump village, is requesting ICH training for their staff.  Over 3,000 people live in the dump area.  A few months ago after heavy rains there was a devastating loss of over 70 lives.  As in any close knit community these families and friends are dealing with complicated grief over this sudden loss.  Every day they struggle with survival against extreme poverty and disease.  Potters House reaches out with feeding programs, medical clinics, Bible classes, education for children and job opportunities for youth.  ICH is partnering with them to prepare staff for dealing with the current tragedy and those these people cope with every day.   

How exciting to witness God advancing His work among the Mayan people.  Hospital Santa Fe in the jungle highlands, Dr. Sergio and his wife Veronica, stand on the front lines.  A surgical team had recently helped perform 35 surgeries.  Ron, Susan and Chuck McCurry were able to help with post op procedures, counseling and prayer.   In addition to the hospital in the jungle highlands Dr. Sergio rents space for a clinic in a nearby market town, San Antonio.  Taking a step of faith Dr. Sergio is purchasing a small strip of land in this town to build his own clinic.  San Antonio is a “cross road” in the Mayan world where people come out of distant villages for market and work.  The clinic is easily accessible and serves people from 4 different Mayan groups.  Dr. Sergio not only has a desire to bring physical healing but also to shine the light of Jesus’ love into very dark and fearful lives.  He has shared many stories with us of the powerful influence of the witch doctors, superstition and their fear of “curses”.  Dr. Sergio plans for the new clinic in San Antonio to be the site of literacy classes using God’s Word and Bible stories.  

Pray with us:   

• ICH training in Seteca Seminary Guatemala City 
• ICH training for staff of Potter’s House ministry in Guatemala City
• Teams in the future to bring the Gospel through medical, educational and Bible training to reach the Mayans. 

Honduras

We were blessed to continue our travels this month into Honduras.  Pastor Francisco accompanied us on a return trip to Cacao, on the northern coast.  Here we witnessed how God is growing the new church plant from Vision Cristiano Ministerio, a nondenominational evangelical organization in Central America.  Pastor Jeronimo Garcia and his wife Suwani have served in Cacao for two years.  He is a Godly man of vision and hard work.  Over the past year Pastor Jeronimo and his church members have completed the main “open-air” worship building and constructed a small tin children’s building.  It has already become too small and inadequate for the 70 children who attend Bible classes on Wednesdays and Sundays.  Pastor Jeronimo also provides a lunch feeding program three days a week in this tin building for 50 of the poorest children in the village.  He and some of the young men have started a shoe factory to provide jobs right there in Cacao.    We are praying that God will open doors for us to return with additional help for Pastor Jeronimo.  This village is an excellent site for teams to help with church construction, children’s ministry, youth outreach, medical ministry and community development.  

Please pray with us:

• ICH outreach to the believers training them in outreach for Christ  
• Teams to work with Pastor Jeronimo in Cacao

Our dear friend Dionisio is walking well with his leg prosthesis and we were able to visit with him before we left the north coast.  He is struggling with his two arm prosthesis but Ron was able to make a few adjustments that will help.  

A special thanks to Pastor Francisco who not only has served as ICH Central American Director but leads a thriving, missions-minded church in Choloma, Honduras.  We were honored to celebrate the 15^th anniversary of his church while we were there.  He and Blanca moved to Choloma to start this Vision Cristiano church as newlyweds.  God has blessed them and their 3 children as the church has grown to over 200 members and they are greatly respected and loved in their community.  

Our translator, Lourdes Argueta, and dear friend of 14 years also joined us on this trip. On our final day in Honduras we were able to arrange an appointment for her at the Christian Eye Clinic in El Progreso.  Maxine Perry and Pastor Daniel Castro founded this clinic in the 1980’s.  Today the clinic is staffed by trained doctors and nurses as well as regular rotation of surgical doctors from the US.     

One final prayer request is our upcoming ministry travel to Cuba in March.   This is the first time we have had this opportunity and are looking forward to seeing God touch lives through the ICH message of hope and comfort in Christ.   

   

Thank you, each one, for your interest, prayers and support for ICH!  Please pray with us as we move forward with God’s plans for ICH in the coming months.  

Serving Him together,

Ron and Susan 

Tax deductible Donations received at:    ICH  c/o Banis     303 Madison Heights Dr.   Marshall, N.C.  28753