And Jesus answering said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves.…”
—Luke 10:30a
I must say that this particular trip didn’t start out so well. We were returning to Loma de Luz after a brief time up in the USA. We were in the US for: 1.) a semi-annual meeting of the Cornerstone Foundation Board, 2.) to prepare for the shipping of a container of supplies and materials to Loma de Luz, and 3.) while there, to visit some friends and family. We also went off on several sub-trips driving from point A to point B on those marvels of engineering, the roads of the USA. If you haven’t recently asked in gratitude for God’s abundant blessings upon the men and women who engineered, built, and maintain the roads in this great country, you should come down to visit us in Honduras. Here, our roads are more like badly neglected, poorly upgraded meandering cow paths. You will come back to the land of the free and the home of the brave with a new appreciation for the streets and roads you drive upon each day. But modern-day air travel? That’s an entirely different story.
This particular return trip began @ 0300 on Saturday, the 28th of June, and it finally came to an end about 7PM on Tuesday the 1st of July. We got up in the dark to load the car and drive to the airport by 0415 for an 0600 flight. Hauling through the parking lot our bags packed with a few clothes, an Xray tube head, appliance repair parts, medical supplies, food we couldn’t bear to waste, and other strange items difficult to explain to TSA and Customs agents, we arrive at the Delta counter, and nobody’s there. There is a sign saying “0600 flight to Atlanta cancelled.” No explanation. Other hapless would-be passengers begin to assemble and we all start comparing notes and learn that there was some weather at the airport in Atlanta last night. So today’s flight to Atlanta (the jumping off point for the international part of our trip to Honduras) is cancelled. OK. You go to the Delta App, “Need Help? Message us” page. After proving to a robot that you are not a robot, you get access to the site to find that the “current wait time for a message is 54 minutes”… and stays that way, for the next 2 hours. Eventually you call the 1-800 # and navigate the voice-mail menu to learn that “due to heavy customer traffic at this time, current waiting time is 6 hours, and 23 minutes.” You put your phone on speaker-phone, stick it in your pocket, drag all of your luggage back to the car and go home. You know there is no way you can possibly make your connection in Atlanta even if you drive there, and if you don’t cancel ahead of time you’ll have to eat the whole ticket.
So, a couple of hours later when Delta suddenly begins messaging “How can I help you?” you text in the cancellation, work out the best new itinerary you can get (leaving 2 days later), and actually feel some gratitude for the personal contact (even though it was a text conversation with someone in a call center half a world away).
Unfortunately, when you receive the automatic email confirmation 5 minutes after you disconnect, you see that it is not a confirmation; instead, it is a tentative reservation that you have to confirm …. via the United App (which you haven’t set up yet), and you know that once you’re in Honduras, with a Honduran phone number, the required Two Factor Authentication won’t crossover.
About this time I start receiving WhatsApp messages from friends in Honduras telling me that the Honduran Government has issued a decree that, starting this instant, everyone coming into Honduras has to show official vaccination cards documenting vaccination with the MMR or demonstrate a PCR or IgM test negative for measles, no more than 72-80 hours prior to the flight, in order to be allowed into the country. Well, that makes our newly arranged Monday morning tickets’ (tickets #2) departure itinerary impossible. The roll-out of this decree, on a Friday before a busy travel weekend, with no planning or notification of airlines, immigration officials, or travelers already en route… was just a fiasco. 1: Any such lab test for measles, even in large US Hospital labs, are all mail-outs, with a 7 day turn-around time on average (making the 72 hour window impossible). 2: Almost no one above average retirement age has a vaccine card showing MMR status for the simple reason that the MMR was not even initially offered until 1971. Essentially everyone alive today who was a child in the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s just got the measles because there was no vaccine at the time, and, having had the measles, is presumed to have lifelong immunity.
But in the end, by Monday afternoon, 60 hours into this trip and so far going nowhere, the Honduran officials had somehow come to grips with reality and called the whole measles vax mandate thing off. “But just temporarily.” Because like the T-800 cyborg in The Terminator, they’ll be back.
The rest of the trip on tickets # 3, was comparatively a piece of cake (your usual $15 stale airport cake). Get up at O-dark-thirty, drive to airport again, check in, present documents, present credit card for extra charges, present documents again, laptop out, belt & shoes off, hands up, shoes back on, gather your stuff, “keep moving,” board by groups, passport in one hand, boarding pass in the other, face the camera, seat belts on, seat belts off, “careful with deplaning,” “now move along,” queue up in the right lane for migración, show your QR code to customs, explain to a customs inspector why you have a piece of Xray equipment that looks like a nuclear bomb, and that the drug dog was particularly interested in suitcase # 3 because it contained Rosanne’s spaghetti sauce, collect your stuff for the 32nd time, line up at the domestic counter to learn that the 1 PM flight to La Ceiba is full, and decide to make a run for the 1 PM Ferry. The taxi driver says he’ll “put it in turbo,” and, sure enough, we get to the terminal at 12:58. So, talk the teller into selling another ticket, grab the luggage claim tickets, jump on the ferry as they are casting off lines; the seas are rough so you’d best stay focused on the horizon to battle motion sickness, and then, after arrival in port in La Ceiba, jostle and jockey semi-amicably through the third-world version of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor at the ferry luggage collection counter, work through city traffic to the grocery store, present the right cards to the checkout girl, and don’t forget the receipt to show at the door, then get on that terrible excuse for a highway and head out of town.
I began to notice that the farther I got from the airport, the worse the roads got, but the more we, who had been yelled at, scolded, ignored, lined up and diminished to data points and QR codes, … had become something else again, just people trying to make it home. Even at the Ferry Terminal, we human beings had started to treat each other like human beings again. And, by the time we got to Loma de Luz, other than the dogs, cats, and livestock lounging on the dirt road, and the jungle creatures scurrying to reach refuge on the other side, all the rest of us animals out here were just people again. The animal that laughs at himself, cries for his neighbor, worries about the future, and wonders about God. The animal created in God’s image and in whom He breathed an eternal soul.
The first operation on the first day back at the hospital brought it home. Abigail had just turned 44. Her birthday was yesterday. She comes from Omoa, way over on the border with Belize. She travelled these roads for 11 hours just to get to Loma de Luz. Abigail has 5 children; the oldest is 25, the youngest are 8 and 10 years old. Her husband died unexpectedly two years ago. All of these last details Rosanne, the best medical investigative reporter I’ve ever met, gleaned during her pre-anesthesia talk with Abigail. From experience, I know that as she learned her story, she held her hand and prayed for her with tears in her eyes. Because the last 4 years have been rough for Abigail. In these last 4 years, besides losing her husband, she has undergone major surgery for cervical cancer, then chemotherapy, then radiation. And now the cancer has returned and she knows that, short of a miracle, it can’t be cured. She came for an operation to bypass the blockage.
She came here because a doctor way over there in Omoa recommended Loma de Luz. He had heard that this was a place where God is at work, and they would treat you like a person.
On her first post operative day, Abigail and her sister and her friend who came with her were all smiling. They said, “You can’t imagine how hard it was for us to get here… but it was worth it.” Abigail said it was worth it because “I have not met even one person who has not been kind to me.”
In some ways this makes me feel grateful, grateful for the people God has put together here, grateful for what the Lord has done in the lives of each of us and how we share that. In some ways it makes me sad, because I can’t do more. For Abigail I can only do things to lessen her suffering and to give her a little more time with her children. There is nothing I can do for a surgical cure because there isn’t one. But that is not what made it all worth the expense and trials and difficulties to get here. What made it all worth it was that she was cared for as a human being, as a fellow traveler, as we frail and fallible but incalculably valuable immortal souls should treat each other.
In Luke Chapter 10, wanting to justify himself, a lawyer throws the challenge at Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers so brilliantly with a story of how a man on a journey treats a stranger in need. He treats him like he would hope to be treated. Well acquainted with real suffering, not just a traveler’s inconveniences, Abigail can tell you, “I know only God can heal me, but you all treated me like a person that matters, and that makes the hard trip worth it.”
God's grace,
Jefferson McKenney, M.D.
from Dr. Shafick Asfura
Anderson is a 22-year-old university student and former competitive soccer player in Honduras. Before May 2024, he played for a team in the country’s second division and had big dreams both academically and athletically. But a sudden car accident that month changed everything.
He suffered a proximal tibial fracture that was managed surgically at another facility, but he also developed foot drop and persistent paresthesias in his leg. From that moment, walking became very difficult. Because of the injury, he had to stop attending university in person and continued only remotely. His emotional wellbeing took a hit. His lifestyle, his goals, and his identity were all shaken.
In January 2025, Anderson came to our clinic looking for direction. That day, I was fortunate to see him in our outpatient clinic and also to be joined by Dr. Joseph Strauss, a visiting orthopedic surgeon. We reviewed his imaging and thought we were seeing signs of bone healing. However, after a thorough physical exam, Dr. Strauss suspected a common peroneal nerve injury as the cause of Anderson’s persistent foot drop and gait instability. He recommended a short orthopedic boot for a couple of weeks, instructed Anderson on specific calf exercises, and recommended an AFO brace to support his foot.
A few weeks later, God continued writing Anderson’s story. Geoffrey Hemmen, a visiting prosthetist, met Anderson in clinic for his follow-up appointment. He personally took measurements, and just two weeks later, sent down a custom AFO brace from the U.S.—something we were not able to find in the country. It changed everything.
When Anderson came back to our clinic to receive the brace, he was full of hope. His sister—who, interestingly, had been following my medical education content on social media—came with him. She’s a medical student and expressed a strong desire to one day volunteer at our hospital, after seeing firsthand how this work impacted her brother.
Now, Anderson is walking better, regaining balance, and most importantly—he’s back at university in person. He sent me a message just a couple of weeks ago to share how grateful he is and how much his life has changed since receiving the brace.
From being a sidelined athlete with foot drop and emotional burnout, to regaining hope, stability, and vision for the future—this is what your support and prayers make possible.
We’re deeply thankful to Dr. Joseph Strauss for his wisdom and time in clinic, and to Mr. Geoffrey Hemmen for his generosity, compassion, and willingness to fund and send help to patients like Anderson. God is good. Always. He is working in the background—restoring stories, and using each of us to walk alongside others toward healing.
News and Needs
1 – Long Term Missionary Needs: Our needs include a US Board Certified Internist or Family Practice Physician. If you are qualified or know someone who is whom God may be calling, please write to us at [email protected].
2 – Jose Miguel: You may remember Jose Miguel from the Spring 2024 Newsletter, who at the time was himself an orthopedic patient. Since then, he has become a part of Loma de Luz’s developing prosthetics department. We thought you might like to see a video of him in training in Guatemala with our partner missionary organization, Hope to Walk (link below):
3 – Successful Surgery: Kelsey McKenzie’s kidney transplant surgery did take place in late April, and it went very well for both Kelsey and the donor. Thank you so much for your prayers! Please continue to pray that Kelsey’s new kidney continues to function well and pray for the Lord’s special blessing on the donor. Kelsey sends his gratitude for everyone’s prayers and support. He said that throughout the whole process—thanks to the prayers and support of you all, of his church, and that of family and friends—he “never felt alone.”
4 – Loma de Luz Video: We also thought you might like to see a recent SharePoint video of Loma de Luz via the link below. Our thanks to David Hubbard (LdL Missionary CRNA) and Jessica Hubbard (LdL Missionary Teacher), the folks who created it for us! Watch Here
5 – Land Invasion: As you may know, there has been a land invasion on the property adjacent to the Children’s Home, with invaders squatting there for four years. This criminal enterprise posed a threat to the work, particularly the Children’s Center, to the Loma de Luz water supply and environment, and to the community at large. The wheels of justice have been exceedingly slow, but, almost miraculously in this case, the judicial system finally worked–with the 3rd eviction notice and a substantial police presence to enforce it. We are so grateful to see this clean-up take place, are appreciative of your prayers, and ask that you continue to pray for peace and that invaders do not return.
6 – Organizer: If you are a good organizer, in good health. and could spare a week or a month or two to help out at Loma de Luz, we are always in need of someone willing to just organize shelves, stored material, nuts and bolts. There is no small job done for the Lord.
7 – Prayer for the Summer: The summer is a busy time for visiting volunteers, so please pray for their safety and for the Lord to give them favor with authorities as they travel. Please also pray for the teachers and other missionaries who are simultaneously being refreshed by the break but also preparing for the upcoming school year. Pray for God’s blessing on the Children’s Sanctuary Center and its staff. And don’t forget to pray for the Agricultural end of the ministry.
8 – The Rainwoman: Dr. McKenney is in the process of writing the first of a series of books on the history of Loma de Luz. In the process, we discovered that his book The Rainwoman (published 2012) was out of print. It is now reprinted with a new cover and introduction and is available via Amazon (first QR code) and Barnes & Noble (2nd QR code).
You can also find them via the search words “The Rainwoman McKenney” on both companies’ websites.
Amazon:
Barnes & Noble
May the Lord give you joy and purpose as you walk through your days with Him.