AdventHealth Expands Global Mission Work into Honduras

By: Ingrid Hernández, AdventHealth, and Inter-American Division News

Through its Global Mission Impact (GMI) program, AdventHealth, a faith-based health system located in the United States, partners with other Adventist hospitals around the globe. The newest of these partners is a five-and-a-half-hour flight from AdventHealth’s Orlando, Florida-based headquarters in the country of Honduras.

Recently, leaders from AdventHealth and AdventHealth Centra Care, the organization’s urgent care network, traveled to Hospital Adventista Valle de Ángeles (HAVA) to tour the site, meet with local hospital and church leaders, and officially sign up the facility as a GMI footprint.

From Centra Care, attendees included vice president and chief operating officer Robert Paswaters, senior manager of employee engagement John Masterfield, and AdventHealth director of global missions Monty Jacobs. Paswaters is the co-executive sponsor of the project, together with Centra Care president and CEO Scott Brady.

“The people at HAVA have a passionate desire to provide whole-person care to their surrounding communities,” Brady said. “We are privileged to extend the healing ministry of Christ with them in a variety of practical ways.”

Located approximately 18 miles (29 kilometers) outside the capital of Tegucigalpa, HAVA is a 30-bed nonprofit hospital — the only one in a region of about 90,000 people. The hospital also runs a clinic, Clínica Adventista Tegucigalpa. As a footprint in AdventHealth’s GMI program, it is one of 10 hospitals with whom the system has established a long-term relationship to foster Christ-like generosity and provide hope and healing to communities in need. In Honduras, more than 60 percent of people live below the poverty line.

AdventHealth’s relationship with HAVA goes back several years. Since 2012, AdventHealth team members have volunteered on mission trips to Valle de Ángeles twice a year, with Centra Care serving as the primary sponsor for most of those trips.

Besides the mission trips, the partnership creates opportunities for supply donations, professional assessments, and joint strategic planning. Most recently, AdventHealth facilitated the donation of an x-ray system with digital imaging to HAVA. Additionally, Adventist Health International and Loma Linda University Health completed an overview of the hospital’s entire electrical system, with AdventHealth committing to help upgrade this critical area of need. Down the line, HAVA also wants to add a new wing and service lines and renovate the clinic in Tegucigalpa, under a five-year strategic growth plan.

“All of this work is being done from the viewpoint of the hospital in Honduras,” said Shelby Houmann, global missions communications specialist and event coordinator for AdventHealth. “It’s about where they see the need to grow. In that way, it’s a true partnership mentality — we want to help make their goals happen.”

The most recent mission trip to Valle de Ángeles was in April 2019, when a group of volunteers from AdventHealth Centra Care and AdventHealth University provided primary care services to the community. The group had such a fun time, Masterfield said, he has convinced the Centra Care team to return in October.

For Masterfield, this mission work is an answer to Christ’s call: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40, NIV).

“We are planting a tremendous number of seeds in the lives of these people,” he said. “We are doing the planting and watering, and we trust that God will do the harvest.”

The original version of this story was posted on the Inter-American Division news site.