The Seventh-day Adventist Church recently inaugurated a wellness center, “Centro de Vida Sana Dr. Filiberto Verduzco Avila,” in Chiapas, Mexico. The new facility will offer natural remedies and preventive medicine focused on wholistic health care for the mind, body, and spirit. 

Dozens of local and national church administrators, leaders, and members attended the inauguration ceremony in Tuxtla Gutiérrez on December 20, 2021.

“This is a very special moment to inaugurate a center such as this,” Ignacio Navarro, president of the Adventist Church in Chiapas, said. The center belongs to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mexico and the Inter-American Division (IAD), he said. “It’s a missionary space in the city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez where the plan of God to restore His creation will be presented and the soon coming of Jesus will be announced.”

Navarro said the wellness center has three particular characteristics: it features the church’s “I Want to Live Healthy” registered trademark, bears the name of Filiberto Verduzco, treasurer for the IAD, and it will be a place to serve anyone in Chiapas and throughout the country. “I Want to Live Healthy” is a lifestyle initiative created by the IAD that promotes eight natural remedies.

Verduzco, who attended the inauguration, thanked church leaders from the union office and the eight local conferences for the honor. “God is the only one who can bring healing, and there will be many patients with sickness in their soul who will need special attention from the Master physician,” Verduzco said. “My dear brothers and sisters, life is a gift from God, and we should teach the correct habits that can lead to a healthier lifestyle.”

Leaders chose to name the center after Verduzco for his inspiring leadership in fulfilling the church’s mission, Navarro explained.

Construction on the center began in 2018 as the church in Chiapas dedicated its missionary initiatives and activities on health for that year.

The center will be able to care for 100 patients at a time and will be fully functional as soon as the remaining permits are finalized, church leaders said. The facility features hydrotherapy pools, saunas, a gym, a dining room, nine patient rooms and suites, medical and administrative offices, a chapel, an outdoor auditorium, and a park. 

Centro de Vida Sana Dr. Filiberto Verduzco Avila is the second wellness center connected to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mexico. Las Canoas Vida Sana has been operating as a sanitarium for decades in Montemorelos, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, founded by Tomás Ramírez.

Park Named for Tomás Ramírez

Ramírez, who is retired, was honored at the inauguration for his work as an educator of preventive medicine. He said he had always dreamed of seeing a wellness center in Chiapas. Church leaders unveiled a new park that bears his name outside the new center.

“In the 1970s, when I graduated from The National Autonomous University of Mexico, I questioned why medicines and antibiotics only cured symptoms but not diseases, and I asked God to show me the way to treat diseases in a more effective and cheaper way,” Ramirez said. “That’s when God drew me close to the Adventist Church, and I began to treat with plants and natural methods. I started my own pharmacy in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, where I found so many medicinal plants, but the best finding was the Word of God, and that is what heals,” he said. His son, Juan Ramírez, who works at Las Canoas center, will also serve as the medical director for the new center in Chiapas.

IAD president Elie Henry toured the center and congratulated the church and its leaders for building a beautiful center that represents God. “This is a center for all of those who will need not only physical help but spiritual as well,” Henry said. “This space will present the message that the Adventist Church cares for the wellbeing of persons.”

Many church members said they were proud to see the completion of the new center.

“God is so great that He has allowed, through the faithfulness of the church, this beautiful facility,” José Antonio Gómez, a member of the Central Adventist church in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, said.

Raúl Pérez Pimentel, a church elder at Sochitlán Adventist church, said it was wonderful to tour the new facility. “This is to honor the Lord and benefit so many, and I want to tell my fellow church members that it is so worth being faithful to the Lord.”

“We want each one who visits this center to be surrounded by angels and those who work here to feel that they are an instrument of salvation,” Navarro said.

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