(Nov. 23, 2015 - stories and photos by Ralph Kurtenbach)  Standing before a crowded Quito auditorium to celebrate a hospital’s founding, Dr. Roy Ringenberg was not only a physician—a medical internist and instructor—he was also a patient.

His care was handled by those who had invited him to Ecuador for the 60th anniversary of Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ). Upon arrival, Ringenberg was struck by a case of cellulitis—a common, potentially serious skin infection.

On Monday, Oct. 12, a sesión solemne (service of remembrance) at the Municipal Building in downtown Quito’s central plaza, culminated a series of anniversary activities.

Hospital staff had earlier held a worship service (see related story below) to give thanks to God. They had also released helium balloons attached to small prayer notes. “We ask, Lord,” said one HVQ department’s note, “that You continue blessing as You have these 60 years, giving us strong hearts to finish the work that is Your work and that Your grace and mercy accompany us in the years ahead.”

The hospital, inaugurated in 1955 after fervent fundraising on a Philadelphia radio program, has been a facility “dedicated to God’s glory and the service of Ecuador.”

The mission’s healthcare work began as something smaller in 1946 when Reach Beyond cofounders Clarence Jones and Reuben Larson approached Dr. Paul Roberts—then a medical school student—about a family clinic for their staff and a facility to offer basic care to the indigenous.

In a few years, the Albergue y Dispensario Indígena (Indigenous Hostel and Dispensary) was inaugurated on April 28, 1950. In practice, it didn’t serve as an overnight hostel, but as an outpatient clinic, according to Reach Beyond’s Roger Reimer, who once directed the mission’s healthcare in Latin America.

But Roberts had a much bigger dream than just a clinic for missionaries or a small Indian hostel clinic. He envisioned a large, modern hospital where all Ecuadorians would receive the best medical care possible, regardless of their ability to pay. He also envisioned a teaching hospital where Ecuadorian doctors and nurses would be trained and a place where God’s love would be shown to everyone who entered its doors.

In 1952 Roberts and George Palmer began raising money to build a hospital. The project was funded largely by listeners to Palmer’s “Morning Cheer” program broadcast in Philadelphia.

Others also gave, and the hospital officially opened as “Rimmer Memorial Hospital on Oct. 12, 1955. It is now commonly referred to as Hospital Vozandes-Quito. “Vozandes” is Spanish for “Voice of the Andes,” named after the international shortwave radio station that was founded in Quito by Jones and Larson in 1931.

Different speakers—both in person and via prerecorded videos—recounted HVQ’s decades in Ecuador. The vice minister of the nation’s Health Ministry, Dr. Marisol Ruilova, a graduate of the hospital’s medical education programs, offered words of congratulations as did Marco Ponce, a delegate of Quito Mayor Mauricio Rodas.

When longtime laboratory physician Dr. Jeanette Zurita took the podium, she presented findings from research on bacteria strains. She later offered people 15 Años Vigilando el Invisible (15 Years Monitoring the Invisible), published by her Ecuador-based laboratory and Reach Beyond.

The room was alive with excitement about the institution’s achievements and its influence, both medical and spiritual, in Ecuadorian society and elsewhere. But as Ringenberg addressed the crowd, his talk tended toward a transparent look at not always getting it right and of interdependence among those striving for a common goal. Years earlier he had, in helping to establish HVQ as a teaching hospital, missed a critical deadline for filing applications with Ecuador’s Ministry of Health.

His Ecuadorian colleagues closed ranks in support of him, smoothing things out for HVQ to launch the hospital’s family practice residency program in 1986. Ringenberg was visibly moved to recall what was for him a salient episode illustrating that “this is the difference at Hospital Vozandes; we’re like a family.”

From 1985 until 2011in Quito, he had treated patients, served for a time as HVQ’s medical director, and mentored—both in medicine and in studying the Bible—young people on the cusp of launching their medical careers. It was the fulfilment of a dream he had held since age 12.

Some from the HVQ “family” were recognized for longtime service. Dr. Luis Granja, for example, received recognition as a general surgeon for 47 years, and Dr. Ramiro Carrillo received plaudits for his 41 years as a hospital ophthalmologist. Dr. Hugo Velasco has performed neurosurgery for 31 years and was duly recognized as well.

Others who poured forward as their names were called out to receive plaques of appreciation from Dan Shedd, vice president/executive director of Reach Beyond’s Latin America Region. This included the following medical doctors who had served at the hospital for at least 25 years: Néstor Amaguayo, Victor Falconí, César Irigoyen, Luis Martínez, Jaime Morán, Fernando Naranjo, Estuardo Novoa, Jaime Ochoa, Enrique Ordoñez, Hugo Pazmiño, Susana Rodríguez, Juan Roldán, Diego Samaniego, Juan Sghirla and Ruperto Suárez.

Reach Beyond announced in mid-2013 that it would sell the 76-bed hospital, only to see the deal fall through a year later.

The evening event also saw special recognitions awarded to Reach Beyond retirees Ruth Baxter (a nurse who chatted to the crowd via video) and Dr. Wally Swanson along with Ecuadorians Dr. Eduardo Noboa and Pastor Gustavo Molina.

Molina began ministering to hospital staff and patients as a chaplain in 1958 just three years after the facility was opened in 1955.

Desperate for Hope, Woman Rips Pages from Bible

Hearing confessions generally lies outside the understood parameters of Edgar Benalcázar’s work as a Protestant pastor and a hospital chaplain in Ecuador. But before him a woman was confessing. Not only that, she was showing him compelling evidence—the pages she had ripped from the large Bible in the hospital’s chapel.

Benalcázar shared the experience with staff members observing the 60th anniversary of Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ). Anxiously, the woman had waited as emergency room doctors treated her 19-year-old daughter for convulsions.

“To see her daughter like that was difficult,” said Benalcázar. “So she thought, ‘There’s nothing better to do than ask God to help.’ so she went to the chapel.”

Nearby, adjacent to a busy dining area, was the tiny chapel, complete with stained glass windows, pews, kneelers, and at the front, an altar and a Bible. It offered everything she needed. Here in the relative quiet of this place, she found solace and a chance to cry out to God in her desperate situation.

Going to the front, she looked at the book lying on a stand, and the words of a psalm captivated her—so much so that before she could stop herself, she had ripped it from the Bible. Back in the ER, she read the words aloud to her daughter.

“After her account to me, we noticed that [one of the pages she had] torn out was Psalm 91,” Benalcázar continued. “It begins with, ‘Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”’ These words strengthened this mama in the midst of difficulty.”

The emotive reference to the woman’s confession was not to generate disdain for her, but rather to give thanks to God. At a special service on Wednesday, Oct. 7, it represented a sample of 60 years of healthcare ministry. Earlier in the day outside the hospital’s entrance, passersby were treated to rousing music as Ecuador’s National Police Band performed several songs on the sidewalk.

Benalcázar also pointed out an HVQ distinctive—providing spiritual care even as bodies are healed of maladies. His talk focused on the effect of that distinctive in the lives of patients and their loved ones.

He said the woman recognized that “in times of difficulty, there is no better refuge for people than the Word of God. She did well by taking refuge in Psalm 91 in that incredible prayer, seeing God as our refuge, our strength and our hope. She took it and repeated it into her daughter’s ear.”

At a sesión solemne (service of remembrance) several days later in historic Quito, Benalcázar took the podium again.

This time he used Scripture references to reflect on the hospital’s founding and its spiritual roots. “Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalm 103:1-2).

He followed by reading a verse that is emblazoned on a plaque placed when the hospital was inaugurated in October 1955. The text reads, “Cry unto Me and I will respond to you, and teach you great and hidden things that you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3).

Ultimately, the hospital’s brick-and-mortar walls and the pages of a holy book serve only to point a person to that which is eternal. When hope and new beginnings are discovered in the truths of Scripture, Benalcázar is more than glad to hear it … even if it meant two pages went missing from the chapel’s Bible.

Source: Reach Beyond