A solid faith

The Youngbergs live a life of healing and teaching

Newlyweds Stephen and Verlene Youngberg stepped off the train at the railroad crossing in Loma Linda in 1943. With them were their possessions--neatly packed into four suitcases. He was 21, and she was just 18. Before being married, they had spent the summer selling books, working for scholarships so they could attend Loma Linda. After a weekend honeymoon at the beach, they boarded a train from Texas to California so he could enter the School of Medicine and she the School of Nursing. To finance his final two years of medical school, Dr. Youngberg agreed to join the U.S. Army after he graduated in 1946. Dr. Youngberg had decided long before coming to Loma Linda that he would live a life of service. From the ages of 1 to 8 he lived in India with missionary parents, and saw for himself the challenges faced by India's poorest citizens. His desire to serve was strengthened by the example of his uncle, Gus Youngberg, who worked with the Dyak people of interior Borneo. The story of his uncle, who died in a Japanese prison camp, is told in the book, Under Sealed Orders, written by his aunt, Norma R. Youngberg. While growing up, Stephen Youngberg and his brother, Russell (a 1949 graduate of the School of Medicine), often spoke of their desire to return to Borneo and continue the work their uncle had helped start. While in medical school, the two brothers joined a group providing relief after flooding in southern Mexico. He asked Mrs. Youngberg to join them to introduce her to the tropics and experience what it would be like to live in Borneo. Mrs. Youngberg was moved by what she saw in Mexico. "With so much desperate need right here on this continent," she told her husband, "we don't need to travel to Borneo serve." While stationed with the Army at Fort Ord, Dr. Youngberg prepared to provide medical care in Mexico, buying and refurbishing a medical unit mounted on a truck. The truck later served as a delivery room for his third child, Sylvia, born in Mexico. In 1948, Dr. Youngberg heard Iner Ritchie, MD (a 1941 graduate of the School of Medicine), speak during the Annual Postgraduate Convention. Dr. Ritchie had founded LIGA ("league"), a group of physicians, dentists, and others who travel to Mexico providing health care. "I remember," says Dr. Youngberg, "that it was Dr. Ritchie's dream for LIGA to build and maintain a hospital and school in each state in Mexico." Dr. Youngberg became LIGA's first full-time missionary, serving in Teapa, Tabasco, from 1948 to 1951. The hospital they built was named in his honor. As the hospital neared completion, Dr. Youngberg's health deteriorated. He battled malaria three times, acquired a severe case of hepatitis, and when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the family moved back to the United States. "I promised God," he recalls, "that if my health were restored, I would continue practicing medicine, keeping no more than $1,000 a month, and giving the rest away to help the poor." His health improved, and in 1952 he began practicing medicine in southern Texas. He also acquired mobile medical units for use in health screening and medical aid to the poor in Mexico who lived in cardboard shacks along the Rio Grande. A contractor donated a pre-made garage where Dr. Youngberg set up a clinic in Matamoros, staffed with two high school students who distributed tickets for appointments. Two medical interns from Mexico made weekly visits, and Dr. Youngberg saw patients when his busy practices permitted.
		Norma Ortiz Louizell, RN, administers morning medications to her small patients at the Children¹s Nutrition Hospital in Pena Blanca, Honduras.
		Dr. Youngberg first began to think about mission service as a child in India. In this photo, taken in the 1920s, he is pictured, seated, on the left.
		Stephen Youngberg, MD, holds two of his young patients.
		A group of the youngest children from the Children¹s Home enjoy an afternoon visit to the shores of nearby Lake Yojoa.

By 1957, Dr. Youngberg had recovered enough both physically and financially to look for a permanent place to serve. He and Mrs. Youngberg spent a month traveling through Mexico and Central America looking for a place to set up a medical mission.

At about that time Walter Tynes, a Dallas oil man vacationing at Padre Island near Dr. Youngberg's practice, brought his son to be treated. As his son was receiving a treatment, Dr. Youngberg told Mr. Tynes, "Come, let me show you my hobby." Mr. Tynes was fascinated to see three large transit buses in the back parking lot being outfitted as medical units.

After the tour, Mr. Tynes donated funds to pay the salaries of a physician and a nurse for the clinic and in 1959, he directed his lawyers to set up a corporation, Pan American Health Service, to help fund Dr. Youngberg's work.

While Dr. Youngberg stayed home to care for his medical practices, his wife made six trips through Mexico and Central America, searching for a place to reestablish full-time medical work. In 1960, she decided on a site in Pena Blanca, Honduras, near a mountain lake. Her father, Joe DeWitt, MD (a 1932 graduate of the School of Medicine), bought 500 acres of undeveloped land and started a boarding academy. The academy, Centro Educacional Adventista, is now operated by the Adventist Church.

In the first three months after moving to Honduras, Dr. Youngberg treated 9,000 patients. "We parked our buses in a semi-circle," he remembers. "The waiting room was on logs under the trees. Our first hospital was a grass-roofed shelter, eventually replaced by an Army squad tent."

Six months after their arrival, the family faced a crisis. Mr. Tynes, co-founder and fundraiser for their work, died suddenly. All available funds had been spent in the move to Honduras. "We had to stay," Dr. Youngberg likes to say, "because we didn't have enough money to return home." But in reality, the family made the decision to stay after much prayer--trusting that God had led them there.

Within months of securing the property, construction of a hydroelectric canal took almost 200 acres from the middle of the property, channeling water from a lake to a 400-foot drop-off into an electrical turbine. Buildings left when the company finished the job were donated to the campus.

In 1965, one of the buildings was dedicated as the Children's Nutrition Hospital. "The day the hospital opened," says Dr. Youngberg, "we admitted three children in third-stage malnutrition. Two were so ill that they died before the week was up. The third, Nectali Portillo, survived, and later became the woodworking instructor in our vocational school."

Another of the buildings left by the canal company was dedicated as a chapel, and church services and prayer meetings are held in it. The site of the original clinic is now a guest house with four nearly completed apartments.

"Pathfinder groups from Florida, as well as a Maranatha group, visited us before we had these facilities," relates Dr. Youngberg. "We hope the guest apartments will provide housing for more volunteers who can help us care for malnourished children, and to give instruction to their caregivers."

In the late 1980s, a community group asked if shop buildings could be used as vocational classrooms. A school was opened, offering courses in mechanics, welding, woodworking, cabinetmaking, sewing, and tailoring to 150 students. Literacy classes for nearly 100 adults are offered at night.

More than 100 children, ages 6 to 15, study in a primary school started for children left in the Nutrition Hospital, who later graduate to the Children's Home. Currently about 30 students live in the Children's Home.

The Youngberg's daughter, Aileen Youngberg, is president of Pan American Health Service, and their granddaughter, Anita Zelaya-Youngberg, RN, is director.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch dropped a year's rainfall in the area in one week. A mountain spring which provides water to the complex turned into a raging torrent. A knock sounded on the Youngberg's door one evening and when Dr. Youngberg answered the door, soldiers were there to ask, "May we borrow your tractor and trailer?"

"Through the night the John Deere tractor--with an Army trailer behind it--driven by young men who grew up in our home, ferried 868 people to safety," remembers Dr. Youngberg. "We were thankful to participate in the rescue, and that God protected the lives of the rescuers."

A solid faith in the Lord has pervaded the Youngberg's lives. They have seen many needs met through prayer and a constant, non-wavering trust that nothing will get in the way of the work the Lord has given them to do.

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