Saturday, May 12th

We woke up in the same village as yesterday and had breakfast, devotions and another clinic. It was pretty busy, but we were done pretty quickly. 

We left about 10:30 and arrived at Caribi about 11:45. We ate lunch and then opened the clinic about 1:30. We all thought that we wouldn’t be at this village very long because there was NO ONE there. Well, that all changed in about 20 minutes. This was by far the busiest we have been. The people from the neighboring village, Cesareia, came over as well as the people in the village where we actually pulled in at. These people were very sick and we handed out a lot of antibiotics. It seemed like we kept treating and treating and treating.  The doctor that was supposed to come on this trip fell and either hurt his knee or broke soemthing, I can't remember.  We have an RN and an OT - so, it has been rather difficult to diagnos some of the issues.  The nurse was great - but she was an ICU nurse, not a family practice nurse!  In the end we all pulled together and helped as many people as we could.

EXCITING!  A village farther up river, where we had not planned to go, radioed down because they “heard” the medical boat was close. They asked us to come saying they were very sick and needed us. This is an awesome testament about how valuable the work Earl and Ruth Ann have done here. The people “hear” even though there are no telephones! Another village radioed as well and asked us to come there. Two villages that were not on the list needed us. How cool!

The church service tonight was a small one, but it was a lot of fun. I am beginning to get the picture – cater to the children and the parents will come. The service was a bit different, Flavia told the same story, but in a different way, so it still held our attention. Flavia had everyone sing Happy Birthday to Cathy in Portuguese. It was very cool. I think she wanted to cry….

We had Brazilian "Pizza" for dinner tonight.  And it was very....interesting!  It was a pizza crust with spam like meat, polka keilbosa, peas, corn, cheese, onions and olives.  I chocked it down, but it wasn't as bad as I had originially thought.  The Brazilians put ketchup and mayo on as a topping as well. 

In some ways I feel like I have been here forever and in others it still feels like I have just arrived!