Amazon Hope

tomorrow i leave for 2 weeks on the boat, Amazon Hope. it will hold a crew of 4-5 Peruvians, 8 Scottish medical personnel, 5 peruvian medical personnel, and me, the lone americana who will also be translator for part of the time. and many, many patients. we´ll see patients in the "hull" (if i remember boat anatomy) where there is a "consult room" which will have curtains making it into 3 and a dental room. we are going on the Rio Ucayali to the communities live on its banks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ucayali
so i´ll be gone for these 2 weeks without email access or phone so please don´t worry if you don´t see anything on my blog or hear from me for that long.
just pray. pray for safety and health, for strength to see so, so many patients all day, for skill and growing ability in Spanish as i will be translator for the first 8 days (none of the team from scotland speak spanish), and then continued skill as i join Ronald in seeing the 100 patients a day after the group from Scotland leaves. for the people we´ll be serving, pray that they would not only be helped and blessed by the health care, but also know why we do it - because Jesus Christ loves them and we are His hands and feet on earth to show them that.
the boat is quite nice - though old. i´ll have an air conditioned room for sleeping and i´ve been told, very good food all these days. we´ll have the chance to get off and walk around in the communities where we stop, so i won´t be entirely ship-bound for 13 days.
another item is that i won´t be finding out about where i´ll be doing my residency until i return on the night of March 25th. pray for this time of waiting for me.

thank you, thank you.
off to the jungle i go...