Amazon Trip

Wednesday, June 21, 2006




Titusville, Florida--Posted by Cherie Hurston

All pictures are originals taken by Cherie Hurston

With one Air Mobile team in Indonesia helping to provide pure water for the victims of the earthquake, another team was in Brazil. Please visit out website at www.airmobile.org to get a full account of the trip in Indonesia!

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An Air Mobile Ministries team just returned from a medical mission in Brazil. It was 8 days filled with beautiful children, wild animals, purified water, medical missions work, and people being blessed by the love of Christ!

There are about 10,000 villages in the Amazon and, so far, only 3,000 have been visited. The group AMM went with has two well equipped hospital boats that depart Manaus every week.

We started the trip in Manaus. The city has around 2 million inhabitants and is the largest city in this region of Brazil. From there we headed down river to the remote communities on the Amazon River to provide them with much needed medical care.




The boat we worked on had three levels. The top was a deck, the second contained cabins and a dining room and the bottom level housed the doctors' offices, an dentist office, triage, and a pharmacy. As we would pull up into the village, people would paddle their boats out to ours and come on board to receive the medical treatment. We jokingly said we were ministering from the boat like Jesus.



The villages we worked in were anywhere from 24 to 30 hours away from the nearest city. The beautiful people that live in these communities have to go great distances for medical care, extra supplies, and education. There are small outposts that provide clothing, small medical supplies, and a basic education. However, there is very little access to the major items such as dentist, surgery, or pharmacies.



Many times the whole community was involved the entire day in different activities. At the end of the activities, we would have a church service and then move to the next village.There are other teams that do follow up with the villages.

The final statistics are as follows:

314 people went through triage and to the doctors

95 people had dental procedures

82 families received care bags with clothes and hygiene items

137 children attended Vacation Bible School

100 Bibles were donated

3 surgeries were performed

82 people accepted Christ as their Saviour!

Overall, the entire trip was a complete success! It was a perfect mixture of work, relaxation, beauty, and joy! If you are interested in participating in an Amazon Medical Mission team please contact www.amazon-mission.org or call at (407) 831-0062.