The trip started great! Our combined team met in person for the first time at the Atlanta International Terminal on Tuesday morning. The travel day is always a long day, even more so for the Miamisburg team as they had to leave VERY early. After a long layover in Atlanta, we flew first to Panama City, Panama, and then on to Manaus, Brazil. Michael Haubner, the new CBM Director and our CBM trip leader, met us at the airport in Panama City.

We arrived in Manaus at 2:30 AM and made it thru immigration & customs without incident. Christian (from the crew) met us with the bus; we helped him load the 40+ pieces of luggage on the bus, and got to the CBM AMAZONIA at 4 AM. The ship’s crew moved the entire luggage onto the boat, we all found our cabins, and we were underway down the Rio Negro by 4:30 AM! We were actually in the Amazon River by 5:30 AM.

Those who could slept in a little this morning (Wednesday) to recover from travel. Once everyone was up and going, our first task was unpacking, sorting, and putting away all of the supplies we brought. After lunch (and some additional rest time), Michael walked us thru the normal daily schedule for seeing patients. Most of the team then made pill / medicine packs for the patients we will see, while the others made family gift bags and sorted & categorized 400+ pairs of reading glasses...!

We rested a little more before dinner, got acclimated to the boat and pulled up to the beach at our first stop in Sao Sebastiao do Uatuma sometime between 11 PM and Midnight. The Amazon River and its tributaries are much lower than normal due to historic drought conditions. This caused us to take an alternate route further down the Amazon that added 3-4 hours to what is normally a 16-hour trip from Manaus. Despite that, it has been a good and productive day!

Welcome to Sao Sebastiao! This small city of about 14,000 people is the Brazil HQ for CBM. They have here a mission house for visiting pastors and missionaries, a conference center where they train those pastors and missionaries, a growing greenhouse and garden for produce, a pineapple “plantation”, the "chicken palace" (for eggs...), and numerous other plants.

After our morning praise songs, devotion, Brazilian Portuguese language lesson, and an orientation to where we are in Brazil, most of the team walked the 1.5 miles to the mission house. We toured the campus and met Santana, the campus director. The CBM support capabilities on this campus are amazing! We left three team members there to paint a couple of buildings over the next 2-3 days, and the rest of us walked back to the boat. We will be back here before the end of the trip!

After lunch, we headed west on the Uatuma River to reach our first village and begin seeing patients. Because of the low water level on this Amazon tributary, the Captain proceeded upriver with caution. We arrived at the small village of Enseada (don’t look for it on your map…) about 4:15 PM, and began seeing our first patients around 4:30. We had an almost even number of medical and dental patients (about 15 each), so it was a welcomed “slow pace” introduction to clinic operations for this mostly novice team. After another delicious dinner, we “powered down” for the day and relaxed. We will head to the next village after breakfast tomorrow.

After breakfast and devotions, we stayed at Enseada to see if any other patients would come to be seen. None did, so we moved about 30 minutes away to Livramento. The river / lake water level is so low that we had to pull up the beach more than a quarter mile from the nearest home. Most of us went ashore to look around, and our dentist gave a short presentation to the few children there on how to brush their teeth, and why they need to. It was cute! The first group of patients walked from that first home; the rest came from the main part of the village in small boats that could make it thru the low water.

We had a much smaller group of patients than expected. Some of the crew talked with people from the village; many have left the village due to the low water (they can’t fish…) and have gone to the big cities where they have relatives so they can work and have income.

After lunch, we saw a few more patients from Livramento. We finished treating them, and then moved the boat down the river a little bit farther to the village of Jacarequara. The water here was so shallow that even though we were tied off to the shore, we could not drop the ramp. Therefore, everyone came to the clinic by boat, tied up alongside the CBM AMAZONIA, climbed aboard thru a gate in the rail, and were registered for treatment on the front deck! Since it starts getting dark around 5:30, we saw the patients who came and managed to get everyone headed home before it got too dark. Dinner, card games in the dining room, and another day is complete!!

We started our day with two significant events. First, Captain Junior took the small boat back to Sao Sebastiao to swap out two teammates from the boat for two others (both recent newlywed husbands, by the way…!) on the mission house work crew. There was still work to be done at the mission house, but we wanted both of these guys to experience life & work on the boat; thus, the swap. Second, one of the women we saw yesterday was back early this morning with a serious accidental gash on the back of her ankle. Two of our three doctors turned the optical shop into a medical treatment room; they then closed the wound with stitches and were able to send her on her way with wound care instructions. We are never sure what each day will bring, but the team remains flexible to take care of whatever challenge comes our way!

More patients arrived in boats about the same time as our wound patient, so our third doctor started seeing them as soon as the wound case was in process. We had a busy morning! We got the two teammates back from Sao Sebastiao just before lunch; (and yes, their wives were VERY glad to see them!)

After lunch and some rest, the crew moved the boat down river for about 40 minutes to near the village of Amaro. From where we tied off on the beach, we could not even see the village; however, the patients came! We took care of everyone and finished the treatment day about 5 PM. We will stay here overnight to see if anyone else comes from Amaro tomorrow morning, and then determine if another nearby village has patients we can see. Day 5 is in the books!

Today is Sunday. After breakfast, we started the day with extended devotions and communion. It was a great time of both worship and contemplation. No one else came from the village of Amaro, so after we finished devotions, the captain moved the boat about 40 minutes downriver to near the village of Caiaua. (How do you pronounce that? Great question - but I have NO idea..!) Since today was Sunday, we were halfway expecting that no one would come to see us. However, we were pleasantly surprised when three small boats of people pulled up by the boat!

We treated a bunch of medical and dental patients before lunch. Our Brazilian dentist is a rock star! She has had some tough teeth to work on so far, but she has been able to take care of just about every situation that has come up! After lunch and some rest, more patients arrived at 3 PM, and the team took care of them as well! We finished treatments around 5 PM and then “powered down” to rest until dinner, followed by the now regular (and multiple…) card games in the dining room!

The small team back in Sao Sebastiao reported today that they finished painting the Mission House!! Yay! They took some much-deserved downtime today (since they are working predominantly outside in this intense heat…) and attended a church service tonight. They will hit the next set of tasks tomorrow. We will be back in Sao Sebastiao either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning; it will be good to have everyone back together!

We moved first thing this morning after breakfast and devotions. Due to the extremely low water, we are anchored about 200 yards offshore from the village of Inajatuba. Like a few previous days, everyone has to come to the Clinic by boat. Either they drive their own or we send in one of our small boats to pick them up and bring them to the boat, and then take them back when they have finished with the doctors and dentist. Not efficient, but it works…and people get the medical care they need.

This morning was very slow - we only saw maybe ten patients. After lunch and a rest period, though, we had another 25 people come on board. We finished with the last patient around 5:30 PM; the crew then took them back to their village in one of our small boats. Dental throughput is definitely a chokepoint just due to the sheer volume of patients who need to have their teeth cleaned and who may need to have filling and/or extractions. Future teams might consider bringing a dental hygienist to handle the cleaning!

We moved the ship before dinner; it was fascinating to watch the crew navigate in the dark to a part of the shore where the bottom was deep enough to safely moor the boat near the village of Caranauaca. After another delicious dinner, several of us went to the top deck to look at the stars and listen to some praise songs. Both were awesome!

What a difference daylight makes! In the early morning light, it was easy to see why the captain moored the boat in this spot! I am so thankful this crew has so much experience on both the Amazon and the tributaries in this area!

This will prove (I think…) to be our busiest village day! We already had 10 people waiting to be seen before we even finished breakfast and devotions, so we opened the clinic at 8:30 instead of nine. By the time we finished just before lunch, we had seen more than 40 people for medical & dental concerns, and reading glasses. The boat is hopping today! We took care of everyone in Caranauaca before lunch, so we cast off and headed back to Sao Sebastiao.

We arrived in Sao Sebastiao around 2 PM, and opened the doors to see patients shortly after that. This is an older demographic than we have been seeing in the villages; they are all from the local CBM-sponsored / supported church. The medical issues remain the same - basic medical and dental care, plus a lot more glasses. This proved to be the heaviest day for distributing reading glasses! We will have more patients from the Sao Sebastiao church in the morning

A great surprise as we were eating breakfast was having Mike, April, and Dave return to the ship long enough to take the team picture! It was great to catch up with them for a few minutes, and then they headed back to the Mission House to finish the remaining tasks while we opened the clinic. After breakfast & devotions, we saw about 20 people sitting at the base of the seawall waiting for us to open the door. We knew this would be another busy day…

We finished seeing medical and dental patients around 12: 30, had lunch, and then some rest time. The heat really does take it out of you; we are so thankful the boat has air conditioning in the cabins and office spaces so it gives us some places to cool down.

At 4 PM, everyone either walked or took a motor tricycle to the Mission House. Michael Haubner walked us through the campus and explained how all of the buildings and spaces are used and what is growing in the fields and greenhouses. Santana (campus director) made coconut bread and some of her certified “awesome” banana chips - they were a great afternoon snack! We headed back to the boat around five, and managed to leave the campus just before a parade supporting one of the local political candidates created a roadblock that could have delayed our return. They are very vocal about their local candidates down here, and they LOVE to shoot fireworks to show their support!

On the way back, we found out that five more people needed to be seen at the clinic, so we reopened everything back at the boat to take care of them. By the time the day was complete, we had seen 76 people - our single busiest stop! It was a long, hot, and tiring day, but we have a great sense of satisfaction with all that God has allowed us to do!

This is our transit day back to Manaus. We left Sao Sebastiao at 4:30 AM; it took us about 28 hours to reach Manaus due to the longer route caused by the low water. Most everyone slept in because we knew it would be a down day. Our plan is to arrive at the Encounter of the Waters (where the Amazon River meets the Rio Negro) just outside Manaus at 7 AM tomorrow (Friday).

We made it to the Encounter of the Waters right on schedule. Everyone was on the top deck to see this amazing sight; God also blessed with several pods of river dolphins AND a good-sized crocodile swimming along out in the middle of the river! We docked downtown, and shortly after breakfast, we walked up to the street and toured the fish & meat markets - they were quite a sight to see! We also toured the city crafts market; just about, everyone found souvenirs. We next went to a store for soccer jerseys, followed by a specialty store for hammocks! Next, we went to a local market for snacks and a candy store for (wait for it…) candy and lots of it! Everyone found something they “had” to take home!

Back to the boat for lunch, some rest & heat recovery, then most of the team went to the Theater of the Amazon. This is an amazing example of late 19th century architecture; construction was completed in 1896. It was restored in 1990; it is a beautiful building to see!

Back to the boat again - it is time to pack and eat our final meal as a team and with the crew. Phenomenal food - again; our very own Brazilian steakhouse on the top deck! Captain Junior, Dentist Eliza, and Santana all spoke of how much they enjoyed working alongside us and thanked us for serving the Brazilian people on the Amazon. The team reciprocates those heartfelt feelings! We all are looking forward to the next time we can serve on the CBM AMAZONIA! Until we sail again - ADEUS!!