Brazil trip - Day 6...

Happy Mother's Day...in the States and Brazil.  Once again I'm missing Mother's Day with my mom.  I'm thinking next year I better make sure I'm in the States or my mom is going to get the wrong idea!  I think this is my 3rd year of missing it.  Kind of sad I'm missing the family get together, but I'll have to make it up to my mom later.  We will just have to celebrate the mothers on our trip today!  Have to say that last night was my best nights sleep so far...which isn't saying much!  But everything is a little better after some good sleep.  It hit me today that I'm stuck on a boat with the same people for the next 5 days...and I haven't been able to run!  This may be bad for all of us!  Ran in to Lynn (the missionary/pastor) on my way to the upper deck this morning.  He said he wanted to talk to me because he had a book he wanted to give me but had to tell me about it first.  At the airport, he was browsing the books and a lady recommended a book called "Wild" to him.  He had read it and thought I would like it.  But he had to preface it by saying he couldn't give the book to just anybody because it contained a lot of vulgarity.  I wasn't sure if he thought I was used to vulgarity (thank you ER) so it
wouldn't bother me, or that he thought I could handle it...I'm hoping the latter!  Several of the team have  been ill with GI stuff, but thankfully I've been spared so far, even though I've rinsed my toothbrush multiple times in the "unsafe" sink water.  After breakfast, we took a leisurely ride back to the main river to a small flooded village.  There was no way to get from house to house except by boat or a few man-made walkways.  Once we get close to a village, the captain starts blaring the horn to let all the locals and surrounding villages know we have arrived.  The morning clinic went by fast and we saw 80 some patients.  Sounded like most of them were just coming for vitamins and de-worming meds so they were in and out fairly quickly.  I did manis and even a few pedis today.  There were a couple of girls hanging out in the waiting room today for quite a while so I grabbed the Noah picture book and had them try to teach me the Portuguese names of the animals.  They were super cute of course.  Since it was Sunday and such a small village we were done with clinic by 12:30.  A few of us were hanging outside waiting for lunch and got to see a toucan which was pretty cool.  Then after lunch Dudu took us on a small boat out to tour the river.  It was nice to see it from a different perspective.  We got to see some water buffalo and birds.  It was a pretty warm day and we all just wanted to jump in the water but Lynn told us it wasn't a good spot for that.  Hopefully later we will get to jump in.  At 3:30 we headed to church in the local village.  To get here, we had to take a 20 second boat ride and then navigate the plank walkways which were rickety in places.  The church was 90% kids but t

hey had a lot of fun singing and they colored pictures for us.  Before the service started, the Americans were sitting toward the back and as I mentioned it was hot!  One little boy, probably couldn't have been more than 10 yrs old, came and turned the fan so it would blow on us instead of the Brazilians.   He went back and sat down then realized it was still rotating, so it wasn't always blowing on us, so he got back up and fixed it so it wouldn't rotate anymore.  It was so sweet.  Dinner tonight was Brazilian chicken salad.  It was good but interesting.  It had everything imaginable in it...chicken, mayo, apples, egg, raisins, corn, carrots, and even olives and then you top it off with shoestring potatoes.  Definitely not a classic chicken salad.  The crew also made made us a chocolate/coconut cake to celebrate Mother's Day.  They sure do take good care of us!  Then to end the day, we had a communion service on the upper deck with the Brazilians and Americans.  We sang a few worship songs in English and Portuguese first then shared the bread and cup. We might not be able to completely understand each other, but we can all worship and take the Lord's Supper together...sweet fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  It was the perfect ending to a great day as we witnessed the beautiful sunset while we worshipped our great God!