December 6, 2005

Dear Brethren,

Sunday was the last day of our latest AMDE trip. AMDE stands for Assistência Médica, Dentária e Evangelística. I will not insult your intelligence by translating that. I will fill you in on how it works.

AMDE is a joint project of First Baptist Church and the Brazilian branch of Missionary Aviation Fellowship. MAF helps us hook up with Baptist doctors and dentists who are willing to give several days of their time and service. They also help us get donations of medicine and dental supplies. First Baptist Church supplies everything else and conducts the actual projects in the field. The “everything else” is quite overwhelming. We buy about half of the medicine, all the food, fuel, boats, generators and the list goes on and on. Just on fuel we spent over $500.00.

Some of you sent us new tents for this project. Thanks. They are just what we needed.

Our team was made up of 12 people. We had two dentists from south Brazil. We had a doctor and three nurses from our own church. Our project leader is also a dentist and coordinates the medical aspects of the project. I take care of logistics and the preaching/teaching side of the trips. Besides these tasks I am also the guy who does the maintenance and repair on all the equipment before and during the trip.

This clinic was on the Moa River. We set up in three different villages. Just under 1000 people got a free doctor’s visit (plus free medicine), their teeth repaired and heard the gospel.

We have 3 portable dental kits that run off of generator and compressor. I spent a good bit of my time keeping this equipment repaired and operating. We have two fold-up portable dentist’s chairs, too. These are homemade. One of our nurses fills prescriptions. The other 2 nurses assist the dentists with supplies and sterilizing all the hardware. They also help the doctor. That’s not all they do though. They still have to find time each morning to teach dental hygiene and Bible stories to the children. This is a bigger challenge than meets the eye. They use puppets to teach the dental hygiene and basic Bible principles. Then they change into their clown outfits (makeup and all) to continue playing with the kids and teaching them while their parents are at the doctor or dentist. Then there is a full time cook and two team members that take care of staging the patients and filling out their medical records. These records are kept from year to year so we can track our progress in each village. We used 3 boats to get all of these people and supplies into the villages. We own 2 of the boats and one of the motors. We had to borrow 2 motors and a boat. The bigger boat that carries the bulk of the supplies is the one we had to borrow. Hopefully we will be able to build our own in the near future. We still have to buy the 2 motors yet, also.

All of the last paragraph was to give you an idea about how big an operation this is. It takes a lot of planning and even more willpower to make everything come together. It is worth it though.

We were at the Serra do Moa for 3 days, República (Nukini Indian tribe) for 3 days and São Salvador for 2 days. The big supply boat left 3 days before the beginning of the clinic. One of our local missionaries, Rivaldo, piloted this boat and our support group for their 2 and a half day journey. They got rained on 32 times! Another of our missionaries, Hudson, took the second boat with 2 dentists and our coordinator, Zico. It took them 11 hours. I was the last to leave with a doctor and nurse. It took us 5 and a half hours in my boat. The Lord sent us enough rain that we were able to get everybody up there without incident. Then the river dried up and it was slow going from one village to the next on the way back down stream. Then on the last leg we got a big tropical storm, which brought the river back up and made it easy for us to get back to town. Most of us had some kind of rain gear, but it really didn’t help much in an all day Amazon rain storm. We were thankful though, because we really needed the extra water to be able to get back to town.

There were 8 children saved during the 9 days. We held services every night with good crowds. The village people were helpful, bringing us fruit and vegetables. Our team was very close knit and there was no complaining at all. The team spirit was awesome. Every member went way beyond the call of duty to help one another.

There are a couple of things that I need you to pray about. The first is urgent. Malaria has reached epidemic proportions on the Moa River and tributaries. This is the first time in the 45 years that I have lived here that it has gone to this point. As you know, I have had malaria a number of times. The most recent was a couple of years ago. I can sleep in a tent and even if I get the illness I have access to treatment. The people along the river do not. Our government is socialistic (to put it mildly) and is doing very little about the problem. The environmental minister is even from our state, but is a tree hugger and has banned all spraying with insecticides. This lady even claims to be a Christian. At República, where Rivaldo lives and serves, one third of the 300 people have the disease. On the Timbaúba River almost everybody is sick. The whole Moa valley is in very bad shape. It is spreading fast. All of our hospitals have been filled beyond capacity for months. Please pray!

Even though we had a doctor who is great with all tropical diseases, we could do NOTHING about the situation. We would have had to have a microscope and qualified technician along for the government to let us have medicine for malaria. Even though our doctor could identify the disease without a blood test, she is not allowed to prescribe the medication, which we couldn’t have anyway! It is quite frustrating. Two villages we visited had test stations with microscopes, but only one person to take blood samples.

Then finally, pray that we will be able to build the boat and buy the motors we still need for this project. My boats, which you helped purchase, are used on these trips, but we still need the big boat to haul the team and supplies around on these big projects. We are also using a borrowed compressor. There is also a short list of smaller items that we need. One of these that Zico and I have talked, prayed and looked into is a satellite telephone. There have been a number of times that I have been stranded by myself in the jungle or along the river with no way to get help or even let my family know where I am and what is happening. Pray with us about all of these things. Later I will call on you again to help us fill these gaps.

Well you may have to read this in two or three sittings. I have no idea what the editor is going to do with this.

Thanks for all of you prayer and support. Please keep it up. God bless you.

In Christ,

Mike Creiglow

Michael Creiglow baptizing in Brazil.