On Sundays, I worshipped at the local presbyterian evangelical church. It is very different to my home church, but I really enjoyed going there and learned a lot. At 8am, there were discussion groups on such diverse topics as the Person of Christ and Cloning. Then at 9am, there would be all-age Sunday school, which signalled the start of that day's broadcasts on local radio and television from the church. The actual service would start at 10am with an hour or singing followed by an hour-long sermon. Even after all this, church might still not be finished. On one of my last Sundays, there were twenty-two baptisms, mainly new adult believers, then the Lord's Supper!

Another Sunday night, we had the Matrimonio Masivo - 12 weddings altogether to allow people who otherwise could not afford it to get married. One couple had lived together as man and wife for fifty years, but it was only once they had become Christians that they realised their need to be properly married in the eyes of God.

Even throughout the week, the congregation continued to be very faithful, meeting twice a week for house groups, with one meeting set aside for prayer and the other for Bible study. (They were going through the Shorter Catechism while I was there.) As over here, we also went to help at the Teens Group and attended the Young Adults group.

After my first week, I helped with a Sunday school for street children in one of the poorest areas of Moyobamba. (The perils of smiling and nodding when you don't really understand led me to agree to teach Sunday school during my time there!) It was great fun - lots of games, stories and songs - but most of all, it was amazing to see how eager these children were to learn about the Lord and to see that many of them have become Christians themselves.

Overall, this was an amazing experience and hopefully a life-changing one. I cannot describe the poverty that some of these families were living in. I have returned realising that, whatever the faults of the National Health Service, we are immensely fortunate to have such healthcare and social security systems.

It has taught me so much more than that though. I was so stressed and so worried before going over to Peru. After all, as I sobbed on my flatmate's shoulder the morning before I left, I was going on my own, I didn't really speak the language, and, worst of all, they have huge spiders in the jungle! It taught me to be completely reliant on the Lord. He knows already what will happen to all of us and, as we follow his will, he will give us that grace and strength to deal with anything as we confess our weakness to him.

1. Inside the church at a communion service
2. The Matrimonio Masivo!
3. This monkey was a pet of a neighbour and enjoyed drinking coffee
4. Sunday school on my last day
5. Fighting a parrot for my camera case!
6. The fountain in the main square of Moyobamba

As there is no real version of the National Health Service in Peru, patients can visit a vast array of clinics for medical attention, paying for each consultation and for every investigation. Examples for this include 35 nuevo soles (about £6) to see the doctor, then 10 nuevo soles (about £1.70) for every single blood test. My favourite part of the price list was in Obstetrics section - "Delivery - 1000 nuevo soles" (about £171), followed by "Delivery without pain - 1500 nuevo soles"!

Given the average monthly wage in Peru is 345 nuevo soles, equivalent to £59 a month or £708 annually, and the expense involved in visiting the doctor, even at the comparatively low prices of the clinic, many people visit their doctor only when things have got very serious. It also means that a lot of our normal health promotion strategies are abandoned - most people could never afford to buy the tablets to control their high blood pressure. Another difficulty here is that most of the older people are illiterate.

The doctors here also do operations. I assisted with one at 6am because it was the only time the anaesthetist could come to the clinic. The tiny operating theatre was baking, even at that time in the morning. Understanding the muffled orders of surgeons is difficult enough in English - never mind in Spanish!

With regard to the language, I had learnt to speak Spanish solely for this trip. I was staying with a Peruvian family and all my friends and colleagues were Peruvian, so I was constantly speaking in Spanish. It was all incredibly tiring combined with the unrelenting heat. Sometimes I would just retreat up to my room to read a book or letters to escape back into an English-speaking world just for a rest! It was lovely to get things to be translated too, even if I needed to correct some misconceptions. One of the letters included the phrase, "In the city of Wales, England!" I also had to try to explain that Scotland was a country in its own right and not just part of England or, worse, part of the United States!

Another day, I went to visit a couple of the villages to see the work of Buena Comida, the Good Food programme, where they are teaching school children how to grow vegetables to encourage better nutrition. The main diet consists of rice, potatoes and yuca, a starchy root vegatable, with the occasional beans, chicken or cuy - guinea pig! It is surprisingly tasty, if a little hard to get all the meat off their wee bones!

The Clínica San Lucas at that time employed two doctors (a gynaecologist and a physician specialising in general (internal) medicine), two nurses, one pharmacist and two laboratory technicians. The work of the clinic is rather like that of a General Practitioner here. There is not such thing as a prescription though. You can just wander into your local corner shop and pick any of the vast array of medicines you would like!

Another main work is the annual week of free surgery for patients, mainly children, with cleft lip and palate, involving maxillofacial surgeons from Lima and the United States, psychologists, and speech and language therapists. The rest of the year is spent identifying these children and visiting them in their homes, which could be five hours walk from the nearest road.

I went with the co-ordinator of this programme to visit some of these children and to offer some basic medical help to the villages. These children are often ostracised by their school friends and family (especially by their fathers who see it as a slight on their masculinity to have a 'deformed' child). Some of the older ones no longer go to school because their teachers have sent them home, saying they can't speak properly, no one can understand them, and they are too difficult to teach.

All the families I met were living in incredible poverty - I can really see how much I take for granted. They had no running water, no electricity, no toilets, no beds, with the nearest medical help several hours walk away. There was no doctor free to go and visit these children so I was sent to do the medical part of the job! It was scary having to make diagnoses on the spot, having not graduated and not havcing the usual equipment and investigations of medicine back home. Everyone (including me!) had parasites, so I just went ahead and treated them, but I diagnosed many an ear infection on the basis of pulling the kid's ear and asking if it hurt!

1. Children tending their school garden, learning how to grow vegetables
2. Guinea pigs on the kitchen floor, all ready for the next meal!
3. Keziah with a baby with cleft and palate. He was six months old but couldn't suckle properly and only weighed 6 pounds
4. Visiting the villages to see children with cleft lip and palate
5. Look at the drainage system for the village - there is no running water or sanitation there

Asociación San Lucas is a Christian organisation working to improve both the physical and spiritual health of the people of Moyobamba and its surrounding area. Most of the staff working at the clinic are Christians, trying to show their love of Jesus Christ through practical service. Each day at the clinic, all the staff meet for a time of worship, with singing, prayer and a short Bible study led by a member of staff or a local pastor. I even had to take one of the devotions, speaking on idolatry and had to do it all obviously in Spanish! It was a scary experience, given that I had not even been able to speak Spanish a few months before.

Asociación San Lucas is involved in improving water sanitation, community health (including sexual health, preventing and treating HIV/AIDS, paediatrics and obstetric care, through the training of community health advisers from the villages), and agriculture and farming for some of the poorest villages of the Department of Moyobamba. Even though I was there as a medical student, I was able to get involved in everything.

I was given the opportunity to visit a couple of villages where San Lucas is working to provide a clean water supply, rather than the dirty river which families are currently using as washing, cooking and drinking water. For one of these villages, Neuvo Milagro (New Miracle), a new water supply had been found on the land of the local shaman. Locals told us that he goes down into this cave to consult the Devil, but, praise to God, he was willing to allow San Lucas to use this supply if it turned out to be uncontaminated.

The Amazon Rainforest is not called the rainforest for nothing - it had been raining, pouring all day so we had to tramp through a foot of mud and muddy water to get to the cave! When we did get there, the five men (I wasn't allowed to go down because I was a girl!) disappeared into a cave about 20 feet below the ground. Being abandoned in a rainforest wasn't much fun, but it got worse when a little stream above the cave burst its banks! I have never been so scared in my life! I was praying desperately for them, debating whether to attempt to make it back to the shaman's house on my own. I knew that he had a mobile phone there (having one of the few mobiles in the area), although I don't really know who I could have called! Eventually, after 45 minutes of fervent prayer, the men suddenly struggled through what was now a raging waterfall and scrambled up the side of the cave!

1. Clínica San Lucas
2. The evangelical church in Guillermo, another village where San Lucas worked
3. Children playing in the water of the Río Mayo, a tributary of the Amazon
4. The men climb down into the cave. That's the shaman in the fake Brazil top and blue plastic sheeting - not quite how I imagined a witch doctor to look!

I was met in Lima by friends and stayed with them a few days to recover from the jet lag and to see some of Lima (very hot, very noisy, very dusty). After swimming in the Atlantic Ocean the week before while working in the Western Isles, I just had to paddling in the Pacific (not surprisingly a wee bit warmer!) I was then sent on my way with reminders not to drink the water and to wary of amorous Peruvians!

After Ashley shared some of her stories as a missionary kid in Peru, it's made me reminisce about working in a medical mission there. If you ever get on to the subject of my all too short time there, you are in for a long chat, probably peppered by LOTS of photos. So I figured that this way if you don't want to know, you can go and potter somewhere else, but I thought that some of you might like to hear about the work there. (These articles was originally published in my denomination's mission magazine.)

"How on earth did I end up here?" was a recurring thought as I was driven from the airport to Moyobamba, hidden away at the Peruvian border of the Amazon jungle. My taxi-driver was turning on all the charm - he was looking for a Scottish wife apparently - but it was really the scenery that blew me away. There were so many trees and plants - all more green that I could ever have imagined - sprinkled generously with bright dashes of orange, yellow and red flowers, with no hint of tarantulas that I was dreading.

I had arrived in the selva, or rainforest region, of Peru, after an eighteen hour flight to Lima, broken by a lovely hour-long stop in the Caribbean, then another one-hour flight over the Andes. However, why was I here of all places?

Since becoming a Christian at the age of 18, I have had a strong interest in the field of medical mission work. So many people in the world live without the basic necessities that we, here in Scotland, take for granted. However, I appreciate that it is an incredibly demanding job to work in such places and wanted to use my medical elective, when all final year medical students get the opportunity to study and work anywhere in the world anywhere in the world in a healthcare setting, to get a small taste of what life as a medical missionary could be like.

Originally I was going to go to India but had to think again after India and Pakistan threatened nuclear warfare and my university told me I couldn't go. Just a few days later, a missionary working in Brazil came to speak to our church prayer meeting. As soon as she discovered I was a medical student, she demanded to know if I had sorted my medical elective. I explained the problems of going to India, but she answered by telling me to write to Latin Link, a mission organisation working with churches in Latin America. My protests that I did not speak Spanish went unheeded by her and again later at my interview. I was sent to see the work of and hopefully be of some help at a medical mission clinic in Moyobamba...

1. Plants in the garden of my new home
2. A boat on the Rio Mayo

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvellous works among all the peoples!
Psalm 96:3

What's the most important trip you want to take this year?

What an interesting question! Where do I need to go this year? Who do I need to catch up with? Where do I need to be? I haven't managed to come up with an answer but it has made me think.

I used to go on mission trips every summer, but now it is so difficult to get away for anything longer than a week with work. Ah, work does interfere with my social life! Perhaps I need to be organised with things for this summer to try to get back out there. Even though I am officially 'working', I find the concentrated Christian fellowship so refreshing. Of course, the sunshine and the good food doesn't hurt either!

This has also reminded me about all the people whom I need to visit. There are friends and family I need to see - letters, emails and phone calls are great, but it is not the same as seeing someone face-to-face and sharing with them.

Balanced against all of this is again the uncertainity of work after August. I have always planned to spend some time working abroad, so maybe this would be the time to do it. I'm conscious that many of my older friends and colleagues also planned to do medical mission work abroad before getting caught up in work, marriage and family and never doing it after all. I know that it is possible to do this after marriage and with children, but it is more difficult, so maybe I should embrace this season of life and crack on with it.

[The LORD your God] went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.
Deuteronomy 1:33

God's work done God's way will never lack God's supply.

James Hudson Taylor, English missionary to China and founder of China Inland Mission (1832-1905)

It's my birthday today, so it's an ideal time to consider what God has done for me, in me and through me in this last year and where I hope to be this time next year. Inspired by this week's Carnival of Beauty on Beginnings and Endings, I want to reflect on the work that he has begun in me and where he has shut doors. In all this, I know that I can trust in a God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, yet who loves me, Keziah, despite knowing me and my failings more than anyone else and more than I allow even myself.

This year, God has used me, through the guidance of some godly women, to start a Bible study group for young women. Just last night, we met together for a wonderful time of fellowship and encouragement sitting round Scripture. I am learning so much from our time together and am so thankful to God for the work he is doing there.

He has taken me to a new job that I love. I actually sit there and think to myself, "I have SUCH an interesting job" and really believe it! He is teaching me and reminding me every day that this is my mission field for now and that this is where he wants me to be his servant and ambassador. While on call this last weekend, I was able to have some really interesting chats with a couple of Muslim colleagues. They will return to a land hostile to the Gospel next year, a place where it would be too dangerous for me to work, never mind visit as a missionary, so I am conscious that, right now, here is my opportunity to share the Christian faith with that people.

God also has seemed to close doors for me over this year, sometimes inexplicably. I had hoped to spend some time supporting student ministry, but the funding to allow me to do this was not available. I had hoped to go into research, but the funding there was not available either. A good friend expressed his interest in me, so we began to talk more purposefully about our future and if marriage was part of that. After much prayer and discussion, I knew that this was not the case. While I know it was the correct and right decision, it stills saddens me to consider all that might have been and what now might never be.

All through this, I know that I do not worship a fickle God, but one who is constant and steady. I know that God has his plans for me that he has had since before the beginning of time, purposes for me that will prevail and cannot be thwarted, plans for wholeness and not for evil, plans to give me a future and a hope, and that he knows both the beginning and the end. As I begin another year of my life, this is in what I can trust and rest, so, instead of being scared and nervous, I am excited to see what this next year will bring!

Isaiah 46:9-10

What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Aargh! Another hard one. I've been sitting here at my computer trying to answer this one and I am having a hard time. When I think over the year to come, I find it difficult to find something that will matter in 10 years - and that depresses me.

I might alter a few diabetes drugs to give someone better sugar control so that in 10 years they still have both legs and can see. I might put a patient on drugs to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol so they don't have a stroke. I might be the first one on the scene when a patient's heart stops and manage to shock it back into working again. (Actually I just did this last week - five minutes later, after a couple of shocks and some CPR, he was sitting up asking what had just happened!) But will any of this really matter in eternity? Or am I just patching people up to fall apart another day?

Then I got thinking. My workplace, the wards and the clinics, is my mission field. In God's wisdom, he has placed me there as his ambassador, as his representative there. How I go about my day, how I treat my patients and my colleagues, what I talk about at coffee time is my witness to the work that God is doing within me. Already I have had opportunity to share some of my faith with my colleagues and my patients.

It is this witness that will matter in eternity. It is the people who came a step closer to knowing God for themselves that will matter in eternity. This is an awesome opportunity and one that I must keep at the forefront of my mind every day.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ,
God making his appeal through us.
2 Corinthians 5:20a

For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

I have been having some really exciting conversations with one of my friends. We originally know each other from work but got to know each other better as we studied for postgraduate exams in a little group.

She is in a difficult situation. She lives with her boyfriend and has done for a few years. They love each other...but he won't marry her. Apparently, he will only marry a Christian. Now, if he is a Christian (I don't know what his own understanding of this is), he has got himself into a terrible situation - he should never have started going out with her, never mind living with her. But she loves him and wants to marry him. So she has tried to read the Bible but got stuck at Leviticus and gave up. At the same time, she is quite scared about reading the Bible - what if all this Christian stuff is really true? What if she has to become a Christian!?!

Now she has been asking me questions as she knows that I am a Christian. She is going to read through the Gospels and then we are going to meet to chat about them. As you read this, please just take a moment to pray for her and her boyfriend that they will both be drawn towards God, that he will rededicate his life to Christ and that she will come to know God for herself. Please also pray that I will be kept faithful in prayer for their salvation and be a faithful witness to her as we discuss the Bible and the Christian faith.

My word...shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:11