Tropical medicine course

Today I am officially enrolled in a tropical medicine course designed for missionaries going into remote areas. I am so excited. It will be taught by Dr. Mary Vanderkooi, an Equip missionary who served in Ethiopia for many years. Sudan's climate and resources are similar to Ethiopia's so I am excited to learn from someone who has been so close to the area and conditions in which I will work.

In the two week course I will be in class all day filled with lectures, lab and case studies, followed with evenings spent reading the textbooks and hanging out with other missionaries. I will learn to diagnose and treat leprosy, TB, malaria, worms, burns, and hundreds of other illnesses/injuries I may encounter. The primary difference from nursing school is that I will not be learning about treating them in the manner I would here in the States--but learning to treat them with limited diagnostics and resources on the field. Improvisation will have a whole new meaning! I cannot wait!

I have learned loads in the past three years in nursing school and at Mercy Medical Center--but I anticipate the upcoming learning to be more medically relevant than anything I have learned thus far regarding my service in Sudan. The course begins on April 11th and ends on the 22nd. I hope to leave for Sudan just two days later from the SIM base in North Carolina.

I am so incredibly blessed and humbled to be on this journey. I am amazed that God picked me to do this!

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." C.S. Lewis