I'm excited to be going out on another international mission, this time for four weeks! My last mission was to the Dominican Republic a few years ago and lasted a week. I had a great time there. I'm excited that my medical knowledge is so much greater than back then and I'll be able to really get involved in the care of the people of Belize.
I'm leaving around July 20th, 2009 and staying four weeks. I will be working at La Loma Luz Adventist Hospital in northern Belize.
Maybe some of you are wondering why I would leave my family for four weeks to go to a third world country. Well, I've always had an adventerous side to me that loves to travel and experience new cultures so this is a perfect way to fulfill that desire; however, there is much more to it than that. When I went to the Dominican Republic I think I partly had selfish reasons to go, because I knew it would look good on my medical school application. I had a sweet experience though and realized how lucky we are here and how much health care is lacking in these 3rd world countries. I felt like our little traveling clinic in DR did a lot of good for the people there and there wasn't a better feeling than having put in a hard days works of service and knowing you did some good for those less fortunate. I was kind of "hooked" after that experience and knew that I wanted to keep going on these missions throughout my life. I hope I can be a big help to the staff at La Loma Luz and do some good for the patients there.
I'm also very interested in learning as much Spanish as possible while I'm there. There is such a big need for spanish speakers in medicine, I hope I can learn it fairly well some day. I'm sure this trip will help a lot in that.
Finally, I think it will be a great way to increase my medical knowledge. I know I'll have an opportunity while I'm there to be very involved in health care and I hope to gain a lot of knowledge by putting all the things I've been learning into practice.
I'll be updating this blog with stories and pictures from my experiences in Belize so check back every so often if you like.
Also, please donate to my trip if you could spare anything. I'm obviously in charge of all the financial obligations for my trip so any gift would be appreciated and any extra I'll donate to the hospital. You can use the paypal link to the right.
