Ashley Hodel’s Story: Why I came Back to the Peruvian Amazon

“The people I met the first time never left me.”

When Ashley Hodel, RN, first traveled deep into the Peruvian Amazon for a medical mission in October 2025, she thought she was going there to give.

She returned home realizing how much she had received.

The people stayed with her. Their stories stayed with her. The patients whose futures she wondered about stayed with her.

So when the opportunity came to return to the Amazon the following year, Ashley didn’t hesitate.

“Coming back felt less like going on another trip and more like returning to people that were so meaningful to me.”

For Ashley, that second journey would deepen not only her understanding of humanitarian nursing, but also her understanding of what it means to care for another human being.

A Calling Beyond the Emergency Department

Ashley is a Canadian registered nurse working in a rural Emergency Department in Wetaskiwin, Alberta. She also works as a Primary Care Paramedic on an emergency ambulance in Calgary.

While Ashley has been an RN for just over a year, her healthcare career began more than eight years ago as a paramedic.

It was during her first year in paramedicine that she began thinking about nursing. She saw opportunities to grow as a healthcare practitioner, but she was also drawn to something beyond the walls of a traditional healthcare system: travel, humanitarian work, and medical missions.

That desire eventually brought her to the Peruvian Amazon.

After connecting with Ed Heath and learning about his childhood in Peru, the healthcare inequalities facing remote Amazon communities, and the work being done there, Ashley decided to take the leap.

Her first medical mission to Peru became an experience she could not simply leave behind.

Welcome to the Amazon

Ashley remembers arriving in the Amazon for the first time and feeling overwhelmed, but in the best possible way.

Everything was unfamiliar.

The remoteness. The heat. The enormous, muddy Amazon River. The dependence on boats for transportation. The relationship between communities and the land around them.

But what surprised her most wasn’t the environment.

It was the people.

“What surprised me most was how quickly the people made us feel welcomed and how much warmth and gratitude there was despite how little they had.”

It was a perspective Ashley says is difficult to understand from afar.

You have to experience it.

And practicing medicine there was equally different.

In Canada, Ashley is surrounded by laboratory testing, imaging, medications, equipment, specialists, and an entire healthcare infrastructure. In remote Amazon communities, many of those safety nets simply aren’t available.

She had to rely on assessment, clinical judgment, creativity, and teamwork.

But something else happened.

The technology faded into the background, and the human side of nursing moved to the foreground.

“The nursing came down to simply being present, listening, educating, and building trust. It changed the way I look at nursing.”

A Patient She Never Forgot

During Ashley’s first mission, the team encountered a child they believed had tuberculosis.

He was very sick.

The team recognized the seriousness of his condition and helped facilitate getting him to a city where he could receive further evaluation and care.

Then the mission ended.

Ashley returned to Canada.

But she never stopped wondering about the people she had met.

What happened after the team left?

Did the patients receive the care they needed?

Did anything they had done actually make a lasting difference?

A year later, Ashley returned.

And she saw him again.

This time, he was healthy and thriving.

For a volunteer who had spent the previous year wondering what happened after the boats departed and the clinics packed up, seeing him again brought the mission full circle.

“Knowing that we changed the course of a child’s life was incredibly meaningful.”

It was also a reminder that returning matters.

When Healing Doesn’t Mean Curing

Ashley’s second trip brought another encounter she believes she will carry throughout her nursing career.

Ashley and one of the physicians entered the home of a woman believed to have end-stage breast cancer.

She had been suffering for months. She could no longer get out of bed. Her disease had progressed far beyond what the visiting team could cure.

There would be no dramatic rescue.

So the definition of care changed.

They treated her wounds. They gave medications to relieve her symptoms. They helped her become more comfortable. Before leaving, they provided her family with medications and support for additional supplies so they could continue caring for her.

And something shifted.

Ashley remembers seeing life return to the woman’s eyes.

Her family cried.

The woman cried.

Ashley and the physician cried, too.

“We knew we weren’t curing her, but we brought some humanity back into her last bit of life.”

For Ashley, the experience crystallized something nursing school and years in emergency medicine could never fully teach.

Sometimes healthcare cannot change the outcome.

But caregivers can still change the experience.

They can decrease suffering.

They can preserve dignity.

They can make someone feel seen.

They can remind someone that they are not alone.

“It may forever be the most humbling experience of my nursing career.”

The Second Trip Was Different

Ashley returned to the Amazon with more experience, but also with a different mindset.

On her first trip, the questions were practical:

What can I do? How can I help? How much can we accomplish?

By the second trip, the question had changed:

What does this person need?

Ashley understood that the team wasn’t going to “fix” everything.

Nor should volunteers arrive believing they have all the answers.

Sometimes the most meaningful intervention might be treatment. Other times it might be education, comfort, listening, or simply sitting beside someone.

“The second time I was able to slow down and appreciate the human side of it.”

That shift became one of the greatest lessons she brought home.

More Than What They Don’t Have

Ashley is also careful about how she describes the communities she has come to know.

Yes, the barriers to healthcare are significant.

Something that might require a simple drive to a clinic in Canada can mean hours of travel by boat in the Amazon, if transportation is available at all. Conditions that could have been treated early may become severe before a patient ever reaches care.

But Ashley doesn’t want these communities defined by scarcity.

“These communities aren’t defined by what they lack.”

She wants people to see what she saw.

Families.

Traditions.

Knowledge.

Pride.

Resilience.

Warmth.

Generosity.

Human beings who deserve access to quality healthcare not because they should be pitied, but because geography should not determine the value of someone’s health or life.

Serving Alongside, Not Simply Serving

Another lesson came from the people working beside her.

Peruvian healthcare workers, interpreters, community members, Amazon Promise, and fellow volunteers each brought something the others could not.

Local partners made communication possible. They understood the communities, culture, geography, and needs in ways an international volunteer never could.

Behind the clinics were countless people coordinating communities, finding patients, moving supplies, navigating rivers, and making it possible for the medical teams to work safely and effectively.

Ashley learned that meaningful humanitarian work isn’t about arriving with all the answers.

It’s about partnership.

“Providing good care was never about one person having all the answers. It was about everyone working together.”

People who arrived as strangers became teammates.

And teammates became something closer to family.

Lessons She Brought Back to Canada

Returning home after her first mission wasn’t entirely easy.

Ashley found herself frustrated by what sometimes felt like entitlement within a healthcare system that has resources many Amazon communities could scarcely imagine.

The second trip helped her process that tension differently.

Instead of comparing patients, she began focusing more intentionally on the human being in front of her.

Canadian healthcare can move at blistering speed. There are charts to complete, medications to administer, vital signs to check, tasks to finish, and another patient waiting.

The Amazon reminded her that amid all of it, a person still wants to feel seen.

“We can always do something to make someone feel safer, more comfortable, more dignified, more respected, or less alone.”

That lesson followed her back into the Emergency Department.

Life Beyond the Clinic

Some of Ashley’s favorite memories have nothing to do with medicine.

Playing sports with children.

Singing and dancing with community members.

Learning the language.

Walking through villages and simply saying hello.

Sharing snacks with teammates after exhausting days.

And then there were the boats.

Traveling down the Amazon River to places most people will never see became part of the adventure itself.

At one point, Ashley and the team even jumped into the Amazon River together.

Those moments mattered.

“Mostly just being with the team is what stays close to my heart. There was a real sense of camaraderie that I’ll never forget.”

They were reminders that an Ed-Venture isn’t composed only of the dramatic moments.

It’s also built from laughter, exhaustion, friendship, curiosity, discomfort, shared meals, long boat rides, and hundreds of tiny interactions that somehow become unforgettable.

Why This Work Matters

After participating in medical missions to the Amazon in two consecutive years, Ashley’s belief in the work has only grown stronger.

Her reason is straightforward:

Access to healthcare shouldn’t depend on where someone happens to be born.

Medical outreach can identify illness, provide treatment, offer education, relieve suffering, and help connect patients to continued care.

But Ashley believes the work must also respect and strengthen what remains after visiting teams leave.

And for her, the motivation has become personal.

“Once you’ve looked someone in the eyes, heard their story, cared for their family, and experienced the gratitude they have for something so simple, it’s very difficult not to care.”

She Went to Give. She Came Home Changed.

Perhaps Ashley’s most important realization is also one that sits at the heart of Ed-Ventures in Missions.

Service doesn’t have to move in only one direction.

Ashley brought medical training, emergency experience, medications, supplies, time, and a willingness to serve.

But the communities of the Amazon gave something back.

They taught her about resilience.

They deepened her gratitude.

They challenged her understanding of healthcare.

They reminded her of the kind of nurse she wants to be.

They showed her that compassion does not always require a cure.

And they gave her relationships she wanted to return to.

“I came home from both trips feeling like I had received far more than I gave.”

Why Ashley Came Back

Ask Ashley whether she would return to the Amazon again and her answer is immediate:

Without hesitation.

Her advice to another nurse or healthcare professional considering an Ed-Venture is equally simple:

Do it.

You don’t have to know everything.

You have to be willing to learn.

To adapt.

To work as a team.

To be uncomfortable.

To listen.

And to arrive with an open heart.

“You will probably be surprised by how much you’re capable of when you step outside of your comfort zone,” Ashley says. “And I promise you, the experience will stay with you long after you’ve come home.”

But perhaps the best explanation for why Ashley chose to return belongs to Ashley herself:

“I came back to the Amazon because the people I met the first time never left me.”

And after two journeys into the Amazon, she carries something else home with her:

“The Amazon has reminded me why I became a nurse, changed the way I see the world, and given me people and moments that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”