Home from Guatemala

We arrived home from Guatemala tonight. We feel very blessed to have had the Lord's protection while on this trip, as well as many small miracles in providing dental work for our Lamanite brothers and sisters in the Gospel. This is a picture of our typical work station. We brought all the equipment with us, including portable chairs made by Eagle Scouts, portable dental units, compressors, generators, and all the disinfecting supplies and dental instruments. There were 8 dentists and 8 assistants, as well as one handy-man/translator. We survived crazy drivers, fleas, wild dogs that roamed in and out of our clinics (Mom's job one day was to chase them off, in between chairside assisting)standing in dog poo all day and not even minding it, and cold showers. We saw machete bearing men and children coming and going to work in the fields each day. One of our team members bought one from a local farmer on the last day for just $10.00. They were both quite happy about that transaction. We took Pepto Bismal every morning and night in an effort to stay well. We avoided the local water like the plague, and never even brushed our teeth with it. (Note the water bottle with a red X on it in the photo--this was local water than we used only for locals, not us gringos). We visited the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras. We visited Antigua on the last day, and it was a welcome relief from the poverty we saw on a daily basis. Dad did about 300 extractions and possibly 20 restorations (i.e fillings). The total group served some 650 people in our 6 days of work.