November 5-14 we took part in another trip to Central America. We went to Guatemala, principally in Quetzaltenango. Here are some photos of some of our experiences there doing dentistry and also some humanitarian projects.
In the above photo you can see me in action here with my assistant Joe Horst. He is a pre dental student and did a tremendous job assisting. He was great getting instruments to sterilization and never seemed to tire.
Steve and Matt were the incredible guys who were on top of things in the sterilization area with the autoclaves. They got the instruments back to us and there were few if any mixups that I was aware of
Each day a small group of the providers and the rest of the staff were able to go out and do some kind of humanitarian experience. Some went to some homes of selected families and left them gifts, food and things like that to help lighten their troubles a bit.
Here our friend Kristie Rogers is giving this family a beautiful quilt. Kristin was incredible with the rest of our humanitarian team organizing and distributing a lot of things. We had over 100 duffle bags that weighed about 50 lbs each full of stuff.
A lot of homes are quite rustic like this one.
Our humanitarian experience was at an orphanage. Here I am with a bunch of kids showing them pictures of my grandchildren.
The children are so precious and beautiful.
On this visit this young woman was given a violin. She has evidently shown incredible interest in music and word somehow got to our group that this would be an incredibly wonderful gift.
I wanted to bring these two home with me.
Here is my wife playing jump the rope games with some of the children at the orphanage.
This is a photo of Joyce back at the clinic area as she is assisting one of the oral surgeons. All of our anesthesia was local anesthetic. We had to be careful on how much we could give because they are smaller in stature and we had to take care we did not give too much over a period of time.
This is the board that kept track of where we were at as far as patients to see. Each time a young patient was seated a yellow sticky with the number was put on the board. At this time it is probably close to 8pm in the evening.
One humanitarian excursion was to a Newborn Infant center in one of the hospitals. Here New Born packets were given out that had some much needed supplies for the new baby and mother.
These towns in the mountains are laid out a lot differently than the streets in the Salt Lake Valley are.
When you visit homes and see these kinds of situations it is suddenly easy to appreciate the circumstances of life that we have.
Here is a visit to another orphanage and they are going after a piñata.
These young people that we took care of were wonderful throughout the clinic time we had. This young woman not only was beautiful but we was so appreciative of the little bit of dentistry we did for her.
This young man touched me immensely. After we finished, he jumped up out of the chair and just hugged me and expressed how appreciative he was.
Here is Joyce with our friend Nancy Ochoa. She currently is living in the Guatemala City area. This picture is in La Antigua and it is a shopping day, the last day of our trip. We were able to acquire some gifts and souvenirs. Originally we had planned to play some golf at a course nearby named La Reunion, but the Volcano Fuego erupted and threw some ash around and the course was closed. Why I have no idea. It is not that tough to golf through some volcanic ash and stuff.
No, I do not do these kinds of veneers on the front four teeth. She seemed to like them though.
It is pretty hard not to appreciate a face like this. All in all we had a wonderful experience in Guatemala. We worked hard, traveled hard and gave everything we could. We have wonderful friends, we made some new friends that we cherish. This is a perfect way I think to express my thanks at this Thanksgiving time.
