Friday, October 26, 2012

Assisting a dentist and other adventures!

This has been an unexpected week! 
We were given the opportunity to work with a dentist, extracting and cleaning our kids teeth this week! 
We jumped on the opportunity to help, in whatever capacity it was! 
It turns out that I love being in the action (I kinda sorta knew this already) and loved it! 
It was hard, of course. 
You cant explain to a child with special needs why you are pinning them down, and shoving needles into their mouths! 
Then, the feeling of numb. How do you explain that? 
Well, you don't. You hug and cuddle and distract. You pray for peace and calm. 
Then you hope they don't hate you.  
But ultimately, no matter how much there was screaming or fear, it was for the good. 
Many of the children had teeth that were completely rotted out. The pain must have been awful! We were so grateful to have Dr John volunteer to come and do this service! We managed to check all 105 kids, along with some of the ayahs too! 
We pulled around 150 teeth, if not more. 
I feel pretty confident that, if needed, I would be able to numb and pull teeth! 
It was a great learning experience for me, as Dr John was so willing to answer my many questions! 

Look, we made it into the newspaper!


This was "my chair", where we saw over 60 kids! 


One of our precious boys! 


This little man was SO brave. He had to sit and wait for the Dr, while the other girl screamed bloody murder. He was terrified by the time the Dr got to him, but he surprised us with his strength! I am so proud of him! 


Dr John



Because we were able to get through all 105 kids in 2 days (we didn't expect it to go that quickly!) we got some of the kids from a close-by village to come in. We pulled some teeth, handed out toothbrushes, toothpaste and stickers, and got to enjoy these new faces! 



THESE faces, however, were not so happy to see us! One of the girls before them was quite vocal, and these 3 just sat there and clung to each other. This picture is a perfect example of their terrified, but adorable faces. Don't worry, none of them had any dental work done, they were all healthy! 


Me with one of our interns, Dr Olive, and a girl that was here for only 10 days. 

And some pictures from our week! This is a picture of the temple across the street. There was a festival going for 7 days. Each evening, around 5:30pm, music would start up. It mostly sounded like pipe organ, saxophone and chanting, all mixed, poorly and without beat, together. Oh and it was all done into the loudspeaker. Needless to say, we had a tough time sleeping! 


Typical in India. Piles of sandals. I always wonder how them find their again! 


This kid is so cute! He is such a little man, asleep on the couch with the remote control close by!

The Covenant Church. Our main office. 


She's herding buffalo!


The local butchers. I really REALLY wish I was joking. But Im not. Can you see the chickens on the right, in the wooden thing? And that stump with the knife? You pick the bird, then watch it be made into dinner!


Our version of Mill Lake. 

And there you go, a glimpse into our life here! We are so excited to start Ability Camp up next week again. We have missed our children SO much!! 

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