oh my gosh, it was HOT!

Oh man, it was hot there in Southern India! Here the children are fanning me with their "Go Fish" cards. They were so sweet to take care of me, their "Auntie!"

in the dental clinic

I'm sorry it is taking me so long to get posts up. Blogger has been giving me fits lately!

Here is a peek into our first day in the clinic.....

Wendy Sweely donated many of our supplies. Thank you Wendy!!

We named our supply closet after her!

Lance painting fluoride on Krishnamoorthy's teeth.

Joseph Stalin opens wide!

A CTR ring on this sweet girl (Choose the Right).

Dr. Scott and his little patient.

Joseph Stalin and me. Yes, that really is his name! And his brother's name is John Kennedy!

Dr. Steve and Dr. John doing their magic.

Raegan and D. Aron. He'd had a bit of a run-in with a wall at some point and severely chipped his two front teeth. Dr. John rebuilt the teeth and gave him a whole new smile. He was so happy, and so were we!

Dr. John and his pleased patient Shankar.

Buelah was such a good patient. I was so impressed with the bravery of all these children. Most of them had never, ever seen a dentist before. I'm sure it was frightening, and many came in quite a bit apprehensive, but they did so well!

Lance the dental assistant. There's nothing like on-the-job training with dad!

Sweet little Karthik waits patiently for his turn in the dental chair.

Sujatha. She looks like she is in pain, but she was only pulling a face because she really didn't know how to react to such strange things put in her mouth!

There are 3 watch dogs at RSO and they were not too fond of us strangers. They especially seemed to like to bark a lot at Dr. Scott ;) Here Scott watches his back as he walks to the dental clinic.

Brooke giving Gracie a fluoride treatment.

Whew, that wasn't nearly as bad as Priya had feared it might be!

Jordan entertains little Karthik while he waits to have his teeth checked. The boys especially seemed eager to get in the dentist's chair. At times there would be several boys lined up outside this door just waiting for their name to be called!

Raegan and Dr. Steve.

video of kids singing david's song!

Here is our video from Rising Star Outreach. It is a big thanks to David Archuleta and his fans for contributing so much to our dental efforts. Because of David and his fans, we were able to purchase all of our portable dental equipment. We left it there at RSO so that hopefully in the future other dentists will take the amazing opportunity to go to Rising Star and continue to help the children.

While we were there last week we taught the children David's song "Somebody Out There." The song seemed so appropriate for what David has done to help the children. It's their way of saying THANKS for their new beautiful smiles :) Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILEwfkFTlQ4

RSO, here we come!

Ready to go and waiting for our flight - it would take close to 30 hours from the time we took off until we landed in Chennai, India.

Sleeping on the looong flight.

When we arrived in Chennai, every single passenger had to have their temperature taken.

They were checking for Swine Flu. Here Dr. Scott gets his checked.

Next is Sophie! (It's a good thing they wiped off that ear checker thing with a dry piece of cotton in between each passenger! Welcome to India!)

All of our loot that we brought with us. A good portion of it was dental equipment (purchased with the money raised by David Archuleta and his fans!).

Our flight got in around midnight so instead of taking the long drive to RSO that night we stayed in a hotel in Chennai. When we woke up I looked out our hotel window and this is what I saw. Our very first look at India in the daylight. I wondered on which planet we had landed.


Before taking off to RSO we took some rick-shaw rides to church in Chennai. Holy COW! That was an experience! There are no traffic laws in India (they say there are but NO ONE follows them and no one cares that no one follows them!). Apparently stop lights and stop signs are only a suggestion, not mandatory. The best way I can describe our experience on the rick-shaws is this: think of the video game "Frogger" except with real cars and trucks. We were the frog. I honestly can't believe we didn't die.

Outside of the church. What a great experience we had there.

(Ya gotta love our shiny skin. Yes, it was HOT and HUMID! This is southern India in July, people!)

On the bus and on our way (finally) to Rising Star Outreach!

A cow in the road. The first of many, MANY livestock we would encounter in the roads - cows, pigs, elephants, camels, goats, etc, etc. (Not to mention children running around in the traffic knocking on our windows begging for food and money.)

I am inside the RSO bus taking a picture out of the window. We often saw truck loads carrying people, usually women, in the back. These beautiful Indian women were pretty happy to have our attention!

We are finally here!! It's hard to believe after all this time we are finally at Rising Star Outreach with the children! They were so happy to see our bus pull up. They ran out to greet us. I cried.

These sweet little girls quickly made some "diamond rings" out of palm leaves to welcome us. Here they are putting the rings on our fingers.

In front of the school - Perry School for Rising Stars.

This is one of the three water wells at RSO. This one was running out of water so they were digging it deeper (with the help of some dynamite!). You can see the hose and pump that go down into it.

Our dental team (plus a few of the children) in front of the girl's hostel. The boy's hostel is next door. The children live here and go to school just a 2 minute walk down the road.

Me in the village just outside the RSO property. I was so excited when we drove by this sign for the first time. I couldn't believe we were actually here. Yes, I cried of course!

We set up our dental clinic in a storage room in the boy's hostel. Lance made this awesome sign to welcome the kids! (It says "We cater to cowards,"We accept most insurances," "Free bleaching for life." I don't think the kids really appreciated/understood the humor!)

We are all set up and ready to see our first patients in the morning!

packing it up

It's packing time. How do we fit all this dental equipment into our suitcases?! It's a little tricky. Luckily we have my 8 and 4-year-old boys to help put the puzzle together!

Lots and lots of flouride for those little Indian children's teeth. I wonder if they even know what this is?

Bibs to protect their clothing.

Checking out the portable hand-pieces before packing them up.

My boys at work - packing up tubes of toothpaste, cotton rolls, dental bibs, etc. This is only a fraction of what we are taking to set up the dental clinic at Rising Star Outreach. Dr's McGavin and Aste have their share as well! Thanks to so many generous people - David Archuleta's fans, Wendy S., and everyone else (you know who you are!). We have everything we need! Armed with this equipment, we hope to be able to serve each and every child at Rising Star Outreach!

countdown....

The time is almost here. It seems like our trip to India has been so far in the future for so long! And now it's becoming a reality.

Crunch time. Trying to make sure we have everything we need - portable dental equipment, passports and Visas, immunizations, bug spray, anti-Malaria and Typhoid meds, but most importantly, a lot of love to share with these precious children of Rising Star Outreach.

It will be a life-changing experience. I can't wait.