Outreach 1 Completed

WEEK 7

I have been in PNG the last 7 weeks which seems so surreal. A year ago I would have never imagined that I would be here. I love the fact that the people here in PNG are having such a huge impact on my heart. This past week we were in central province for a day and headed back to Port Moresby.

I had a wonderful patient named Anne. She arrived to the dental clinic with her Husband and Daughter. She was very grateful and waited years to be seen. It was quite interesting because her teeth were perfectly fine but she could definitely use a thorough cleaning. She was very excited when she heard she would be able to clean her teeth. During her cleaning, she shared part of her life with me which was great because I'm not used to people being able to speak English.

After her cleaning, the moment came for her to look in the mirror. She was ecstatic, she could not put the mirror down and kept saying, "thank you, thank you." She continued to look in the mirror and run her finger in her mouth which I was unsure why. She proceeded to tell me that it always felt like sand was on her teeth and she was trying to feel if there was anymore "sand." I explained to her that this was the bacteria on her teeth and the importance of removing it. A picture of Anne's family and I:

 

It is moments like this that I really hold onto. I will admit that being in the dental clinic is much different. We have patients come in but due to language barriers, we can't always communicate. So they come in, get work done, then leave. Whereas if I was on land doing community engagement things, I could build relationships and play games, ext. But I know that I am called here as a dental hygienist. So people like Anne, really bless me because I know that she is blessed by services that she has never been able to receive.

On Wednesday, all of our volunteers left which concluded outreach 1. It was definitely a busy 3 weeks. Here is a glimpse of what was done in the lovely dental clinic:
212 patients seen
454 procedures done
212 teeth pulled
115 fillings
101 cleanings
437 toothbrushes handed out
236 toothpastes handed out

It was a life changing time for each one of us in the dental clinic and man did we have such a fun time as a team. I will treasure the many relationships that were made! Here is a video that you can hopefully watch which recaps our outreach: https://www.facebook.com/facebook/videos/10153415714906729/

Here are some other pictures from the outreach (taken by our media team), sorry if the layout is odd:

For the remainder of the week, we had our last week of lectures on the ship. The lecture was on Bible Study. It was definitely very insightful and I look forward to using what I learned for studying! Now we head into Outreach 2 in the Central and Milne Bay Province.

Please keep us in your prayers!!

Some of the fun dental cases that I have worked on: