Just over a month ago one of my worst fears was realized when I started having some tooth pain…“Oh, no! I need dental work in Guatemala.” After several trips to a local dentist I ended up getting one large filling, two root canals and yesterday finally received my two crowns.

As you can imagine, getting first rate dental care in a third world country is no small feat. But, as it turns out, I was in really good hands and the only thing that hurts now is the bill.

As the hours in the dentist chair passed I tried not to think of my pain so several images ran through my head:

I thought of Anna. A while back Anna was between jobs as a housekeeper/nanny, so we hired her to clean our house. At about the same time my teeth started hurting, Anna came down with such great tooth pain she could not come to work. She ended up needing two teeth extracted and was not able to work for at least a month.

The Turnquist Family

Here is a woman who has been living pretty much hand to mouth for her entire life and now could not work simply because she could not afford quality dental care before the problem got too big.

I thought of a little eight year old boy, Victor, who has been a great playmate for Lilly and Robbie the past couple months. Victor is living with his new Mom, Lisa, in Antigua while the paperwork on his adoption is complete. Last week he needed a very painful extraction. He had not been to a dentist before and I can only imagine his “excitement” to visit the dentist from now on.

I thought of those who are less fortunate than me, Anna or Victor. Those who live with chronic tooth pain – until all of their teeth fall out. I would guess a large portion of the people in this area – outside of Antigua – fall into that category. Do they miss work due to tooth pain?

So today with my new teeth comfortably in my face I think of those things again. And I wince for them – even though my pain seems like a distant memory. I don’t think I will ever think of the pain of the dentist drill the same.

Tim and Leanne are from Minnetonka, MN. They first heard about Common Hope five years ago when they had an opportunity to visit our Antigua site for a day. Upon returning home, Leanne started doing volunteer work in the St. Paul office and about a year later, Tim started working full time in the St. Paul office as Manager of Information Technology.

In October of 2004, Tim and Leanne made the decision to move their family (they have two young children-Robbie and Lilly) to Guatemala and work for Common Hope as long term volunteers. Tim is working on a computer program called “Cosas” – an inventory control system to help us track supplies. Leanne is working in Hospitality during the mornings while the kids are in school and spending afternoons being wowed by the amounts of Spanish the kids are picking up! They will return to MN in June 2006.

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