Africa Mercy International Film Festival Movie

It's finally here! The movie you've all been waiting for is uploaded to this blog and can be viewed by anyone with access to youtube. So enjoy An Ordinary Day at the Dental Clinic and join the Mercy Ships dental team for a few minutes from the comfort of wherever you happen to be watching... Click here to watch the movie!

Madagascar Mercy Ships Moment #9 - Just an ordinary day in the dental clinic

So life on a hospital ship in Madagascar is never boring...Living very closely with a community of about 400 volunteers aboard a relatively small ship has its share of challenges, but the benefits far out weigh them all. This weekend was a great example with the much awaited annual Africa Mercy International Film Festival! Any and all crew members can put together a short movie on the subject of their choice and submit the film to be judged by a panel of "experts" on the ship from around the world. The premiere viewing of the films is a well attended formal event for all those living on the ship complete with an after party of hors d'oeuvres and mocktails (aka non-alcoholic drinks). Ok, I'll be the first to admit that we do get a little desperate for entertainment here on the ship, especially with an early 9 pm curfew when everyone must be on the ship even during the weekends. But the film festival is lots of fun and this year my friend Karen and I filmed a production called "Just an Ordinary Day" to give people a glimpse of life on the dental team. So if you're interested, check out a link to the movie hopefully coming soon. Acting is credited to the amazing dental crew, and the technical aspect of putting the film together was outsourced to the USA where my brother Jay stayed up late to get the movie finished before a tight deadline. Enjoy!

In Madagascar with Mercy Ships - warning: shots and lemur photos

So just in case anyone is wondering where I am right now, the answer is Madagascar, an island off the east coast of Africa and famous for LEMURS! I'm actually writing this update as I'm riding in a small boat on a 3 hour river trip returning from a lemur reserve. However, the purpose of my time in Madagascar is not only for the lemurs (as incredibly cute and amazing as they actually are) but to volunteer on the Mercy Ships dental team again for the next 2 months or so. My friend Karen and I arrived Sunday the 15th in the port town of Tamatave, Madagascar where the ship is presently docked and have already put in almost 2 weeks of work at the dental clinic with a team of familiar faces and new friends. I worked as a dental assistant the first week with Toni, a children's dental care provider from Australia, who also worked with me on same team in Congo last year. Toni, our Malagasy translators Arlin and Jacquiot, and I make up the pediatric specialty of the dental clinic. We treat all the kids much to our delight and others relief, with usually only a few screamers a day. Stickers, stuffed animals, and balloons help to make the dental treatment a little more tolerable, although we've found Malagasy teeth to usually be in very bad condition. Most of the kids need multiple extractions and many fillings for baby and permanent teeth. One little toddler even came in pain from all of her upper front teeth being completely rotted into the gums. It's heartbreaking to see so much neglect and decay especially in the mouths of children. But, we're all happy to help save what teeth we can, remove the the teeth that can't be saved, and hopefully teach some good oral hygiene habits at the same time. After running out of pediatric patients for the day, my new job becomes giving local anesthesia to adults or the dreaded "novacaine" shots and extracting a few teeth, after the patient is numb of course. For my second week of work I'm filling in for a dental hygienist who couldn't come at the last minute, so there has been lots of variety in the dental clinic so far. I'm definitely looking forward to what the next few weeks on the ship brings and to seeing some more lemurs this weekend!  

 

    The dental pediatric pro team

Madagascar Mercy Moment #10 - Dentist jokes

One of my favorite friends on the ship is Saulo a nice dentist from Peru... who happens to be sitting here right now helping me update my blog. He tells the original story about a particular dentist who didn't have any patients at all. This dentist was desperate for dental patients so he put this sign on his door:
Extractions - 10,000 ariarys (local money) without pain
                      20,000 ariarys with pain
A man with a tooth ache happened to be walking by, saw this sign, and decided to enter the dentist office. The dentist greets the man, takes him to the dental chair and says sit down please. "Which option do you want? The extraction with or without pain?" The patient responds - "Without pain of course! 10,000 aryarys right?" So the dentist starts extracting the bad tooth when the patient screams in pain. The dentist responds with - "If you keep screaming, I will have to charge you 20,000 aryarys." The end :)

L-R: Saulo, Julie, Celeste - SOME people like to work!

NEW Madagascar mini series

10 Madagascar Mercy Ships Moments is being launched today to share some of the daily happenings here on a hospital ship docked in the unique port town of Tamatave, Madagascar. Limited free time, technology, and internet connection may hinder the success of the series...but let's see how it goes :)

INDIA!

This update is overdue for several reasons, Internet access was hard to come by in most of the places where we stayed in India and now that I've been out of India for about 1 1/2 weeks and already busy with Mercy Ships in Madagascar a report on both places is definitely needed.

My time in India was incredible! We experienced God at work though out the entire trip and as a mission team we met many amazing people and saw the tremendous beauty of rural India. The month spent traveling around India was divided between about 4 different locations and I'll try to give a few highlights from each place.

Team India 2015!

The mission team met in the Hyderabad, India airport and included 10 people from across the USA associated with my Karen's church and their Foreign Mission group. From there we flew to Rajahmundry where we stayed with a medical doctor and his family while helping with medical clinics/camps offering free basic medical screening and medications. My main job was blood sugar testing and no one was very excited to get their finger stuck with a needle so I got a reaction similar to providing dental care :) Evening services were held after the medical part and many village people attended staying late into the night. Unfortunately about half of our team got sick, but thankfully it was during the part of the trip when we were staying with a doctor and he was able to fix us up again with lots of pills and shots. Mine was a bad chest cold with a deep cough and 4 shots of antibiotics helped get me better rather quickly. The whole team was able to have much more compassion on the sick patients who were receiving medications during the camps as we could all relate to needing those same things to feel better in India.

The next location was a children's home in a small village where we stayed and also did medical/dental clinics, training for the local pastors, street meetings and just playing with the almost 50 school kids living there. The children were super sweet and captured the hearts of the whole team, trying to get out of their homework in the evenings by having us come over and "help" them then just playing games and taking pictures...I'm definitely guilty of being a distraction to lots of the kids!

The third destination was a town not too far away where the services started before we even arrived and the local pastor kept us busy the entire time, even squeezing in a program for a tribal mountain area about a 4 hour bus ride away which turned out to be quite the adventure. My brother Jay also celebrated his 25th birthday there and we learned the tradition in India of feeding cake to the lucky birthday person...of course as Americans we had to take things one step further with Jay having more cake on his face than in his mouth and ending with a full out cake fight. Annie, our nice little Indian hostess put together a great surprise for Jay and was probably even more surprised at the mess we all made.

India part four happened after Jay, Karen and I said goodbye to the rest of the team in Hyderabad again and set out on our own for a few days of sight seeing. Rural south east India where we had been ministering was so beautiful but the northern areas around Delhi, Agra and Jaipur were also gorgeous in their own way. The highlights to this part of the trip was the train ride in a 3 bunk sleeper car, the Taj Mahal of course, unofficial tour of the forgotten city with a local guide, riding an elephant into the Amber fort in Jaipur, the many eating and shopping experiences along the way, and finally WARM WATER for showers at the last hotel. After weeks of cold bucket showers, hot showers (and toilet paper) had to make the highlights list.

Where in the world is NEXT?





Hello and back again! I know around the same time last year I started posting about Mercy Ships Congo and really appreciate the following and great responses to the pictures and stories from that amazing experience this spring with my brother Jay. In case you're wondering what's happened since then, I was home in Ohio for the summer working as a dental hygienist and recently moved to the Washington DC area, also for work at a pediatric dental practice. Recently however, one of my good friends from the Congo dental team, Karen, invited Jay and me to join her church group on a mission trip to India for several weeks in January. We will be doing medical/dental treatment and also assisting with pastor training in 3 different locations around central India. I've very excited about this opportunity because serving God in India has always been a dream of mine and working with Karen and Jay again will be an extra special bonus to be sure.


Jay, Karen, and Julie adventuring together in Congo... and on to India next month!