Eventually, however, a little boy from our village was in such obvious pain that I decided to try to pull the tooth for him – and since that successful extraction Lori and I have pulled 4 additional hurting teeth in our village on our own.

Pulling teeth is such a unique experience, because we can see someone go from debilitating pain one moment to relief and peace the next. While caring for emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual health of ourselves and those around us, we rarely get to see such quick and lasting results.

Here are some pictures from our most recent experiences pulling teeth in our village home:

For the past 6 years, Dr. Luce and his staff have been giving of their time and skills to come to Chiang Rai and care for the dental needs of Akha children and Bible Students at Akha Outreach Foundation, as well as the occasional village dental clinic.

Last year Dr. Newman and his family joined the dental team, and the village aspect of the dental ministry began to really take off.

Both dentists have been encouraging us to learn how to anesthetize a patient and perform simple extraction techniques, but we’ve been slow to respond to their urgings (Lori once had a mild fainting spell when watching an oral surgery). Earlier this year, however, Dr. Luce was at a meeting for the Christian Dental Society and saw a presentation training nationals to do rural, village or jungle dentistry and his heart was really stirred to see the young Akha leaders trained in dentistry as well. Dr. Newman, who has also used his skills to minister in Africa, was equally excited by the vision and the two of them prepared a 3-hour training to supplement multiple days of observation, along-side training and hands-on extractions.

The training was a wonderful experience. These young Akha leaders jumped right in to the action, and Lori and I got up the courage to join them. After learning about the root structures of different teeth, safety and cleanliness precautions, and what types of teeth are within our skill set to extract we all practiced administering anesthetic to each other. You know you have a good trusting relationship as husband and wife if you can let each other practice sticking needles into your gums. After the training day, we had a village dental clinic in Doi Chang and we 6 trainees (and our pastor Joe, who couldn’t stomach the shots, but trained as an assistant) treated a majority of the 40 patients we saw that day.

In total, the Dental Team (Bill, Rick, Jana, Lisa and Pam) put up some very impressive numbers in the short week they were here.  In the villages, over 200 teeth were pulled. At House of Joy, 40 wisdom teeth were pulled, 40 fillings were given, 2 tooth repairs were made, 13 additional extractions and 137 cleanings filled their week. In addition, they trained a team of 7 locals to continue dental care for remote villages as we are traveling in and out of them. Pray for M, Nuey, Anm, Adeu, Lori, Paul & Joe Akha as an assistant, that we might have opportunities to continue to minister to the needs of the Akha wherever we might go.

This year will be a whirlwind trip, just one week, but we are all looking forward to their visit. It’s incredibly late, but I’ve gotten a video up from last year’s village clinic.

The video is of a removal of an oral cyst (at least I think it was an oral cyst, Dr. Newman you can correct me in the comments if I’m wrong) from the lip of an Akha teenage girl. It’s a graphic, bloody video, so if you are one of our weak-stomached viewers, here’s a happier video for you.

We are off to the village today with Erick Olsen who is visiting us on his way back to America. We are armed with boxes of medicine to restock our Akha clinic for the onslaught of flu cases we expect to see up there as well.

Despite all our running around during the last two months, we are all in great health but covet your prayers of protection from the flu and for continued recovery from the jetlag that we’re still dealing with from Germany.

Three of the four clinics we did were especially exciting for Paul & I because they were in villages not associated with our organization. As is the case in much of the world, sometimes, here in Thailand, church groups have trouble getting along.Unity among Christians and Christian organizations is one of the areas that Paul and I really have a heart to see improve among the Akha. So, in providing a “no strings attached” clinic, we hope to not only bless the individual receiving the medical care, but to build relationship with village and church leadership which might remind them that the body of Christ can still function even outside of denominational affiliation!

The village they visited was about 20 miles east of the village we live in, so we drove over to help out if we could. We certainly weren’t much help in pulling teeth, but we were able to set up a mobile clinic and treat some minor non-dental ailments. The open-air school room we were in felt like a three-ring circus at times, with everyone in the village either straining to watch in sympathetic agony as the dentist pulled teeth, or curiously crowding around to see the two white people “who speak Akha” give out medicine.

Here are a few pictures of the day, courtesy of Joe Rutledge.