Oct 10, 2018 Dental clinics in Colombia

Recently, I spoke with Dr. Lee, a dentist who was on our mission team to Duitama, Colombia. Here is a short interview about his experience!

Was this your first time in Colombia and what was your first impression?

Yes, this was my first time going to Colombia. I found that the people are very nice! They’re friendly, cordial and very helpful.

How was your experience working in the dental clinic?

It was very exciting to work in the clinic. We didn’t have enough manpower and we needed more people to help, but we made it through with what we had. I’m very grateful for the local help that I hadÑthere was a fellow dentist named Esperanza who helped me every step through the clinic. Her name, translated to English, is Hope, which fit her very well!

Esperanza was extremely helpful. Without her, I don’t think I would have been able to do it. She helped with a lot of hands on stuff. She did the anesthesia and I did tooth extractions and we worked very well together. Plus, I was able to show her some of my techniques and she we both really enjoyed that. Thankfully, all of the extractions went smoothly and we didn’t have any complications.

How many people did you guys see in the clinic?

We lost count of the number of people we were doing extractions on! It was a lot. Because of the time constraint and lack of helpers, we just got to work and continued without stopping. Eventually, our registration team finally stopped registering people because we had to get to the church for the meeting.

Speak of the meetings, how did they go?

We had a very small team and during the week, one of the team members had to go home because he had to be back in time to start school. So, I ended up doing both the health talk in the adult meeting and helping lead the children’s program.

I was running around like a chicken without a head and I had to run up and down the stairs to get back and forth to both meetings! But it went well and Pastor Roy did an excellent job speaking.

Emily Weber
QHM Marketing