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Love With Teeth
Putting teeth into love
Medical Relief Intl. shows Christ to poor through free clinic
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTOS
CAINTA, Philippines—Bill Mays leans over his work, refining his piece like a diamond cutter.
Mays isn’t working on gems today, but gums—specifically, partial denture plates to fit over them. Mays’ Ph.D. in religious studies makes him a doctor, but his dental missions experience makes him more of a dentist than most of his clients today would ever see otherwise.
“Have you ever had a toothache that makes your whole body hurt? I’ll bet the streets are full of people like that,” says Roger Akers, senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in this impoverished Metro Manila suburb.
At least Antioch’s front steps are full. The people here are standing in line for a free dental clinic hosted by Antioch and Medical Relief International, a Seattle-based volunteer organization started by Mays three years ago.
During their two days at Antioch, MRI’s team of 23 will pull rotten teeth, fill cavities and create dozens of partial denture plates for almost 150 kids, teenagers and adults.
The clinic fills two floors of Antioch’s three-story office-building-turned-worship-center. Downstairs, the Sunday morning nursery becomes the Monday morning waiting room and triage center. In the next room over, volunteers from Antioch counsel people who have expressed interest in the Gospel (134 people made professions of faith in Jesus during the clinic). A few feet from them, MRI team members Melody Joy Morgan and Chadrose DeGuzman admit patients to be worked on upstairs.
The second floor has the kinetic feel of a beehive and the smell of a nail salon—fumes from the catalyst used to bond epoxy for the partials. Molds are taken of clients’ teeth; then positive plaster models are made from the molds. Mays’ team of volunteers then squirts epoxy powder over the plaster, bonds it and fits the partials with false teeth and wires.
At the partials table, a patient waits in a plastic lawn chair as Mays smooths the rough edges of her plate with a handheld grinding tool. He then tips back her head and firmly presses the partial against the roof of her mouth.
“This is a helpful ministry, especially here in the Philippines,” says Marlon Peregrin, 22, a Filipino member at Antioch who trained under Mays during a one-day seminar on denture fabrication before the clinic opened. “Here in the Philippines, dentures are very expensive.” Marlon estimates that plastic partials like the ones he helped to make would cost about 4,000 pesos ($80 U.S.).
Evelyn Jarlego, 42, brought four of her five children to the first day of the clinic. She makes $44 (U.S.) a week as a domestic helper. For a mother who once had to look her daughter square in her swollen face and tell her that $7 was too much to pay to alleviate her suffering, a free dental clinic on a school day was well worth the trouble.
“When I heard about the free clinic, I told my children to skip school and go with me and do some dental care,” says Evelyn, who had a broken tooth pulled at the clinic eight years after the fact. “My children need dental care. We have no money to go to a dental clinic.”
Evelyn and her friend, Blenda Macugay, make for a case study in relative versus absolute poverty. While Evelyn struggles to pay dental bills, Blenda and her eight children struggle to eat. Her job doing laundry brings in about $18 a week—barely enough for food and clothes and other essentials.
Which is why she and four of her kids grabbed the first spot in line at 6 a.m. for a clinic that started at 8:30. All four, even 7-year-old Maryjane, had teeth pulled. Her 20-year-old daughter, Maryglen, had several extractions and a partial denture plate made for her top front teeth.
“If there was no mission, then Maryglen wouldn’t have gotten her teeth out and her plate,” says Blenda, 54, who was too scared to get any work done for herself. “My children’s teeth wouldn’t have come out, and Maryjane might have had a swollen face. I’m very thankful for a mission like that.
“The dentist was professional and they’re very kind,” she adds. “Dentists here don’t care if it hurts. At this mission, they find a way not to hurt the patient.”
And MRI finds a way to work with local churches. In fact, they won’t travel without a local partner ministry such as Antioch Baptist in place. Mays says that MRI’s real focus is facilitating ministry for local churches. “It helps missionaries to be esteemed more highly if they can get medical professionals to come in,” he says.
“We like coming alongside organizations,” says MRI President Mike Karr, a Seattle-area dentist who has been doing dental missions for 20 years. “Cultural Christians do the witnessing. We just show the love of Christ by helping them out.”
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Bill Mays helps a young patient with a new partial denture plate during a two-day free dental clinic in Metro Manila.
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CAINTA, Philippines—Bill Mays leans over his work, refining his piece like a diamond cutter.
Mays isn’t working on gems today, but gums—specifically, partial denture plates to fit over them. Mays’ Ph.D. in religious studies makes him a doctor, but his dental missions experience makes him more of a dentist than most of his clients today would ever see otherwise.
“Have you ever had a toothache that makes your whole body hurt? I’ll bet the streets are full of people like that,” says Roger Akers, senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in this impoverished Metro Manila suburb.
At least Antioch’s front steps are full. The people here are standing in line for a free dental clinic hosted by Antioch and Medical Relief International, a Seattle-based volunteer organization started by Mays three years ago.
During their two days at Antioch, MRI’s team of 23 will pull rotten teeth, fill cavities and create dozens of partial denture plates for almost 150 kids, teenagers and adults.
The clinic fills two floors of Antioch’s three-story office-building-turned-worship-center. Downstairs, the Sunday morning nursery becomes the Monday morning waiting room and triage center. In the next room over, volunteers from Antioch counsel people who have expressed interest in the Gospel (134 people made professions of faith in Jesus during the clinic). A few feet from them, MRI team members Melody Joy Morgan and Chadrose DeGuzman admit patients to be worked on upstairs.
The second floor has the kinetic feel of a beehive and the smell of a nail salon—fumes from the catalyst used to bond epoxy for the partials. Molds are taken of clients’ teeth; then positive plaster models are made from the molds. Mays’ team of volunteers then squirts epoxy powder over the plaster, bonds it and fits the partials with false teeth and wires.
At the partials table, a patient waits in a plastic lawn chair as Mays smooths the rough edges of her plate with a handheld grinding tool. He then tips back her head and firmly presses the partial against the roof of her mouth.
“This is a helpful ministry, especially here in the Philippines,” says Marlon Peregrin, 22, a Filipino member at Antioch who trained under Mays during a one-day seminar on denture fabrication before the clinic opened. “Here in the Philippines, dentures are very expensive.” Marlon estimates that plastic partials like the ones he helped to make would cost about 4,000 pesos ($80 U.S.).
Evelyn Jarlego, 42, brought four of her five children to the first day of the clinic. She makes $44 (U.S.) a week as a domestic helper. For a mother who once had to look her daughter square in her swollen face and tell her that $7 was too much to pay to alleviate her suffering, a free dental clinic on a school day was well worth the trouble.
“When I heard about the free clinic, I told my children to skip school and go with me and do some dental care,” says Evelyn, who had a broken tooth pulled at the clinic eight years after the fact. “My children need dental care. We have no money to go to a dental clinic.”
Evelyn and her friend, Blenda Macugay, make for a case study in relative versus absolute poverty. While Evelyn struggles to pay dental bills, Blenda and her eight children struggle to eat. Her job doing laundry brings in about $18 a week—barely enough for food and clothes and other essentials.
Which is why she and four of her kids grabbed the first spot in line at 6 a.m. for a clinic that started at 8:30. All four, even 7-year-old Maryjane, had teeth pulled. Her 20-year-old daughter, Maryglen, had several extractions and a partial denture plate made for her top front teeth.
“If there was no mission, then Maryglen wouldn’t have gotten her teeth out and her plate,” says Blenda, 54, who was too scared to get any work done for herself. “My children’s teeth wouldn’t have come out, and Maryjane might have had a swollen face. I’m very thankful for a mission like that.
“The dentist was professional and they’re very kind,” she adds. “Dentists here don’t care if it hurts. At this mission, they find a way not to hurt the patient.”
And MRI finds a way to work with local churches. In fact, they won’t travel without a local partner ministry such as Antioch Baptist in place. Mays says that MRI’s real focus is facilitating ministry for local churches. “It helps missionaries to be esteemed more highly if they can get medical professionals to come in,” he says.
“We like coming alongside organizations,” says MRI President Mike Karr, a Seattle-area dentist who has been doing dental missions for 20 years. “Cultural Christians do the witnessing. We just show the love of Christ by helping them out.”
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.