This is Heidi and Sister Sue Johns working in the sterilization room.  This week, Heidi has been helping out sterilizing the instruments between each of the patients.  Next week, she will be helping assist in the clinic.  Sister Johns is the full time missionary assigned with her husband (Elder Steve Johns) in the clinic for about two years.  They are the ones that run the clinic and have been an amazing help to us and great mentors.  Working in this kind of clinic as really different and you have to work very differently than what we're used to.   You do what you can with what you have.  It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.  The Tongan people are very grateful for anything that we can do for them.  

Patient of the Day --

 This is a patient that had #24 (tooth in front) that was very mobile, there was no bone to support the tooth (Severe Periodontal Disease), and was fractured on the end of the root because of the force from biting.  It was hurting the patient, so I decided to extract the tooth.  The patient did not want to go with a missing tooth, so we did something that we don't do in America.  I extracted the tooth, shaved off part of the root, and put the tooth back in by bonding to the adjacent teeth.  It's not ideal, but it works.  Below, you can see the tooth with the end of the root tip that fractured.  I shaved off about 3mm more of the tooth, and implanted it back into the site.  Ideally, this patient needed some Perio therapy, and some fixed prosthodontics, but we did what we could.

You can see he was a Class III malocclusion (his bite wasn't right).  I had to adjust his bite quite a bit, so it doesn't look ideal, but it will be functional and he was so excited that we could save his tooth.  The reason it was so mobile was the upper tooth was hitting it first all the time.  That's one of the reasons we had to adjust it down.  I'm hoping this will service him for a long time.  He's going to be the next Tongan temple President.  I wish he would come to our clinic in Twin Falls and I could treat it to last for a lifetime.   We do what we can.

Satisfied patient!  Very grateful and happy people.

We are able to wash our clothes, but "Mother Nature" does the drying part.  

Our kids playing with other kids on "Liahona campus".   These kids on the campus are a little more privileged than most Tongan kids.  Most are very poor and don't have a lot.  The kids manage to eat a lot of sugar though.  We see a lot of young kids with a lot of decay.

These kids have come over and befriended our kids.  They have had fun playing together throughout the day.

Our little Tongan princesses!  Little Ella has made a friend.  We have little kids that come over to our apartment and want to play.  The schools are out on break for just this last week.  They go back this next week.  We're hoping the kids can still play and have fun with our kids.