This is the West Coast of Tonga where the "blow holes" are.  Tonga is built upon coral, so there are lots of these coral reefs where the ocean comes and crashes against these coral reefs.  The pressure has created holes in the reefs where the waves come in, goes into the coral and shoots up about 30-40 feet in the air.  It looks like the geysers in Yellowstone.  Pretty incredible!  We went there after church yesterday.  It is so beautiful here!  It really is the "other side of heaven".

Patient of the Day - This beautiful woman just wanted to be able to smile.  She wanted to keep the gold inlay on #7 because it is a status symbol, but I told her there was decay underneath and we needed to fix that as well.  The agreed to have the front teeth fixed.  She was very happy afterward.  Here are some before and after photos.

             

    

1st Day in the clinic - 

     Today was our first day actually in the clinic.  We woke up around 6:30 and went for a run.  The boys wanted to sleep in, so I went on a run with Makayla and Maddison.  The morning was perfect.  We started working at 8:30 AM and got done around 7:30.  We let the kids have about 40 minutes for a lunch break.  We had Logan help assist me in the morning and Makayla help assist in the afternoon.  Maddison helped sterilize the instruments and change over the operators in the morning and Heidi and Braden helped in the afternoon.  Whoever is not helping out in the clinic is helping with Ella and helping clean the apartments, and playing with neighbors.  Maddison this afternoon made some new friends and helped them paint their toenails.  :)   Probably the first time they every had that done.

     The clinic is pretty well equipped with the basics, but it is still very basic.  We do a lot of fillings, extractions, root canals, pediatric dentistry, and some removable.  We do what we can.  Today was a long day for the whole family, but we helped out a lot of people.  We got the kids to bed around 10:30.  We'll see how they do tomorrow.  :)

     Story of the day - We were doing a root canal on a patient today and all of a sudden the suction went off.  We went into the room where the compressor was and saw the the plug was smoking.  I tried to turn the power off to it and as I tried to do that, it sparked.  The cord started melting.  I wasn't sure what to do.  I didn't want to get electrocuted, but I had to do something so we didn't have a fire on our hands.  I pulled the plug out of the wall and the prongs stayed, but the cord came out because it melted off.  It started on fire and I quickly put that out.  To make matters worse, it was leaking a lot of water and there was about 1/2 an inch of standing water on the floor of the room.  Talk about a deadly trap.  Someone was looking out for me.  I shut off the power, water, and got someone from the technical facilities to try to come help us.  They didn't know much about it and seemed like it's going to be a while before we can get it fixed.  We don't have access to really anybody that knows how to quickly fix mechanical or electrical issues.  It makes me thankful for the good equipment and guys who service our equipment.  It was a successful day because no-one got hurt and we still were able to service patients.

      We went to bed around 10:30 and as we were getting the kids to bed, we found and exterminated 4 cockroaches.  HA!  It was a good productive day in Tonga!  Good night!  Love ya!