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Howard Speaks: I Went to Mexico and All I Got Was This Incredible Experience Howard Farran, DDS, MAGD, MBA, DICOI; Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

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– by Howard Farran, DDS, MAGD, MBA, Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

About 20 years ago, I was invited to give a lecture in Lafayette, Louisiana, by one of the world's greatest dental implantologists, Dr. Jerome Smith. When I arrived Jerome began telling me about the missionary dental clinic he'd set up with Dr. Carl Breaux and the Rev. Larry Myers of Mexico Ministries in Atoyac de Alvarez, Guererro, Mexico. It wasn't really a clinic, seeing as they didn't have a proper facility, and at the time they were only set up for extractions. Jerome asked me if I'd consider going on the next trip with him. I figured it was worth the experience, so I left my brand new family, practice and the United States and shot down to Mexico.

Now, I'm not the most religious guy in the world, but going on this trip with Jerome and his crew was one of the very few spiritual experiences I'd ever had in my life. Like you probably are now, I was carrying a lot of weight on my shoulders between the stress of home and raising a family, to the stress of the dental practice and managing a staff and patients. I was trying to learn endo, perio, pedo and prostho. I had so much on my mind then, but when I arrived in Atoyac de Alvarez, and I started working on people who had no electricity, sewage or running water, everything I was worried about back home melted away. It was one of the most relaxing environments I'd ever been in. The poverty these people lived in was hard to imagine, yet everyone there had a smile on their faces. There were no phones or fax machines or freeways. Nobody was late for work, nobody was worrying about how much they owed on their Visa card. Nobody was stressed out – aside from the fact that they needed medical care. They were the happiest most thankful people I'd ever seen in my life. I bumped my head one time and 20 kids laughed about it for 10 minutes straight. It was so cool.

I came back from that trip more energized and excited and ready to work than if I'd gone on a two-week cruise in the Bahamas. I'm serious.

Jerome Smith is very devoted to this mission. He's traveled to this area in Mexico 35 times in the last 20 years and has sunk a lot of his own personal money into giving this severely underserved population medical and dental care. He has attracted a growing list of volunteer physicians, dentists and nurses, along with lay people who have given generously of their time and resources to this "work in progress." Slowly but surely Jerome and his team have laid a foundation, built some brick walls and have brought the people of Atoyac de Alvarez a full-fledged clinic for medical, dental and plastic surgery.



Jerome recently invited me to travel with him to Mexico this year, and this time I brought two of my four sons with me. We made the trek with three dental school instructors and seven dental students from the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health – A.T. Still University. It was so rewarding for me to watch these seven dental students go to work. We treated more than 300 patients on this trip. We would work all day and talk about dentistry until midnight every single day. These students entered into the sacred and sovereign profession of dentistry for all the right reasons – treating their fellow man and doing the right thing every time. They're not out to "make a killing," work two days a week and drive Beemers and Benzes around. We'd talk all night about stuff like composites and the aesthetic/health compromise. My boys got to talking with these dental students and really got turned onto dentistry – for the first time I can remember! I can't think of any other trip I've taken my boys on that had such a positive impact on all of us! I can retire and die in peace after witnessing the next crop of dentists getting ready to enter the profession with such passion and drive to do the right thing. They did such great work on this trip to Mexico. Dentistry is going to be in great hands.

Some time in your careers as dentists, you owe it to yourself to take a trip like this. There are so many reasons for it! Yes, you are serving a needy population of people who are grateful for your help, and that is by far one of the greatest rewards of going on a missionary trip like this. But there are other, more subtle benefits to you.

I grew up Catholic and Catholics are big into marriage retreats. When we were little, once a year, our mom made us go on these weekend retreats with the Catholic church. We'd complain and moan about it for days, but we always returned home better for the experience. It took us out of our routines and opened our eyes to the world around us. That's what this trip to Mexico was like for me and my sons! Guys, you don't realize how much time you are spending on e-mail, texting, reading, working and watching 24- hour news channels until you're taken out of your element. What is great about trips like these is being able to break your routine. When you leave your home, leave your country and go to a village that doesn't have an Internet connection or even a telephone, you begin to realize how weighted down you are.

In that week I talked to my sons more than I talked to them the entire summer – and we all live under the same roof! I work, they work, our social lives rarely intersect, we're all preoccupied with e-mail and texting, someone usually has headphones on and if we're ever in the same room, one is playing a video game, the other is watching ESPN and the other one is on the phone. We're spending time occupying space, but not spending any quality time together. But being down there in the jungle for a week we had some of the deepest discussions we had in months, if not years. It was just an incredible father and son experience.

Here's something else you should always remember: We have it good here in the States. The United States and Great Britain are two of the richest nations on the planet. When we look at the almost 200 countries that make up the world, 20 of those countries have 82 percent of the world's wealth and the remaining countries fight over the remaining 18 percent. On Planet Earth today, you have about seven billion people, and for one billion of those people, it's a pretty awesome life; for the next four billion, life isn't quite so awesome; and for the bottom two billion, life really sucks. And of that bottom two billion there are thousands of people who wish they'd never been born. To think that it's 2011 and the number- one cause of death on the planet is diarrhea from drinking tainted water is just grotesque.

We drive around in our brand-new, sleek, tricked-out cars equipped with GPS and satellite radio and Bose surround-sound systems, and every three seconds some toddler in the third-world dies from diarrhea. Not to mention the horrific turmoil in places like Sudan that should outrage every single one of us. Even if we don't want to go on trips like this, we should at least throw some money at people like Jerome and the other volunteers who do!

I'm sure Jerome Smith doesn't want me to write this but I am going to write it: The operating budget for his facility in Mexico is somewhere around $100,000 a year and Jerome, along with Drs. Russell Romero, Carl Breaux, Tom Mattern and Tom Watson have run this operation for about 20 years. Jerome has gone down there 35 times. He and a handful of volunteers are this village's only health care. Dentaltown Magazine reaches more than 100,000 of you each month. If each one of you donated a dollar to Jerome Smith each year, this clinic in Mexico could operate worry free.

Here's the bottom line: I highly recommend taking yourself out of your comfort zone and traveling to a far off land to do dentistry for a population that really needs you. Did you read that? I'll write it again. They need you! You need to reconnect to the reason we all got into this great profession in the first place – to help those in need. It's a professional spiritual awakening, I swear. You need to get away from your morning lattés and e-mail. You need to leave your cell phone, fax machine, iMac and iPad behind. You need to stop stressing about your crazy schedule, new patients, broken appointments, overhead, the economy, the debt ceiling and the Republican debates! Ditch your life for five days. Make this your vacation! Why sit on the beach like a lump for a week when you can change the lives of people who need you?

If you don't want to travel, OK, fine, then how about you open up your pocketbook and donate some money to a guy like Jerome Smith. Log on to www.latinworldministries.com, check out the Web site, and give him $20, or $50 or even $100! Donations can also be mailed directly to:

Latin World Ministries
2 Whitney Circle
Texarkana, TX 75503

You can afford to skip a steak dinner one night. Instead of the $75 you're going to drop at the restaurant one night this week, go buy some Kraft dinner and some fish sticks and put the rest of that money to good use. The world will be better for it.
Seminars
Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, is an international speaker who has written dozens of published articles. To schedule Howard to speak to your next national, state or local dental meeting, e-mail colleen@farranmedia.com.
October 14 • Bucks County, Pennsylvania
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