Use What You're Given

Dr. Annette, supervising procedures

When you hang around the Sowerses long enough, you get pretty good at recognizing the names of some of the recurring characters in their life stories. One name I’ve heard quite a bit is “Dr. Annette,” a dentist from the States, with a heart for missions. Dr. Annette is currently on her 18th mission trip to Honduras, and Allen handed over his cell phone so I could chat with her and learn more about this medical missionary.

Dr. Annette made her first trip to Honduras twenty years ago, following Hurricane Mitch. Her church found out the island of Guanaja had been hit very hard and needed people to help rebuild. The church scheduled a trip and Dr. Annette went along. Since she’s more skilled with a dental drill than a hammer, she did what she does best. When she arrived in Guanaja, she learned the area had no dentist. People were lining up for her services before she was even unpacked.

Now, Dr. Annette shows up every year, with a team of dental students. They spend one week in Gracias and one week in Guanaja. I asked how many patients they see, during a typical week. Her response was, “We try to keep track, but we get so busy that we lose count. This week, we gave out 140 tickets. Not all of the people who receive tickets come. We probably see between 100-200 people in a week. On some of those patients, we do multiple procedures. We do extractions and fillings.”

The group also does education at local schools, whenever possible. They go into schools and give a presentation about nutrition and dental hygiene. They also put fluoride on the children’s teeth. On this trip, Dr. Annette and her team took care of 114 kids at one school.

Tools, medicines, and other supplies, on hand for the dental work

Naturally, I was curious to learn what led Dr. Annette to make medical missions such a large part of her life. From childhood, Dr. Annette wanted to be a missionary, but, as she said, “God made me a dentist, so I planned to continue to use dentistry to show God’s love to people in need. I’m not a preacher, so this is my gift. I’ve made relationships doing this. When I go to Guanaja, I actually stay with people in their house. I don’t take anything and they just put me up. My motivation is that people see God’s love.”

To encourage others to make a similar trip, Dr. Annette said, “Anyone can do this. The Sowerses make this very easy. They take care of everything for you. They pick you up from the airport. We stay and a nice, safe hotel with safe food.”

“My husband and I decided early on to make missions a part of our lives. We work to keep our monthly expenses down and stay out of debt.” They don’t ask for donations, but they do ask for prayer. And they’ve seen those prayers at work, this week: from a tooth that wasn’t budging just suddenly popping out, to making connections on airplanes.

Dr. Annette also wants to encourage parents who may not feel they can make a trip because they have young children. She said, “We started bringing our daughter when she was two. Just because you have small kids doesn’t mean you can’t come and help. On that first trip, we found a local person to watch her during the day, while I did dentistry and my husband worked on a construction project. When she got older, she attended the local bilingual school during the week. It has been great for her to have a cross-cultural experience. This is the first year she hasn’t come, but that was just a problem with logistics. She came for ten years.”

While not everyone has a skill, such as dentistry, to share, Dr. Annette insists that there’s always something you can do. It’s a matter of using the skills you’ve been given.

 - posted by Christi