Dental Restoration: Smiles and Souls
How do you show the love of Jesus to a village that is recovering from a massacre? You help in any way you can. For Dr. Jim Flatley, that meant offering his services as a third-generation dentist.
Along with a team from Tennessee, Dr. Jim traveled to a Mayan village in Chiapas, Mexico, where tragedy had struck just ten years earlier. A paramilitary group had raided the village church during a service and slaughtered almost everyone present. Now the church stands as a memorial for the victims. The humble wooden chapel is graced with pictures of lost loved ones, and handwritten lists naming the departed form a cross on the wall.
The survivors still can’t forget. On the 27th day of each month, the entire community walks in mournful procession up to the church in remembrance of those lost in the tragedy. A woman who cooked for the visitors tried to share her story of losing her entire family, but she could hardly form the necessary words.
Another survivor came to Dr. Jim because of numbness in his face. Suspecting a deeper problem, Jim questioned him about stomach problems, nightmares and difficulty concentrating. The patient reported all these symptoms. He had seen his parents killed in the massacre and had even been hit in the hand with one of the bullets that shot his father! Jim’s combat-trauma training as a former Navy dentist allowed him to diagnose the man with post-traumatic stress disorder. Concerned, Jim inquired about getting some mental health care for the man.
The reality of these emotional scars made the Americans even more eager to serve the people. The Tennessee team constructed showers for the villagers’ homes, complete with running water, and assisted Dr. Jim in the dental clinic.
As Jim expected, the facilities for the clinic consisted of “a room and a wall socket.” He had spent months planning and packing everything needed for oral surgery. His cousin had also foreseen this need and purchased some used dental equipment in another area of Mexico.
As Jim surveyed this surprise delivery hidden in layers of shrink wrap, he wondered what condition it would be in, since his cousin had no medical knowledge. Unwrapping the equipment, Jim found a Japanese dental unit from 1925 that he suspected was obsolete even when his grandfather practiced dentistry.
A couple of craftsmen on the team decided the clinic needed a table. Within an hour, they built a sturdy one, and a plastic shower curtain provided a clean surface on which to place the medical supplies. Water in plastic jugs was hauled in and heated in a huge pot using a finicky hot plate. This was used to sterilize the medical instruments.
The language barrier made it difficult to explain the treatment to the patients. Some of them had never had a toothbrush or seen toothpaste, much less been to a dentist. Gloria, a bilingual team member, wrote some information on a chalkboard in Spanish, but the people spoke only their Mayan tongue, Tzotzil. Finally, Oscar, a local leader, stepped in to help. Information was translated from English to Spanish to Tzotzil for the villagers.
Jim was perplexed when one patient didn’t seem able to lean back all the way in the dentist’s chair. The impediment was a large lump of some kind on the woman’s back. Upon further investigation, he was delighted to see that the offending lump was actually a sleepy baby swaddled on his mother’s back in the traditional manner. 
One prominent patient was a Roman Catholic priest, a Mayan man who served as leader, lawyer, nurse, clergy, plumber etc. for the entire region. Having taken a vow of celibacy, he had no wife to help carry the burden. The priest had a partial denture that fit poorly and was painful. Having to improvise, Jim had the man smear Gloria’s lipstick on the denture and try it on. After he took it out, the places where the lipstick was gone showed where the hard acrylic was rubbing against his mouth. Jim circled those areas with a black marker, and then adjusted the denture using a Black & Decker power drill—the only “precision medical instrument” available.
With the help of the team, Dr. Jim extracted over 100 bad teeth, saving many people from constant pain and preventing serious illness and infection. He hopes to see the village provided with more regular dental care.
Through his service on trips like this one, and through volunteering to treat Wycliffe missionaries, Jim uses his gift of medicine to bring Christ’s healing love to others. “The face of God,” he often says, pointing to a picture of a proud Mayan mother or hardworking field hand. Perhaps after Jim treats a patient, he isn’t the only one who goes away having had a glimpse of Jesus. And the patients aren’t the only ones who leave with a new smile.
(Story by Borghy Holm)