March 2009 - "Mission Accomplished!"  Can't thank everyone enough for another beautiful trip!  Our team (from US, Canada and Vietnam) had breakfast at 6am, get our supplies ready, our caravan headed to the remote villages by 7am, and we did not return to our hotel until 7 or 8 pm most of the time.  We saw over 2,000 children in 6 distant villages - sometimes we had to cross the river by ferry and follow long bumpy dirt roads, we worked in the tropical heat, our make shift clinics were the classrooms of the village elementary schools, we worked long and hard in primitive condition to say the least.  We didn't choose to go to VN because it was easy, we went where the children needed us. While many people chose to stay home due to the unstable economy, we chose to say "YES WE CARE!" 

A repeat volunteer our future Dr. Crystal Vo had to work 3 jobs while attending University of Washington to save enough money to go on this trip.  She was the youngest in the team but there was no question about her maturity, focus, and dedication in helping others.  Dr. Mai Le, a pedodontist from Seattle, WA had to plan a year ahead to be able to have the time off to be on this trip.  It is not easy for any of us to arrange our family life, work life, married life, daily responsibilities at home, overcome many obstacles so we can be away from our families and make the time for the children living in deep poverty.  Dr. Julie Kim from Montreal, Canada, bravely asked all of her relatives to support her effort and they did!  Fifty dollars here and a hundred dollars there, it adds up.  We must be the voice for the children who have no voice and no choice.  Dr. Julie Kim and Dr. Mai Le are both used to help the indigents and low-income communities in their daily practice (including a lot of oral surgery) they shine under challenging working conditions in VN!  Mrs. Brenda Rust, another repeat volunteer on our team, is a nurse in Tennessee and California.  She was also a school bus driver, so you know, this is a lady who is not afraid of hard work!  When our team visited a very old, overly crowded, and real gloomy looking hospital in Saigon, Brenda commented how she has more respect for the Vietnamese doctors who can treat and help so many patients under this basic condition while most doctors in the rich world would think that they can't function unless they have "everything".  Happiness is not having everything, true happiness is making the most with everything you have.  The way we see things in the world is the way our soul expresses itself, it shows who we really are deep down inside.  It was an honor for me to have a team of this caliber!

We came home as a richer person as our hearts are filled with the unforgettable faces and smiles, the thousands of innocent children that have touched us deeply ...