An Olds couple who journeyed to Africa to provide dental care have decided to sponsor one of the children they met there.
Jared Ord, a dentist, and his wife Lindsay, a dental hygienist, went to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last month where they provided dental care to about 230 people, about 210 of whom were children.
One of the couples who went with them has already sponsored children there and finally got to meet them.
It was a very emotional moment.
The Ords were so taken with that and so touched by one child in particular, that they're hoping to sponsor her or perhaps another child.
Lindsay said the child they have in mind is a 15-year-old girl.
“I'm going to put in a request if she doesn't already have a sponsor because we made a connection with her,” Lindsay says. “She has HIV and she has no parents and she lives with her older sister in basically a junk heap.”
“They live as security guards in basically a junkyard,” Jared says.
“There are little kids running around and there are sharp metal pieces everywhere. I was just, ‘oh!'” Lindsay says.
Lindsay says this girl was her first patient.
“She was in so much pain on one side that she'd never chewed (there) -- so much so that she had tarter built up over the biting surfaces of her teeth on one side of her mouth,” Lindsay says. “It had been that long since she had chewed on that side of her mouth.
“It took me almost two hours to scrape most of that away.”
The Ords saw her about a week later.
“She was extremely shy and quiet. She had a really hard background. But she smiled and that was the first time I saw her smile in the three days that we saw her,” Lindsay says. “I was so happy because you could see that she was finally out of pain.”
"She has HIV and she has no parents and she lives with her older sister in basically a junk heap."LINDSAY ORD
