Creating Smiles,
Improving Lives

Our dentist, Dr. Tom Sentz, noticed that our bus driver Christian Roque was missing a tooth.  Tom made him a false tooth (called a “flipper”) to fill in that spot!      Tom has been coming on trips with Austin Smiles, annually or more often, since the mid-90s, so he...

It is easy to fall in love with the babies and children that are being treated by the Austin Smiles team. Here are a few that we are loving this week. Ximena is 12 months old and charming is the only word to describe her. Maritsa was dressed in a precious denim dress...

The power went out in the hospital on Monday, producing lots of anxiety for the medical team and for the patients’ parents.   Fortunately it came back on almost immediately. Today the power went out again about 10:30 am, but this time the hospital had to rely on...

Austin Smiles volunteers call ourselves a family, but in many cases that is literally true.  Husbands and wives regularly serve together, and volunteers frequently bring a child, niece, or nephew along.  On this trip we have two sets of sisters. In a family of 5...

Alisa Baron is a speech pathologist who is trained in bilingual therapy. She speaks Spanish beautifully.  On Smiles trips, she works with children and their parents at numerous points in the process. At triage, she examines children for velo-pharyngeal insufficiency,...

About 2 months ago Mission Director Leilani Briseno and Dr. Harshbarger traveled to El Salvador to screen potential patients for facial reconstruction.  Impressions were made of patients’ teeth to anticipate jaw realignment surgery.  A Salvadoran orthodontist referred...

Saturday, June 14 – Austin and Houston to San Salvador Reuniting with old friends and meeting new ones at the airport for the Austin Smiles trip is fun, and a little easier when airport arrival is noon instead of 6am.   We had a bit of a delay in Houston, so after...

Our Austin Smiles poster child for Veracruz 2014 trip O

A group as large as ours (48 volunteers!) can present transportation nightmares, especially since the hospital was a considerable distance from the hotel. But each morning we were able to board clean new buses in 2 shifts, ignore traffic and enjoy the scenery on the...

For those who don't normally work in an operating room, what happens there can appear like a well-choreographed dance; a group of focused and well-trained professionals performing their jobs in synergy (Synergy:  joint action of participants, that when working...

Ariceli is an 11 month old born with a bilateral cleft lip resulting in a noticeable defect on an otherwise pretty face.  She travelled to Veracruz with her father, a single parent, who constantly carried her and fretted whenever she was removed from his arms. Ariceli...