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It takes many months to put together TNT4C trips. We need to recruit participants, find in country contacts who will work with us, and translators from the indigenous language to Spanish. One of our main considerations is the comfort of our team, a team that does not eat or sleep properly cannot be effective. We do not want to duplicate efforts of the community but wish reach out to children that are in the most need.

Our trips are meant to provide pain relief and in many cases that means pulling teeth we do some amalgam and composite fillings when we have the time and resources. The dentists do not do any work that requires follow up care as the teams are only in country for one week and the patient does not have the resources to follow up with a local dentist.

The work space is often a basic room. Dentists and the rest of the team create the clinic using school rooms, meeting rooms, gyms or donated medical clinic space, or hospitals. Whatever the in country contact is able to secure for free. We bring a portable unit, all the instruments, lawn chairs for dental chairs, plastic boxes for the disinfection. In some cases, we need to rent a generator due to lack of electricity or frequent outages.

We need to have safe food handling practices followed by the people that supply our meals as the water in Third World countries is not potable. We enjoy being able to sample the local cuisine. Lunch is generally brought to the site and breakfast is at the hotel. Dinner is the time for the teams to explore the community and find a restaurant that they enjoy.

Regardless how much planning and forethought that goes into a mission trip there are always things that come up unexpectedly that must be dealt with, flat tires on our van, forgetting to bring something, equipment failure, power outages and accidents and illness amongst the team members. The team needs to be able to think on the run and not be stumped by the unexpected.