The Holy Land...Dental Volunteers

Dental Volunteers for Israel is an organization that provides free dental care for children up to the age of 18, in Jerusalem. These children are referred from the social services department and are very poor and have very little knowledge of oral hygeine. DVI has dentist that voluneer from all over the globe, each week 4-5 dentists voluneer their time to treat the children.
So this year 6 AF dentists from Lakenheath went to offer our services and to see the amazing land of Israel.

Entrance to clinic

Dentistry Israeli Style

With 2 weekd to work and explore we had the opportunity to visit may amazing places in Israel.  The first weekend we went to Masada and The Dead sea.  

View from Masada (Roman encampment)

Herod's Palace

Really I was there

Floating in the Dead Sea (Brandon, Liz, Me, Jamie, James)

WOW, it really does feel weird

The fountain of youth, the black mud of the Dead sea, we had to give it a try....do I look younger?

Sunday rolled around and it was time to start work.  ,But since we had so many dentists in our group each day there were 2 of us off, so for Neil and I the first Sunday was a day off after our weekend off so we went off to the old city to check out the culture.   We walked to the old city (only a 40min walk) and walked all over the city, then we had a snack and re did it all once the rest of the group got off work.

Old City Market

View from the Old City Wall to the City of David

The Church of the Holy Sepecur

The Western Wall (Jarom, James, Neil, Brandon, Claire, Amy, Ethan, Jamie)

The Classic view of the Western Wall, prayer in progress

Dome of the rock, and Western Wall complex

Dome of the Rock Complex, with F16's flying over, nothing like Air Power!!

Well it is time to get to work so off we go to provide dental care to children in the Holy Land...the key to pediatric dentistry is speed, calm nerves and an assistant that speaks the native language of the child...

A Day at work (my head is all a glow)

Neil focused on providing excellent dental care.

Enough work it is time for some time away from the city...anyone up for a camel ride in the desert?

Looking down on the camel

Our shadow on the treck

Be nice girl.

The 2nd weekend we hit the road and saw, Cesarea Aquaduct, Hiafa,  The Sea of Gallilee, The Jordan River, and who knows what else...it was a long day in the car, and we had a great time.  

The Aquaduct

Does Neil thinkn he is Leo Decaprio in Titanic?  (on top of the Aquaduct)

Bahi Tempel in Haifa, Beautiful Gardens...WOW

Sea of Gallilee...Do you think Jesus was in that boat...well maybe he could have been?

The Jordan river...Jesus may have been baptized in just this spot...amazing!!!

You  may think there wasn't anything else for us to see after all of that but...of course there was.  we went to the Mount of Olives, saw the Golden Gate, and AllNnations church, Kidron valley, 

Mt of Olives with All Nations churhc, and kidron valley in the fore ground.

Old olive trees on the Mt. Of Olives

Carving of Jesus praying at the Garden before his betrayal. 

The Golden Gate...where the messiah is to enter, it has been bricked up to prevent his return...don't think that will stop him though

During the second week the volcano in Iceland it was time to erupt disrupting flights all over Europe, so we were all wondering if we could be able to leave Israel on time.

Iceland Volcano Creating enough ash to stop all air traffic in Europe...Hmm will we get home?

Though the planes were grounded for almost 7 days, we departed on Time...well most of us did.. Brandon was scheduled to leave 7 days before the rest of us but he departed one day before we did.  

With miles of walking under our belts and fun in th old city it was time for the adventure to come to an end.  Time to leave Isreal and head home to Jolly old England.  It was a grea trip with great people.