Tears

Whether it’s the belly laugh of a child, a cat wearing roller skates, or an 80-year-old doing the Macarena, there are so many reasons to smile. Now that I think about it all of those things make me smile but what really lights me up is the thought of people helping people. On Aug 20^th over 4,000 members of the Smile Generation family across 18 states set out to help over 2000 people get over million in donated dentistry. If that doesn’t make you smile, there’s no way that roller skating cat is going to make you chuckle.

John Hagee said it best when he said “The measure of a man’s greatness is not the number of servants he has, but the number of people he serves.” On Smile Generation Serve Day, there were so many incredible stories of people serving others. Here are just a couple of them.

A team partnered with Breast Friends, a support group for women who have had or have breast cancer, to provide them with donated dentistry. Our team was inspired by the strength of the women facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Through the tears, the teams were able to smile.

One patient we fell in love with works as a cashier at 7-11, where her hours just got cut. She lives with her aunt, who helped raise her as her mother was a drug abuser. She served in Iraq at the age of 20 and is a single mom to two kids. She met our Benefits Coordinator, who has braces, at 7-11. We decided to bring her in and were able to help her with all of her dental needs. The last thing she needed was braces, and we agreed to do that for her, too. She cried, and then we cried because we were able to bring such a smile to her face.

These are just two stories. There are hundreds more stories of people simply helping people because it makes them smile.