LDSentinel Publication

Published in the Latter-day Sentinel http://spokane.latterdaysentinel.com/

 

October 12, 2011

News

Coeur d'Alene dentist brings smiles to Central America

By Gloria Warnick, Sentinel Staff Writer

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October 12, 2011 — Doug Pulsipher, DDS of Coeur d' Alene, and his staff are all smiles, literally.


Dr. Doug Pulsipher, a Coeur d'Alene dentist, and his wife, Sally, volunteer time to a Church humanitarian program called "Smiles for Central America" that provides dental care for departing LDS missionaries in countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Contributed Photo.

Dr. Pulsipher and his crew been traveling with a group called "Smiles for Central America" to help fulfill a mission statement "to provide dental and medical services for young Latter-day Saint men and women in Central America."

Twice each year, Smiles for Central America sponsors humanitarian service expeditions to Central America for the purpose of delivering medical and dental services for young LDS men and women to help them prepare to serve full-time LDS missions. The group rotates through the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama.


Sally Pulsipher with several smiling missionaries. The Pulsiphers have traveled to Central America four times as part of Smiles for Central America. Contributed Photo.

Dr. Pulsipher has gone four times with this group to Central America. He usually goes twice a year and pays his own way, which costs from $2,300 to $2,800 per person. His wife, Sally, has gone with him each time. He has been to Peru, the Dominican Republic and Belize. He has traveled with his son John (a dentist) to El Salvador and with his daughter, Lindsey (a hygienist) to Nicaragua. Dr. Pulsipher served an LDS mission to Chile 43 years ago.

"This program is the best humanitarian program I've ever participated in," said Dr. Pulsipher. "We know we are changing lives, not just fixing teeth. We are providing the pathway for young people to get out of poverty and into the middle class. Before this program there were 500 participants in the Perpetual Education Fund in Central America. Today there are 5,500. Before this program there were about 1,200 missionaries serving from Central America and today there are 2300."

Being able to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints not only affects the missionary but their posterity as well, as all they teach in the mission field. A missionary is more likely to marry a member in the temple, raise children in the gospel, become leaders in the Church in their own country, leave poverty and move into the middle class.

The same thing happened to the early converts to the Church. Dr. Pulsipher tells of his mother's great-grandparents (Mellors) who were too poor to immigrate to Zion when they joined the Church in the 1840's in England. When Brigham Young established the Perpetual Immigration Fund in 1856, it allowed the Mellors to travel on the ship Horizon to Boston in May of 1856. They were eventually part of the Martin Handcart Company.