Hi, my name is Shanon Burriss and I travel every year to Honduras with Emerald Coast Missions alongside my mom, Letha Boyett.

Three years ago my mom got an invite to go to Honduras to make dentures. She was the first person to ever go for restoration rather than extraction. She showed up to a closet sized room, most supplies on the floor, working out of a bucket for water, without half the machines she needed. She went anyway and she did the work.

The next year she asked me to come. I said yes, and I have not looked back since.

We serve a community that gets help one week out of the year. One week. In that week we make complete partials and dentures from scratch in the field. We fix things that broke or shifted from the year before. We work through complications that would be manageable in a real lab but are a real challenge in ours. We dump water buckets constantly because our machines can’t drain properly. Only one of us can grind at a time because we only have one lathe, and that really holds us back on how much we can get done. Our hydrocolloid takes two hours to set per person instead of the normal twenty minutes because we don’t have the right materials and equipment.

There are women, men and even children who do not want to smile because most or all of their teeth are missing. When we hand them a mirror after we seat their dentures, the smiles and tears that come across their face is everything. For many of them, they have gone most of their lives thinking they would never get fixed. We serve out of Santa Barbra and take care of surrounding communities. The first year my mom went she was only able to help 4 people. We were able to help 10 people last year and would like to increase those numbers this year.

But here is why I keep going back.

My mom and I also personally put together gift bags for 50 children and 30 adults in the small village of Cunta. School supplies, hygiene items, things they may have gone without for a while. One year my mom put slinkys in the kids bags. They were so excited but had never seen one before and had no idea how it worked. They are some of the most appreciative and kind people I have ever met. It makes you want to do more than you are able to.

So I decided to do more.

This year we are also gifting the principal of Cunta’s only school a box of classroom supplies and a personal care bag, just for her. And we want to donate school uniforms for children who can not afford to attend school because they don’t have one.

Here is where your donation goes:

• Community gift bags for 50 children and 30 adults: ~$900
• School uniforms so kids can attend school: ~$750
• Travel costs to get us there and back: ~$1,900
• Dental lab equipment and supplies: ~$700
• GoFundMe processing buffer: ~$250
• Goal: $5,000

Every single dollar goes toward this trip and the people we serve. If we raise beyond our goal, it goes straight toward dental equipment so we can help even more people next year.

I want to know this community. I plan to go back as long as I am able to. Your support makes that possible.

Thank you for reading this far. It means more than you know.

With gratitude,
Shanon Burriss