Kids & Family

LES Students Send Miles of Smiles from Lawrenceville to Kenya

Sometimes a smile can change a life.

“Give a smile, and you’ll get a smile,” was the message fromOperation Smile’s volunteer Christine Stockton, as she spoke to Lawrenceville Elementary School students at a recent assembly.

Stockton proved that a smile can change a life, as she witnessed during her October trip to Mombasa, Kenya, her twenty-third mission trip on behalf of Operation Smile.  

“Asanta sana,” translated from Swahili means, “Thank you very much,” a phrase that Stockton repeated over and over again as she shared with the LES children about the orphanage she visited, filled with boys who previously lived on the street.

At their school in Kenya, children practiced their numbers by writing in the dirt, for there was only one stub of a pencil and no paper. Stockton gave the school donations of pencils and toothbrushes, donated by LES families on behalf of Operation Smile. 

She also gave them a soccer ball, a prized possession in a country where children create their own soccer balls out of plastic bags, tape and string.  

At the hospital, volunteer doctors and nurses from Operation Smile operated on 127 lucky children and adults with cleft lips and palates.

Seventy of the surgeries were performed on residents of Somalia, who spent seven days on a bus to get to Mombasa. The children from Somalia had never seen soap bubbles before, and they were fearful of the bubbles blown by the volunteers hoping to entertain them.

The children awaiting facial reconstructive surgery also had an opportunity to see their name written in print for the first time of their lives, on name tags created by the LES children. Operation Smile volunteer Christine Stockton shares her stories with the children from LES about creating new smiles in Mombasa, Kenya. 


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