For dentist Lacy Claeys and Helena High School senior Luke Dutton, the return to Helena has been a shock. Middle America seems so far from where they've been.

In their hearts, they still feel the dry, warm Mexican winds brushing sand from garbage at the dump. It's a trash heap home to scores of people and a church where, one by one, Claeys and Dutton eased the suffering of poor children, some of whom work the streets at night.

In their minds, they still remember the young ones coming to the dental chair with neatly combed hair and their nicest clothes, sometimes frayed and torn, and calmly opening their mouths to reveal the source of their pain.

In their souls, they still sense the exhausted joy of jumping rope and playing soccer at day's end with their orphaned patients in the fading light of a desert sunset.

After 10 days in Juarez, Mexico, Helena just doesn't seem the same. Material possessions have less worth. Concentrating is more difficult. Even sleep is challenging.

Something fundamental has changed for the duo.

Dutton remembers the heartbreaking moment when they told the mother of a 12-year-old prostitute that her daughter had herpes in her throat.

"It didn't even faze her," he said. "She already knew."

Both Claeys and Dutton yearn to return to Juarez, to once again make those children's smiles a little brighter.

Mobile dental office

Claeys and Dutton were armed with their equipment -- the pair brought everything but the dental chair. And they carried with them a favorite Bible verse, Matthew 25:40 -- "To work with the smallest among us is to work with God" -- as they departed two weeks ago on a 22-hour bus ride to the border.

Juarez is across the line from El Paso, Texas. Helena's Evangelical Covenant Church, which Claeys and Dutton attend, has long supported an orphanage and clinic in the Mexican city. Dutton made the trip last year, building homes and helping teach Bible lessons.

Their trip in March was his first experience working directly with the town's children. It was Claeys' first mission trip.

Dutton, 18, recently decided he wants to become a dentist, and had trained with Claeys and her husband at their Helena clinic. He assisted Claeys in Mexico, feeling the ligaments snap as he separated baby teeth from gums for the first time.

The children at the orphanage are well cared for and clean, and have learned to brush their teeth. But many of them have decay remaining from the time before they entered the orphanage.

As Claeys and Dutton wrapped up their first day, they counted 81 fillings, a handful of extractions and a few crowns.

"We lost count after that," she said.

Claeys recalls a young girl with 20 cavities in 20 baby teeth. Here, she would send such a patient to the operating room. There, she asked the girl which two teeth hurt the worst before pulling them.

The children, between 2 and 14 years old, never complained.

"Everyone in America is afraid of going to the dentist, and they don't even know how well they have it," Dutton said.

In Juarez, the duties of a dental assistant include keeping feral dogs away from the door of the clinic.

'18 going on 30'

Initially, Claeys worried about Dutton, unsure of how he'd handle the work. Those concerns didn't last long.

"He's awesome," she said. "I do some pretty gory things, but nothing like we did in Mexico. It's the hardest dentistry there is. I'm so proud of him. He was totally unafraid. He might have been ... but he didn't seem afraid, ever.

"He's 18 going on 30. He's so spiritually together and kind."

Claeys is taking Spanish lessons. Dutton, who will enroll at University of Montana next year, plans to go on to dental school and return to continue the work in Juarez whenever possible.

"Once he's got two years of dental school, we can do double the amount of kids," Claeys said, an almost conspiratorial gleam in her eye.

Uplifting goodbye

The trip from the orphanage to the garbage-dump slum was one of the hardest days, especially after the pair realized some of the kids they were working with were prostitutes. They couldn't save these young women.

Yet perhaps they could ease their pain.

And as the woman and her young assistant left that day they saw their work -- a rag-tag band of children waving at the bus, brushing with their new toothbrushes and flashing their smiles.

Reporter Larry Kline: 447-4075 or larry.kline@helenair.com