We will be publishing updates in the newspaper and posting reports and photographs on ajc.com/gwinnett.

So far, the lineup of planned contributors includes:

* A special ed teacher from Norcross who will teach English to orphaned children on the Thai island of Phi Phi.

* A Suwanee dentist who will be pulling teeth in El Salvador.

* An English lit teacher at Shiloh High School who will be showing her students the actual places that inspired "A Tale Of Two Cities".

Gwinnett's purposeful travelers have compelling stories to share. Trip will mix dental, divine

For nearly two decades, Dr. David Hayward has been donating his time and expertise. Hayward has a traditional dental practice in Suwanee but he also shares his skills with some of the poorest people in the farthest corners of the globe.

Often traveling with his wife, Barbara, Hayward combines Christian missionary work with dentistry. The spiritual side of his work can be like, well, pulling teeth, he said. But his willingness to pull teeth makes him welcome in some of the most remote and sometimes foreboding parts of the world.

"Dentistry is like gold," Hayward said. "I've been able to get into unreached areas, where other agencies couldn't get in, even with a doctor." Sometimes, he has been the first dentist people have ever seen, he said. He often treats people suffering in great pain.

Hayward makes from two to four dental missionary trips per year, mostly to remote sections of western Africa, Central America or Eastern Europe. This year, he plans to make what will be his 31st trip abroad, going to El Salvador and possibly to Sri Lanka, if he can obtain official permission.

He travels with a portable dental office in a large suitcase, and he can set up to work anywhere he can find electrical power or a generator.  He has formed a nonprofit company called International Dental Outreach. It operates under the umbrella of an international charitable mission organization called Helping Hands, which does much of the administrative work for his agency.

While Hayward is seeing to people's dental needs, an accompanying delegation from Crossroads Christian Church in Suwanee will be doing the more traditional missionary work.

Hayward traces his global dental practice to a deal he made with God. He prayed for divine help to make it through dental school; in return, he promised to help wherever he was called. So far, he's been called to dozens of the poorest places in the world.

"I see he need is so great," Hayward said. "At first, I felt what I had done was just a drop in the bucket." But now, he sees that a well can be filled drop by drop.

Among the other travelers will be Julie Mearon, an English literature teacher at Shiloh High School, who will be giving some of her students a firsthand look at the locales that inspired great authors such as Charles Dickens; and Richard Pruitt, a youth pastor at the Church of the Redeemer in Snellville, who will be part of church mission group that will be installing a water-purification system for villagers in the mountains of the Dominican Republic, who now use a polluted stream for all their needs.

Thai orphans touch teacher Stacy Hanley, a 1999 graduate of Norcross High School, went last year to Phi Phi, an island about 30 miles off the Thai resort area of Phuket. Her vacation turned into a life-altering adventure, she said.

"After 40 hours of flight, at least 20 pad Thais (a Thai dish) and banana pancakes, countless beers, an attack by a monkey, a couple of boat rides when I wasn't sure the boat would bring me back to shore, a stubbed toe and leg infection, I decided that I'm moving to Thailand," Hanley said.

 She's not going back for the banana pancakes. Much of Phi Phi was obliterated in the tsunami of Christmas weekend 2004. Nearly one-fourth of the estimated population of slightly less than 10,000 was killed. About 70 percent of the buildings on the island were destroyed. When she visited, no cars or even scooters were on the island; the only thing remaining was poverty.

It was when she saw some of the more than 100 children who had lost one or both parents that Hanley was moved to act. She said she was touched deeply by the children, who seemed lost and hungry. So she and a friend have formed the Thailand Teachers Project.

Working under the auspices of a Connecticut-based agency named Volunteers on Call, Hanley will teach English to elementary schoolchildren and to local volunteers. To do this, Hanley had to take a leave from her most recent position, teaching at a school for children with learning disabilities in Greenwich, Conn.

She has no guarantee that she'll be able to resume that job when she returns, probably in 2007. But to her, Phi Phi was more important.

"This was something I could do," Hanley said.
There is still time to arrange to contribute to: "A SUMMER CALLING: Vacations