Smile Stories: Before and After Smiles...

Operation Smile's volunteer medical professionals travel around the world to treat children suffering from facial deformities. Their efforts mean new smiles for thousands of children, including these former patients:

Ngan

Min Zhu

Brigid

Guillermo

Arnoldo

Thanh

Vietnam - Thanh

"Sut" means split lip and is a terrible name for a child. But for the first nine years of my life, that's what I was called by everyone in the village. Every day, the cleft lip I was born with caused me pain and humiliation. On my first day of school, the other children taunted me so mercilessly because of my disfigured mouth that I refused to go back. It seemed that my whole life would be ruined by this curse.

Then, Operation Smile came along. During the mission to Vung Tau, Vietnam, I received a new smile, new friends, and reclaimed my birth name, Thanh, which means, "Blue Sky." Now, the sky's the limit for me. I have returned to school and to life, and the future is filled with sunshine.

See photos of Roma Downey’s inspirational journey to Vietnam with an Operation Smile volunteer medical team.

Watch the video of Roma Downey's journey to Vietnam with Operation Smile.

See updated photos of children from the 2003 Vietnam medical mission.