The Moose Jaw International Medical Mission Team will be travelling to Guatemala yet again in the new year, assisting in providing health care to those in need.

A team of doctors, nurses and volunteers will be making their way to the poverty-stricken municipality of Patzun, Guatemala, working alongside Clinica Corpus Christi, a small 24-bed hospital and orphanage.

Local Nurse – Melissa Macneil says its a variety of people who will be making the trip.

"Its a group of about 30 of us local nurses, doctors and volunteers that go down. We have a surgical team, a medical team and a stove team. We try to do as many surgeries as we can in a week, the medical team goes out 5 days a week and they see about 100 people a day, and our stove team goes out and they install clean water filters and more energy-efficient stoves into people homes who need them."

"They really don't have access to the healthcare that we do, they just don't. We go and provide what we can. They're in a bit of a remote area so it takes too much money and time for them away from work to get these things normally. We go to the same hospital every year so we've met the Sisters for 5 years now, lots of the locals who work around the hospital we see them every year too and it's just fabulous."

The Moose Jaw International Medical Mission relies heavily on donations. If you would like to contribute, you can visit their Facebook page or BridgesOfHope.com.

Local Aircraft Technician Shauna Sinclair will be making the trip as part of the stove building team. She describes the work that her group does.

"We installed 22 stoves and water filters last year out in the community. We set up with these guys and start out there, but every day we head out with the medical team to very remote towns and villages, places that would never have access to running or clean water. We go set up stoves and water filters, and it's just such a humbling experience."