Following months of fundraising and preparation a group of Moose Javians headed out to Guatemala at the beginning of February. 

Carie Yaschuk (R) was a part of the Moose Jaw members who joined a medical team that made the journey to Guatemala to help people who were in need of medical attention.

The crew recently returned with a lot accomplished in a short amount of time. 

"We did approximately 30 surgeries at a clinic in Patzun," said Kandice Hennanfent, an RN from Moose Jaw who took part on the trip the past few years. "We saw close to 600 people in four different villages."

"We treated them for basic aches and pains, all the way to people who we discovered had diabetes (and) high blood pressure. We did assessments on them including blood pressure, checking their pulse, temperatures and we treated them for whatever we found necessary."

Despite there being an obvious language barrier between the medical teams from Canada and the community members seeking medical help, they were able to create an understanding. 

"Even when the translators are not available, it was amazing how we could get the message across and they would communicate with us in whatever way they could. It was very successful with the translators, but even when we don't have a translator we seemed to be able to communicate quite well with neither speaking each other's language. It's quite amazing."

The members of the team from the Friendly City met up with Canadians from another province before they took off, and they came home halfway through the month.