"We'll see 8- to 10-year-old kids that have a 50 percent hearing loss just from either fluid in their ear or they've had so many infections that their eardrums burst, and they keep bursting and bursting and bursting, and pretty soon there's no eardrum. There's this big huge hole," Mellor said, adding that many children's bones are either frozen or rotted.

Utah Medical Outreach has a core group of eight doctors, most of them from Layton, who go on the service trips when they are available.

Anesthesiologist Earl Leeman of Fruit Heights travels with the Utah Medical Outreach once a year. He said during a typical trip he will do 30-35 anesthetics.

"My favorite part is just the fact that you are helping people that have no ability to access health care at all," he said.

Leeman has been going to Guatemala with the group for three years and said the trip provides him the opportunity to do his job with no strings attached.

"We just truly go down there and do what we are trained to do, and we do it with a lot of care and compassion," he said. "You take away the whole element of the business of medicine that we get so wrapped up in. It releases the pressure, and you are taking care of the people 100 percent of the time. You don't worry about their ability to pay or their insurance and stuff like that."

Mellor said the service trips aren't limited to medical professionals. He said anyone who wants to go can help in some way. For example, his brother, John Mellor, doesn't have any medical training but when he goes with the group he helps translate for the doctors and helps patients recover from surgery.

All medical professionals and volunteers who travel with Utah Medical Outreach donate their time and pay their own expenses. They also donate equipment for the trips. Some of their supplies are left in Guatemala at a local residence to avoid carrying them back and forth.

Mellor said the group's next big purchase will be a portable generator so the doctors can work without local electricity. For more information on the nonprofit organization, visit www.utahmedicaloutreach.com.

The medical professionals left for Guatemala May 6 and will return home Saturday.

Mellor said that when they get home from a trip, they are exhausted. But the work is worth it.

"You just have such a great feeling when you finish and you see these people," he said. "You're bringing something to them that they would never get otherwise."

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E-mail: nclemens@desnews.com