May 2010 - Clarksville Family Magazine

Feature
Most of us living in
comfortable Clarksville
enjoy the many amenities
of luxurious living. We
enjoy garage door openers,
garbage disposals, bathtubs
and microwaves. When
shopping for a place to live we
expect running water, indoor
plumbing and air conditioning.
To most of us, those are not
luxuries, but an essential
selling point of any piece of
real estate.
To most of us, running water,
indoor toilets, and schooling
for our children are basics.
However, not all people in the
world enjoy such luxuries.
This isn’t a surprise to us.
We see it on the news; we
REAL ESTATE, SCORPIONS AND A MISSION: HOW
CLARKSVILLIANS ARE HELPING GUATEMALAN FAMILIES
by Pamela Magrans
read about it on the Yahoo
homepage. There are many
who would call our basic
necessity a luxury.
La Toma — a Guatemala
community and some
Clarksville volunteers
Far south of us, in Central
America, rests the country of
Guatemala. It borders with
Mexico on the north and El
Salvador and Honduras on
the south. The entire country
is slightly smaller than the
state of Tennessee. The
country has been plagued
by revolution, poverty,
low literacy and lack of
health care. It is hard for
most of us to imagine living
in the conditions that many
Guatemalans
live in.
However,
for a few
Clarksvillians,
imagining
it was not
enough.
A group from
Salem United
Methodist
Church
began a local
ministry called
Saints Alive.
The ministry
is a local
mission work
camp where
youth work
on homes in
Montgomery
County.
However,
members
6 Clarksville Family
of the church wanted to do
more and to reach out and
help on a global scale. So, in
2004 Salem United Methodist
Church organized their first
mission trip to Guatemala.
They left amenities behind and
boarded a plane bound for
Guatemala. Their destination
was an area about four hours
from Guatemala City, a rural
area called La Toma. Over
the past six years, they have
helped build two schools, a
parsonage, a medical clinic
and six homes.
Myranel Bryant has
participated in the Guatemala
mission trip four times. “Once
you have been to a third world
country and seen the poverty,
you realize how very blessed
you are, even if you are just
considered middle class (or
lower) in the U.S. We have so
much in comparison,” said
Myranel.
Salem United Methodist
Church has since teamed with
several other churches in an
effort to expand the services
they can offer to the people in
the La Toma area. Myranel and
her husband recently returned
from a trip in March where 20
team members from seven