Saving Seamay: Senior missionary couple serves Guatemalan village
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SEAMAY, GUATEMALA
It's a warm spring morning in Guatemala, and the mist is just beginning to rise off the jungles of the Alta Verapaz. High above the village of Seamay, John Curtiss is hiking along a thin trail that cuts through the heavy brush, his bronzed forearms glistening with sweat.
At a clearing, a squat structure seems to rise from the red-brown earth of the jungle, like some undiscovered Mayan ruin. It's actually a water tank, and Elder Curtiss, a senior missionary for the Church, helped build it.
As the sun begins to rise over the terraced farms that dot the surrounding slopes, Elder Curtiss climbs a rickety ladder to the top of the tank, lifts a wooden lid and threads a gnarled stick through the opening to check how much water the 30,000-gallon structure is holding.
"There was a special feeling when this was finished," Elder Curtiss says, glancing down at the village of tin shacks and cinder block huts that sit in the valley below. "It was amazing how the people of this community put their hearts and souls into this project."
Elder Curtiss is one of an estimated 4,244 senior missionaries currently serving around the world. Some work at visitors centers in places like Nauvoo, Ill., while others proselytize in countries like Ghana and Brazil. Humanitarian missionaries such as Elder Curtiss have helped train doctors, build schools and dig wells from Haiti to the Dominican Republic to the Congo.
It's all part of an increased effort to get more senior couples to serve missions for the Church. As part of that effort, in June the Church announced changes to senior missionary policies, including allowing couples to serve anywhere from 6 months to 23 months (previously couples serving outside their home country were called for at least 18 months) and a cap of $1,400 per month on housing costs.
For Elder Curtiss and his wife, Sister Beatriz Curtiss, serving a mission in Guatemala was the fulfillment of a goal the couple set when they joined the Church more than 30 years ago.
"When we found the Church we decided we had to find some way to pay back. We were so impressed by the two sister missionaries who taught us and we wanted to be like them," recalls Sister Curtiss, who grew up in Guatemala but spent most of her adult life in the United States. "So when we were finally able to go, it was not a difficult decision."
As the only humanitarian senior missionaries serving in Central America, the Curtisses were responsible for coordinating the delivery of wheelchairs all over the region. They also helped train doctors in neonatal resuscitation to reduce infant mortality rates in countries like El Salvador and Honduras.
But their main focus centered around helping the village of Seamay, which sits deep in the highlands of northeastern Guatemala. Wedged between a humid patchwork of farmland that stretches all the way to the Caribbean and a vast land of sweeping rain forests, the village, while beautiful, suffers from a high rate of poverty.
Elder Don R. Clarke of the Seventy, who was president of the Church's Central America Area at the time, wanted to help the villagers make a permanent change through education, self-sufficiency and health programs. "We talked to the local leaders and we said, 'We're here, and we're going to stay and we're not going away,' " Elder Clarke recalls. "Because people come, they drop their projects and then they leave. We weren't going to do that. But we also told the community we would stay only if they did their part … and so we sent some of our great humanitarian missionaries there, the Curtisses."
A retired civil engineer, Elder Curtiss supervised the construction of a water tank that helped bring water into the homes of the 2,000 villagers, who had never had running water in their homes. In the meantime, he and his wife taught sanitation classes at the Church and helped begin construction on a new school that will soon have a library and a computer lab. While the Church paid for the water tank and facilitated construction of the school, the villagers did the labor themselves, which Elder Curtiss says helped them feel ownership of the changes occurring in their village.
"The thing I learned during my mission that I didn't know before was how much humanitarian work the Church does around the world," Elder Curtiss says. "It just blows you away."
For Sister Curtiss, the greatest blessings of serving a senior mission were personal and unexpected. The Curtisses had always been active, had held leadership positions wherever they had lived, and had always held family home evening and read the scriptures, as a couple and as a family. But during their mission, Sister Curtiss says, they have grown like never before.
"Our trust in the Lord has increased by leaps and bounds," she says. "We've trusted in Him before, but not like we trust Him now. We're much more aware of those in need and we include them in our prayers. Spiritually we've grown in ways that had we not served a mission we wouldn't have experienced."
"To those who are thinking about serving, I would say to just forget your concerns and just go," she adds. "The Lord will take care of you and you will know Him in a way you never have before."
