Shelby Smith, retired International Mission Board (IMB) worker, turned 85 this year.
He also led a missions trip to the village of Pindal, Ecuador — one of the least-reached areas of the country.
“There’s a lot of demon-worship there,” Smith said. “We fully expected to be attacked by a demon-possessed person, but I could feel the power of the living God there.”
The medical missions team was able to treat 1,600 people in the region and saw 131 people profess faith in Christ.
“We’d been wanting to establish a beachhead where we could come back,” Smith said, “but we had an evangelistic crusade right then.” The team was even able to establish a house church in the home of the woman who ran a restaurant where the team ate.
Smith, a native of Jemison and the Birmingham area, felt called to overseas missions while studying for his master of theology degree at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
“We were looking at a slideshow of Japanese people [in class],” he said. “There was an old couple who reminded me of my parents — an old man working and an old woman praying. (And God showed me) people are just the same in every place.” At the time, Smith said, the U.S. held 5 percent of the world’s population and 95 percent of its preachers.
Smith was unsure of how his wife, Betty, would feel about his call. But as it turned out, God laid the same call on both of their hearts at the same time even though they were 275 miles apart.
The Smiths applied to the then-Foreign Mission Board (now IMB) and were appointed in 1958. After a year of language school they moved to Ecuador. There they did evangelism and planted churches until 1964, when their time was cut short by tragedy. During the birth of their fifth child an Ecuadorean doctor decided to do a cesarean section, and Betty Smith died in the surgery.
“At that moment I felt all the powers of hell laughing at me and mocking me,” Smith said. “I cried out, ‘Lord, help!’ And at that moment I could see Jesus standing on the earth with His head higher than the sun, bigger than the world. And He reached down and put His arms around me and said, ‘Lo, I am with you always.’”
Smith returned to Alabama a widower with five children. The IMB put him on extended stateside assignment, but Smith knew he would return to the missions field eventually.
A few years later, Smith met Frances Higdon, who became his wife in 1968. Shelby and Frances Smith were sent to Trinidad and then Antigua by the IMB.
The Smiths planted churches in the Caribbean for 12 years, starting churches and then seeing national believers trained up to lead them.
“My philosophy there was to build a strong, stable, self-supporting church by any means possible for God’s glory,” Smith said.
In 1980 the IMB asked Smith to change his responsibilities: he began developing Sunday School curriculum for the Caribbean. The family moved to El Paso, Texas, and then to a home in Gulf Shores that Smith had bought in the 1970s.
By Smith’s reckoning he wrote 1,500 Bible study lessons that were cycled among 200,000 people over the years.
Since retirement, Smith has used his freedom and his finances to continue missions work.
“I feel just as called now as I’ve been since 1958,” Smith said.
Though now residents of Greensboro, the Smiths take missions trips with whomever they can. Their most recent missions team consisted primarily of people from Hale Baptist Association, including Dee McGuire, pastor of Greensboro Baptist Church. Smith also preaches occasionally, especially on the value of volunteer missions.
“I don’t like to hear people give excuses about it,” Smith said. “I’m 85 and still going.”
Reflecting on his experiences, Smith said he has learned the importance of living life God’s way.
“God will bless you all you will let Him,” he said. “You just have to live and do it His way.”
Smith plans to return to Pindal in July 2013 with a team to do Vacation Bible School and more medical missions. As long as he lives, he plans to give his time and his energy to serving God’s kingdom.
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