David McDonnall, one of four Baptist workers killed March 15 in Iraq, and his wife, Carrie, “endeared themselves to our church,” Pastor Michael Dean said.
The McDonnalls, kneeling at the altar of Travis Avenue Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, were commissioned and prayed for by the congregation before they departed last fall for full-time service in Iraq.
“No doubt that image is still very vivid in the minds of many of our people,” Dean said. “It puts a very personal touch to the risk of the calling of missions.”
Dean recalled a visit with the McDonnalls in his office last fall as David wondered aloud about security concerns in Iraq and even whether he should buy a gun. But, as they talked, it became clear they would choose to heed any recommended safety precautions, but otherwise they would trust in the Lord.
Speaking with McDonnall’s parents in Colorado the day after his death, Dean said he had an opportunity to tell them “their son was one of the most godly and courageous young men that I’ve ever met.”
McDonnall’s wife, Carrie, was in stable condition at the U.S. Army hospital at Landsthul, Germany at press time, according to Baptist Press, the lone survivor of the attack in which David and three other International Mission Board (IMB) workers were killed.
The couple met while serving as two-year Journeymen with the IMB in northern Africa and the Middle East. They then enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth to prepare for further missions service.
Last summer, the McDonnalls led a team of about a dozen Southwestern students to Iraq on a three-week volunteer trip to distribute food, renovate an elementary school, and explore possibilities for other humanitarian initiatives in northern Iraq.
During that trip, the couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary.
Southwestern’s President Paige Patterson, and his wife, Dorothy, were in Germany at the time of McDonnall’s death and were planning to remain in the country to minister to Carrie McDonnall when she arrived there.
McDonnall, 29, a native of Colorado Springs, Colo., had a “charismatic personality … [and] always had a story to tell about the adventures of being a worker in the Middle East,” said Brennan Searcy, a Southwestern Ph.D. Old Testament student who went on the volunteer trip the McDonnalls led to Iraq.
Carrie McDonnall, 26, is a native of Sulphur Springs, Texas. Searcy said she is a “strong, godly girl who loved her husband and [is] a skilled missionary herself” with a similar heart for God and the people of the region. (BP)
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