March 10, 2003
Bomb attack at Philippines airport
kills Baptist missionary, wounds child
___RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--The Southern Baptist missionary killed in a March 4 bomb attack at a Philippines airport was a man of vibrant faith with an inspiring passion for non-Christians, International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin
said.
___Bill Hyde, 59, died of severe head and leg injuries caused by a bomb hidden in a backpack and left under a rain shelter at the international airport in Davao. He was at the airport to meet another missionary family, Mark and Barbara Stevens, on their return from a trip out of town.
___That Hyde regularly shuttled missionaries to and from the airport symbolized his servant's heart, Rankin said, but he will be remembered even more for his concern for people who had never experienced the love of God for themselves.
___"Bill's colleagues and Filipino coworkers knew him as an encourager and a servant," Rankin said. "But his passion for reaching the lost of the Philippines led him to a church planting assignment on the southern island of Mindanao. He had a passion to go to the edge, to the hard-to-reach places, training lay pastors and evangelists and starting churches."
___Hyde's enthusiasm for the gospel resulted in hundreds of churches being started in remote parts of Mindanao, said a longtime coworker.
___"Bill was the type of person who had the passion for going out to the hard-to-reach places to train Filipinos to go out and start churches," said Don Phelps, a former missionary colleague who now serves as minister of missions at Grove Avenue Baptist Church in Richmond, Va. "His conviction was great that there was no place that was beyond the reach of God's spirit and his truck.
___"He would load it up with Filipino pastors and lay leaders and take them out to start churches in tribal areas and up in the rural areas. There were hundreds of churches planted in a short amount of time in different areas where he and (his wife) Lyn lived and served."
___Meanwhile, the infant son of the Stevenses, who was injured in the blast, was upgraded to stable condition at a Davao City hospital.
___Nathan Stevens suffered a shrapnel wound to his liver and was in delicate condition for 48 hours, said IMB spokeswoman Wendy Norvelle. His sister, Sarah, 4, suffered minor injuries in the explosion and was treated and released at the hospital. His mother, Barbara, 33, was slightly injured. His father, Mark, 31, escaped injury.
___At least 21 people were killed and 148 injured in the attack, which occurred late in the afternoon outside the arrival terminal of the Davao airport in the Philippines' second-largest city.
___Bill Hyde was a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and was a non-resident member of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano.
The Baptist Standard
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
|