Four Baptist missionaries looking for a way to bring clean water to northern Iraq died after a suprise attack, their employer said.The latest victim, David E. McDonnall, 28, of Rowlett, Texas, died Tuesday morning while en route to a military support hospital in Baghdad. Four U.S. military surgeons worked for six hours to save his life, according to the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.
His wife, Carrie Taylor McDonnall, 26, is listed in critical condition, the mission board reported. No other missionaries were with the group.
The other three victims were identified as Larry T. Elliott, 60, and Jean Dover Elliott, 58, of Cary, N.C.; and Karen Denise Watson, 38, of Bakersfield, Calif.
The Elliotts were scouting the best location in Iraq for a water purification project, said Michelle DeVoss of Cary, whose First Baptist Church in the Raleigh suburb was home when the Elliotts returned from Honduras, where they had been missionaries since 1978.
"They were fully aware of the risk and they were just called to do it," said DeVoss, who hosted a welcome-back party at her home for the Elliotts in January.
Watson was a detention officer with the Kern County Sheriff's Department in Bakersfield before joining the Richmond, Va.-based mission board in January 2003, said Bill Bangham, a spokesman for the group that coordinates missionary activities for the Southern Baptist Convention. She arrived in Iraq earlier this month to help the Elliotts and others study how best to allocate the mission board's humanitarian efforts, Bangham said.
U.S. Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, a spokesman for American forces in the northern city of Mosul, said in an e-mail message that the victims were traveling Monday in a car on the eastern side of Mosul when they were attacked. A Pentagon spokesman didn't immediately return calls Tuesday seeking additional comment.
The four died from bullet and shell fragment wounds from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, according to the mission board's Web site.
Larry Elliott had experience in disaster relief that included helping Honduras recover from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, DeVoss said. He first traveled to Iraq last month to survey the country's needs and his wife joined him a few weeks later, DeVoss said. The couple planned to return to their home in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa later this month and move permanently to Iraq in June, she said.
"These are two of the most tender-hearted and on-fire Christians I have ever met," said DeVoss, who lived in the Elliotts' home during a November mission trip to Honduras with her husband and 10-year-old son.
"Larry had a fantastic, deep, belly laugh. He enjoyed life and yet served with so much enthusiasm," DeVoss said. "Jean had a heart of gold. She opened her home every time there was a mission group. She just accepted people into her home like they were family."
Larry Elliott was born in South Boston, Va., and grew up in Granville County, Bangham said. Jean Elliott was born and grew up in Shelby.
Every few years, they would return to the U.S. on a furlough and live in Cary for a few weeks in the former parsonage behind the First Baptist Church, said Keith Stevens, chairman of the 2,000-member church's board of deacons.
Larry Kingsley, a church deacon who coordinated the mission work of First Baptist's members, said Larry Elliott had an engineering degree from North Carolina State University.
"He was a person who could just do anything," Kingsley said. He said during one trip to Honduras, he and the Elliotts poured concrete and stationed reinforced beams to raise a church and school.
Unlike their years of working and preaching in Central America, Kingsley said, the Elliotts understood that their humanitarian work in Iraq would focus on helping human needs rather than ministering to souls.
"They knew going into Iraq, they couldn't really share their Christian faith unless somebody asked them," Kingsley said. "They were there in a humanitarian situation. ... They were people who just had a great heart for helping people out."
The Elliotts are survived by two sons, one of them living in the Raleigh area, and a daughter in Texas, DeVoss said.
{Emphasis is mine]
May God comfort their families and friends even as He welcomes them Home to their eternal rest!
Amen.
Thanks for your updated info.