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Lyn Hyde is hoping Southern Baptists will remember her on October 22. For 25 years she has known the power of their collective prayers on her birthday when her name is included on a missionary prayer list. A much different circumstance prompts her call for prayer this time.
Seven and one-half months after her husband, Bill, was killed by a terrorist’s bomb on the Filipino island of Mindanao, she’ll return to the Davao City airport where the March 4 explosion took place. While sharing her testimony God’s grace before International Mission Board trustees meeting Sept. 10 in Austin, Texas, Lyn Hyde said, “There is only one airport that I will fly back into and I will walk through the place where Bill was killed. I’ll go back to our duplex where we lived where Bill will not be, but his things will be.”
Over the three weeks of her visit, Hyde said she will seek to “hear from the Lord, continue the grieving process and try to determine what God is saying to me for my future.” She expressed gratitude for the IMB providing a full year to make a decision as to whether she will return to the Philippines as a missionary. Asking for continued prayer for her sons who, though ages 31 and 32, are deeply grieving the loss of their father. “As God continues to bring good to our lives, we can count on him doing that for us.”
In a testimony interspersed with scriptural references that had sustained her through the loss of her husband of 37 years, Lyn Hyde explained why they began serving as missionaries in 1978. “The reason Bill and I went to the Philippines is that the Great Commission has not yet been fully obeyed. We are called to follow Christ and to lay down our lives for the cause of Christ. Bill has returned to his owner and maker,” she said, expressing her thanks for the 37 years of marriage in which he was loaned by God to her. Quoting Isaiah 54:5, she said she was experiencing the reality of that scripture, reciting, “My maker is my husband, the Lord almighty is his name.”
Hyde has been living in Argyle, Texas, having one son, Tim, in nearby McKinney where he is a contractor. Her son Steve founded Words of Life Ministries, a missions organization in Southeast Asia and currently serves in Cambodia. While in the States she has enjoyed being a member of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, she said.
With the realization that March 4 was the only time she had not stood next to her husband while waiting to pick up fellow missionaries at the airport, Lyn Hyde is convinced God left her here to fulfill his purpose. “When the bomb exploded that killed my husband, it was as if my life was blown up into a thousand pieces like a jigsaw puzzle,” she shared. “In the hours and the days that I’ve spent with the Lord since that time, the Lord is slowly beginning to turn over the pieces of that puzzle.” As he puts them back together again, she knows the picture will not be the same as her husband is not there.
“I was complaining to the Lord not long ago that he has not even given me the border pieces of the puzzle of my life.” Quoting Psalm 16:5-6, she remembered, “‘Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.'”
In recent months Lyn Hyde has begun to see that the Lord is the border of her life, she said. When her husband’s life was cut short by a terrorist bombing she realized, “That did not kill a call to missions on my life. From the time I was seven years old when I came to know the Lord and from the time I met my first real-life missionary, all I ever wanted to be was a missionary. Even though Bill is gone from me, that call has not gone away.”
As she trusts God to put the pieces of her life back together again to send her back to the mission field, Lyn Hyde recognizes, “We all need to be alert for the fact that we are in a world in which we live where the enemy has been released.
“This is not an isolated incident. We need to see the larger picture taking place around the world,” she urged. “The cost for each one of us and the cost for the IMB is going to be far greater.” Through forensics studies conducted by the FBI, she learned shortly after the murder of her husband that the bomb materials were connected to the al- Qaeda network. Another 43 Filipinos died as a result of injuries from the blast with another 136 people injured. “We do know without any doubt that these people are enemies of Jesus Christ and we became the victims of these people.”
Upon his return from
