Missionary Couple finds opportunity

BROWNSVILLE, Texas?Assisting youth groups on summer missions in the Rio Grande Valley is just an extension of the work conducted daily by Dwight and Connie Hendrick. But it brings some of the greatest rewards.

“I’m doing this for the kids,” said Dwight Hendrick of his work with the Mission Outreach Center (MOC), a ministry of First Baptist Church, Brownsville. Yes, souls are being saved. And, yes, needs are being met in an impoverished region. But what gets 75-year-old Hendrick excited about his job as a missionary is seeing teenagers get excited about sharing the gospel.

He told of one teenage boy approaching him after a morning of street evangelism in Mexico’s colonias?squatter towns of ramshackle tin and cardboard buildings with no electricity or running water. The youth had led someone in prayer after an evangelistic encounter. Hendrick said the boy went away so happy about what he had done.

In the 1950s Hendrick could have never seen himself being a missionary, especially one living in a remote part of Varacruz, Mexico. But he was saved during a youth Bible study?a Bible study that he was leading. The lesson was on Eph. 2:8-9. “One person responded to that message, and that was me.” It was like a light went off in his head, he recalled. By 1956 he and his family were in Mexico City witnessing in the streets and behind any door that would open to them. Shortly thereafter, Hendrick was sent to Varacruz.

But by 1965 it became evident that the Hendrick teenagers needed Christian fellowship with peers and a quality high school education to get into college in the States. So the family left for Brownsville. One year later Hendrick’s wife died of cancer.

It was a common tragedy that brought Dwight and Connie together just four years later. Halfway across the ocean in Hawaii, Connie had lost her first husband to the same illness. “I saw my husband die when I was 26,” she said, adding “Life is so short.” That life lesson instilled in her the urgency of sharing Christ.

Connie and Dwight were friends before their spouses died and in 1970 they married. It was a marriage of mutual passion?a passion for seeing the lost of Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley come to know the Lord.

The couple has served the Lord as independent missionaries, receiving regular financial support from churches in California and New York and from individuals. Their church home, First Baptist Church, Brownsville, also contributes to the Hendrick ministry.

Every day they cross the border into Mexico. “The people’s needs are so great,” Connie said. So much of her time is spent delivering food, clothing, school supplies, and uniforms. During the summer, Connie prepares three meals a day with help from FBC teens, feeding 30-75 teenagers per meal.

Their work is not glamorous and it often takes them into the lives of people who are desperately impoverished, but it’s what they do. “We’re missionaries,” Connie said matter-of-factly.

But the couple’s first priority, according to FBC Pastor Steve Dorman, is evangelism and starting Bible studies. Once study groups are formed, the Hendricks recruit area pastors to continue the work.

Dorman referred to the missionaries as “the pastors’ friends” because of the assistance and encouragement they give to church leaders south of the border. “They just have a huge heart,” he said.

Their work goes far beyond meeting the simple physical needs of the poorest Mexican people. One woman, whom Hendrick described as being “on fire for the Lord”?will be receiving surgical care paid for by their ministry. Hendrick said they are helping with the financial costs, because he could not bear to lose such a dynamic witness for God.

But it is during the summer months that the Hendricks, along with numerous volunteers from FBC Brownsville, are kept the busiest. Together they operate the church’s Mission Operation Center, a staging area for mission groups who come to evangelize the valley and Mexico.

The couple facilitates FBC Missions and Education Pastor Ricardo Rivera. Hendrick’s main contribution to the MOC program is selecting sites within the Mexican colonias for door-to-door evangelism. Using an English/ Spanish Bible tract created by Hendrick almost 20 years ago, the mission youth groups fan out every Monday morning sharing the gospel in simple Spanish terms taught to them by Hendrick the day before.

The first day his new Bible tract was used almost 20 years ago, Hendrick said he was nervous. A youth group was sent into the streets of Mexico.