Pastor Lamerique, now with the Lord due to the tragic earthquake, was one of the leading Baptist pastors in Haiti. He led a church of 600, managed a kindergarten, a primary school and a children's sports club. His wife and children survived. They shared the happenings of the devastating hour:

 

 

"I was reading on the first floor when the earth moved as if a great chasm opened up and our house fell into it," said  Bioutelle, the 11 year old daughter.

"My mother and father were talking in the living room; my father was just standing up to leave the house. A piece of the ceiling fell down, hit his head and he fell on the ground. My mother also fell down on the ground and rolled under the table. As for me, I don't know what happened to me. All I remember is my older brother pulling me out from under the rubble. My leg was hurting very badly but it only had scratches on it."

The eldest child, Bethill, 16 years old, joins in: "I was watching TV on the second floor and I heard a screeching, exploding noise as the house collapsed. I was not hurt and I was able to pull my little sister out from under the ruins. My younger brother was not at home, he was at [our] grandmother's place. We heard the screaming of our mother and we found her under the concrete rubble. She could not move. My sister and I tried to rescue her and pull her out. I don't know how we managed it. I'm only 16 and not very strong; Bioutelle's just a little girl. Our dad was too deep under, we could not move him. He did not speak a word and he did not move. My mother is saying that it is possible that he died immediately when the ceiling fell on his head."

"It is difficult, our hearts are broken," said Bethill.

[She] shared how she loves to play and to make music on the flute and the violin. When I asked her to play me her favorite piece she says she cannot. "It has broken to pieces in the earthquake, like our dreams."

C. Bill Hogue, a former vice president of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), died on January 26 in Texas in the United States, after a year long struggle with cancer. He was 82 years old.

 
Hogue served in several capacities within the BWA, including as a member of the General Council and the Executive Committee, the two governing bodies of the international organization. He was also a longstanding member of the Executive Committee of the BWA Division of Evangelism and Education (E&E) where he, along with former E&E director, Tony Cupit, shared in several projects around the world. He was a member of the Search Committee that recommended the appointment of Neville Callam as BWA General Secretary to succeed Denton Lotz in 2007.

 

At the time of his passing, Hogue was a member of the BWA Memorial Committee, the Mission and Evangelism Workgroup, and the Personnel committee.

From the time he met with Hogue when he appeared before the BWA Search Committee, Callam said he found Hogue to be "a gracious and compassionate person who had breadth and depth of vision for Christian involvement in the world and also a heart for people."

The BWA leader stated that, "In Bill Hogue's passing, the Baptist World Alliance has lost a vital partner, a team builder, and a special friend."

"I have the fondest memories of Bill from the time I joined the BWA in the late 1980s," said BWA President David Coffey.  "From the beginning of our friendship he was a brother beloved. I feel impoverished by the thought that I will never see Bill again at a BWA Gathering," Coffey declared.  "He was a Barnabas of an encourager; he stayed passionately focused on the Great Commission of Jesus; he was a loyal and gifted ambassador who carried infectiously a vision for the work of the BWA."

Former BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz described Hogue as "a man with a passion for evangelism but who also had a heart for racial reconciliation and social justice."

A native of the state of Texas, Hogue graduated from Howard Payne University in Brownwood and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He served as a pastor of three congregations in Texas and one in Oklahoma from 1952-1971.

From 1971-1973, he was director of evangelism for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma; vice president for evangelism of the Southern Baptist Convention's Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) between 1973 and 82; and executive director of the California Southern Baptist Convention  from 1985-1995.

He leaves Betty, his wife of more than 60 years, four sons, and a daughter.

Funeral services were held on January 30 at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church in Brownwood, Texas.
 
 
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For these stories and more, visit the BWA website at www.bwanet.org. 

 

 

Baptist World Aid

 

 

Mt. Meru University, Water Borehole - 21,375.00

Micah Challenge USA - 500.00

 

Haiti

 

Monthly Prayer Guide

Each week, the staff of the Baptist World Alliance prays for conventions and unions throughout the world.
 
We invite all other Baptist conventions and unions, and individual Baptists everywhere, to join us in these prayers.
 
For the month of February we will remember the following:

 

BWA Women's Leadership Conference: July 24-27, 2010, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

20th Baptist World Congress: July 28-August 1, 2010, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

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