Imagine more than a thousand people cheering and applauding for you—and hundreds of them wearing T-shirts with your picture on the front.
Missionaries Tom and Susan Canady received that unusual treatment from Honduran Baptists when they left Honduras in 2007 after 30 years of service. Baptists honored them with dinners, parties and other gatherings for weeks and even named the Baptist seminary in San Pedro Sula after Tom!
Why are the Canadys such heroes to Honduran Baptists?
Consider that there were just 22 Baptist churches in this mountainous Central American country when the Canadys went there after studying Spanish in Costa Rica for a year.
But when the Canadys returned to their native Wilmington to retire, there were 436 churches, many of which Tom helped start. He taught the pastors of many others as their seminary professor.
North Carolina Baptists can feel they have been a part of the Canadys’ work, because their missions giving helped the couple serve.
But here’s a question: How does a young North Carolina couple with two kids (their third was born in Honduras) decide God is calling them to serve Him in another country? Why would such an implausible idea even occur to them?
Why Missions?
Ask Tom and Susan and they gaze into a pool of memories 40 years deep. Baptist Men and Woman’s Missionary Union played key roles in their ministry choices, they agree.
Both ministries are supported by the North Carolina Mission Offering.
“My first real exposure to missions was in Royal Ambassadors,” Tom said. “The church we attended didn’t have anything for young people, but many of my friends went to Masonboro Baptist Church.
“They were all in RAs. And the RAs welcomed me in unconditionally, to basketball, baseball and summer camps. They adopted me into everything. It was a real strong influence on me,” he said.
The RA motto, which includes the words, “to become a well-informed, responsible follower of Christ” has stayed with Tom his entire life.
The Masonboro leader Tom credits the most is J.P. McGinnis. “He and his wife just celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary and he was involved in RAs for more than 40 years. In fact, he was leading RAs until recently. He was so proud when we went into missions,” Tom said.
In one Wilmington Christmas parade a few years ago Wilmington Baptist Association, inspired by J.P. McGinnis to be sure, prepared a float which celebrated Tom Canady’s life -- “from RA to missionary!”
Wrightsville Beach Baptist Church, which Susan’s family attended, had a strong Woman’s Missionary Union that emphasized missions.
“I got to hear about missions both through the WMU and also from missionaries who came to speak as they promoted the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,” she recalled.
While Tom was preparing for ministry at Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute they were members of Mud Creek Baptist Church. Susan led the YWAs, Young Women’s Auxiliary.
After Fruitland, Tom earned an associate of arts degree at Isothermal Community College then went on to Gardner-Webb University for a BA degree. There he was called to his first church, Faith Baptist Church in Mill Spring, N.C.
A Saint’s Influence
At Faith, Mrs. Pauline Bell was the WMU director. “She was a saint if ever there was one,” Tom said. “Every summer she would take kids to camp at Ridgecrest. When they told me that was their custom, I said ‘Fine, which week?’
“And Mrs. Bell said they always went to foreign missions week. I asked why. She said, ‘We just feel the Lord may call one of our young people to the mission field.’ And sure enough, He called somebody from the church that summer. It was us!” Tom said.
They did not go immediately, but moved to pastor Drakes Branch Baptist Church in Drakes Branch, VA, a strong mission-minded church which has sent volunteer teams to Honduras every year for the past 25 years.
Later Tom also earned a MAT degree from Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., plus master of divinity and doctor of ministries degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; his doctorate enabled him to teach seminary once in Honduras.
Susan worked with the Honduran Woman’s Missionary Union during the three decades of service in Honduras; she had seen first-hand in her own life the value of teaching missions to young people and to women, leading them to do missions and pray for missionaries.
Looking Ahead
The Canadys will miss Honduras and their many friends and co-workers, yet they feel good about the work they were enabled to do because of the faithful giving of Baptists back home.
And it was the RA program and the missions education programs of Woman’s Missionary Union that helped the Canadys understand missions as God’s plan to redeem a lost world—and that they could have a part in it.
Winning the world to Christ will take sacrificial giving, and it will take many churches who will introduce missions to tomorrow’s new missionaries. It will take, in essence, more Pauline Bells, more WMU work. And that means North Carolina Baptists will need to increasingly support the North Carolina Mission Offering.
“I worry about where our missionaries will come from in the future if we don’t have WMU to teach, promote and pray,” Tom Canady said.