Spring 1967 – June 5, 1967 — Athens, Texas & East Texas
In the spring of 1967, Dr. John Long LaNoue Sr. and Jim Wren launched the first medical clinic of what would become Amigos Internacionales, Inc. — a lay-volunteer international ministry formally incorporated under Texas law. What began with a borrowed trailer, volunteer East Texas physicians, and a prayer for transportation became the institutional seed for more than five decades of faith-based humanitarian work across four continents.
The founding chapter of Walking with God in Broken Places documents the institutional formation of Amigos Internacionales under conditions of denominational-legal constraint: the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) State Missions Commission could not formally sponsor a cross-cultural medical ministry led by laypersons who were not credentialed missionaries. LaNoue's response was to form an independent 501(c)(3) — legally separate from the BGCT but operating with full denominational cooperation and moral support.
The first mobile clinic departed Athens, Texas on or around June 5, 1967. It carried volunteer physicians, dental equipment, medications, and a conviction stated in John 14:12–15 as its operational mandate: that ordinary believers, acting in obedience, could do the works of Christ. That conviction has governed Amigos Internacionales for nearly sixty years.
HEC-001 is the foundational anchor for the entire Walking with God Legacy Repository. Every subsequent dossier — from Hurricane Fifi in Honduras to Ground Zero in New York City to the famine in North Korea — traces its institutional lineage to the organizational decisions documented here.
The chapter establishes the operational doctrine that defines Amigos across all subsequent chapters: layperson-led, volunteer-executed, denominationally cooperative but legally independent, sustained by providential resource provision rather than institutional budget cycles.
The Amigos Belize bank account opened in this period — funded by early ministry collections — would solve an unforeseen logistics crisis in Honduras nine years later. The physician relationships built in East Texas in 1967 would anchor the medical fellowship that traveled to Mexico City in 1985. The pattern of God pre-positioning resources before the need is known begins here, in 1967, and repeats across every subsequent chapter of the memoir.
Amigos Internacionales, Inc. — Founded 1967, Athens, Texas. EIN 23-7000057. IRS ruling year 1968. All-volunteer, independent 501(c)(3). Current headquarters: Whitehouse, Texas.
Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) — State Missions Commission declined to formally sponsor the ministry; individual BGCT churches provided financial and volunteer support throughout the founding period.
Texas Baptist Men (TBM) — LaNoue's employer organization during and after the founding period. TBM leadership, particularly Bob Dixon, provided operational cooperation that would expand into the full disaster relief partnership documented in HEC-006 through HEC-013.
Los Vecinos Baptist Mission — First field site for the mobile medical clinic; served underserved Hispanic communities in East Texas.
East Texas Colleges — Kilgore College, LeTourneau College, Henderson County Junior College, and Panola College provided student volunteer support and logistical connections during the founding period.
Mt. Lebanon Conference Center — Used for early Amigos planning and training gatherings.
"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." — John 14:12
This is the operational text of Amigos Internacionales. Not a fundraising slogan. Not a mission statement drafted by a committee. A direct promise from Christ to ordinary believers, taken by Dr. John LaNoue as a literal operational mandate in the spring of 1967 and applied unchanged across every subsequent chapter of the memoir.
Chapter 1 establishes three doctrines that will be tested and confirmed in every subsequent HEC dossier: (1) Layperson-led ministry is not a compromise of professional mission work — it is its own calling. (2) Denominational cooperation and institutional independence are not contradictions. (3) Resources are pre-positioned by providence before the need is known. The Belize bank account opened in this period is the first documented instance of that third doctrine.