1968–69 (Sears tractor) • 1971–72 (mobile-unit construction) — Mesquite & San Antonio, Texas
After the HEC-006 committee approved LaNoue's design and named him builder, he was left, in his words, with “an enormous project and two promises”: Miss Eula Mae Henderson, Director of the Women's Missionary Union of Texas, pledged \$26,000 for construction, and Bob Dixon promised Texas Baptist Men workforce support. LaNoue and Dr. Eugene Greer toured every used-trailer lot in Dallas without finding a match, then LaNoue located a 45-foot Dorsey drop-frame electronics trailer in San Antonio. He hauled it home behind a Sears Roebuck surplus tractor he had acquired two years earlier through a \$750 faith-bid — made with no money in hand — that an unnamed Sunday School classmate, an attorney for Sears, covered on the spot.
The trailer pickup in San Antonio went wrong before it went right: a king pin missed the fifth-wheel lock, the landing gear collapsed, and LaNoue worked alone with a small hydraulic jack until 2 a.m. before driving six hours home through morning rush hour. Backing the rig down a 12-foot Mesquite alley and into his driveway with a jack and bricks became local legend. What followed was six weeks of 90-hour work weeks at the LaNoue home — garage as workshop, den as dormitory, kitchen as café — with Kaywin LaNoue as procurement officer, nine-year-old John LaNoue II as prayer-list keeper, and Kaywin's mother Elizabeth “Becky” Baldwin feeding the crews. Construction choices LaNoue later called “over-engineered” — an aircraft-fuselage-style glued-and-screwed ceiling and a custom-dimensioned propane tank — would prove providential two years later during Hurricane Fifi in Honduras. The chapter closes as the nearly finished unit receives its first call to service: the May 1972 Guadalupe River flood, documented in HEC-008.
Chapter 7 documents the construction-phase translation of the HEC-006 design into the operational unit deployed in HEC-008. Three structural elements converge: the faith-bidding pattern LaNoue used to acquire the Sears tractor in 1968–69 — bidding before funding was secured, relying on relational networks to cover the gap — prefigured the build-funding model for the mobile unit itself; the 1971 Mary Hill Davis Offering allocation (recorded as \$26,000 in Voice 2, \$25,000 in external Baptist sources) was the first denominational state-missions-offering allocation for SBDR equipment infrastructure, a funding pattern still in use 56 years later; and the “over-engineered” build choices — the glued-and-screwed ceiling structure and the custom-dimensioned propane tank — became the very features that preserved the rig and its crew during the 1974 Hurricane Fifi deployment to Honduras.
The chapter also documents the family-and-volunteer build economy that made a six-week, 90-hour-per-week construction schedule achievable: a TBM volunteer workforce, a WMU prayer-and-supply chain, Kaywin LaNoue's procurement discipline, and a nine-year-old's determination to have “a part in this project” through prayer.
Dr. John LaNoue — Designer (HEC-006) and builder (HEC-007) of the first SBDR mobile feeding unit; acquired the Sears tractor by faith-bid and built the unit at his Mesquite home.
Dr. Kaywin Baldwin LaNoue (“Dr. L.”) — Procurement officer for the build; bargained the 25 KW generator from \$4,000 to \$2,500, applying her father's doctrine to “always pay cash and always buy wholesale.”
Bob Dixon — Texas Baptist Men staff; provided the volunteer workforce promise and issued the TBM prayer request that produced it; later called LaNoue with the first service assignment.
Miss Eula Mae Henderson — Women's Missionary Union of Texas Executive Director (1947–c. 1981); pledged \$26,000 for construction and coordinated the WMU prayer-and-supply chain.
John LaNoue II (age 9) — LaNoue's son; asked for a prayer list to have “a part in this project”; kept tools organized after school; later the controls-station operator at Seguin (HEC-008).
Elizabeth “Becky” Baldwin — Kaywin's mother, a former Illinois restaurateur who lived with the LaNoue family for ten years; fed the construction crews daily.
J. Edwin Nusko — One of Amigos Internacionales' three original trustees and first vice president of the First National Bank of Athens, Texas; the only team member with tractor-trailer driving experience, though not present for the San Antonio trip.
Dr. Eugene Greer — McLaughlin's executive assistant; accompanied LaNoue on the unsuccessful Dallas used-trailer search.