Fall 1972 – 1973 — Mesquite & Dallas, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee
Twenty months after completing the first TBM mobile disaster unit, John LaNoue considered himself indispensable to the BGCT disaster relief program he had built. In fall 1972 he received two competing invitations — the Baptist Sunday School Board's Church Recreation Department wanted him to develop national camping and outdoor-education curricula in Nashville, and the lay leadership of Amigos Internacionales, the medical missions organization he had founded in 1967, wanted him as their first full-time director. LaNoue resisted both, offering what he later called “a negative prayer with a disclaimer attached.”
On Thanksgiving Day 1972, a widowed friend and Amigos volunteer physician, Dr. James Krafft, asked to be dropped at a Dallas-area Episcopal church's charismatic prayer meeting. LaNoue and his wife Kaywin stayed, witnessed a service unlike anything in their Baptist experience, and heard a man deliver an unsolicited prophetic word they both immediately recognized as meant for them: “You have no need to be fearful. Be obedient, come and follow Me, my children.” The next day, Dr. Lamar McNew and his wife Liz drove 200 miles from College Station for a prayer session of their own; after about two hours, Liz McNew, weeping, delivered the identical prophecy word-for-word. All four people present independently wrote “Nashville” on paper ballots. LaNoue called BSSB director Ray Conner the following Monday and accepted the Nashville position. Jerry Bob Taylor, who had grown up in his father's auto repair shop, seamlessly took over the mobile unit's maintenance — a lesson in LaNoue's own dispensability. The move to Nashville positioned LaNoue for the BSSB-authorized Hurricane Fifi deployment to Honduras two years later, documented in HEC-010.
Chapter 9 is the pivot between LaNoue's BGCT field-operations era, documented in HEC-006 through HEC-008, and his BSSB national-curriculum-development era — the same position that would authorize his month-long absence for the 1974 Hurricane Fifi response in Honduras (HEC-010). It is also the Repository's principal documented encounter with the Episcopal Charismatic Renewal movement, occurring within months of the February 1972 Dallas conference of 300 charismatic Episcopal priests and the 1973 founding of the Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship in Dallas.
The chapter documents how the Amigos Internacionales volunteer-physician network functioned in practice: Dr. James Krafft, LaNoue's son's pediatrician, was the bridge to the Thanksgiving Day encounter, and Dr. Lamar McNew's willingness to drive 200 miles for a prayer session illustrates the depth of relational commitment within that network. The Jerry Bob Taylor succession — a smooth transition of the mobile unit's maintenance to someone who “grew up in his father's auto repair shop” and knew the unit “inside and out” — stands as LaNoue's own recorded correction of the indispensability he had claimed for himself throughout the chapter.
Dr. John LaNoue — Subject of the vocational transition; recipient of the prophetic word; accepted the BSSB Church Recreation Department position in Nashville.
Kaywin LaNoue — LaNoue's wife; co-recipient of the prophetic word at the Episcopal church and co-writer of a “Nashville” ballot.
John LaNoue II — LaNoue's son, whose allergy sensitivity to Nashville's pollen profile was the family's primary practical concern about the move.
Dr. James Krafft, M.D. — LaNoue's son's pediatrician, a recently widowed Amigos Internacionales volunteer physician and Baptist deacon; the Thanksgiving 1972 guest whose request to attend an Episcopal prayer meeting became the bridge to the renewal encounter.
Dr. Lamar McNew Jr., M.D. — A College Station family practitioner and Amigos Internacionales volunteer physician who drove 200 miles with his wife for a prayer session, later a namesake of a Texas Medical Association award.
Elizabeth Ann Miller “Liz” McNew — Lamar McNew's wife; delivered the identical prophecy at the Dallas prayer session, providing the second-channel confirmation that resolved the family's decision.
Ray Conner — Director of the BSSB Church Recreation Department; hired LaNoue and later, in HEC-010, authorized his month-long absence for the Hurricane Fifi response.
Bob Dixon — Texas Baptist Men executive director from whom LaNoue was departing; the institutional continuity figure after LaNoue's move.
Jerry Bob Taylor — LaNoue's successor in TBM mobile unit maintenance; grew up in his father's auto repair shop in Brownwood, Texas, and had helped build the unit.