September 1974 – Early 1975 — El Progreso, Honduras
Between September 18, 1974 and the early weeks of 1975, the Texas Baptist Men Mobile Disaster Relief Unit — designed by Dr. John LaNoue and built at his Mesquite, Texas home — executed its first international hurricane deployment in response to Hurricane Fifi's devastation of northern Honduras. The unit served approximately 6,000 meals twice daily from El Progreso, Honduras, for several months. Wikipedia later documented "a $30,000 custom-designed food wagon operated by a Baptist church in Texas" feeding the people of El Progreso — external attestation that the operation entered the international historical record.
The deployment was the operational vindication of every engineering decision made during the unit's construction. Most dramatically: the custom thick-walled propane tank that served as the trailer's entire load-bearing structure when the rear axles were suspended in mid-air during barge unloading at Puerto Cortez. The tank held. The paint was scratched. The operation continued.
The chapter closes with the 25-year fruit: in 1999, returning to Honduras for Hurricane Mitch, three Honduran Baptist pastors who had been the watching children of 1974 met LaNoue at the airport. The El Progreso Baptist mission church — a small wooden building with an under-house Sunday School in 1974 — had become a city-block-sized congregation with a K–12 school.
Chapter 10 documents the moment when Texas Baptist Men's institutional disaster-response capability crossed from regional into international hurricane response. The Honduras Fifi deployment was the proving ground for nearly every engineering decision and personnel pattern that would govern Southern Baptist Disaster Relief's subsequent expansion to all 50 states and internationally.
The Wikipedia external attestation — that "one group of people from a Baptist church in Texas spent $30,000 on a custom-designed food wagon to distribute food to the people of El Progreso" — is the chapter's external proof that this operation entered the international historical record of one of the three deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record.
The Amigos Internacionales Belize bank account — opened in 1967 when LaNoue founded Amigos and used for Bible Schools and medical clinics — solved a logistical crisis in 1974 when Bob Dixon could not write checks or use credit cards in Belize for food procurement. God had solved the problem six years before it occurred.
Bob Dixon — TBM Executive Director; operational lead. Designed the mobile feeding unit in partnership with LaNoue (HEC-006, HEC-007). The Dixon-LaNoue operational partnership is tested for the first time at international scale in Honduras.
Dr. Jimmy R. Allen — Pastor, First Baptist Church San Antonio (1968–1980); recent BGCT President (1970–71). His congregation connection to the Honduran Consul General in San Antonio provided the institutional bridge that initiated the Honduras deployment. Future SBC President (1977–79).
Doña Concha — El Progreso resident who partnered with TBM on mass feeding operations. Scaled her capacity from 100 to 6,000 alongside the TBM team during the months of deployment.
Dr. Charles H. Whiteside — AnaLab Corp., Kilgore, Texas. Called in remotely to solve a water-purification crisis during the deployment via Heath Kit ham radio and a 20-meter antenna rigged at Stephen F. Austin State University.
Dr. David Harms, M.D. — IMB ham radio operator; flown to Mexico City immediately after the earthquake to restore communications with missionaries.
Herman "Pop" Crawford, Ernest Liebig, Jerry Bob Taylor — Named TBM team members, Chapter 10.