1999–2010 — Dallas & Tyler, Texas • concurrent deployments to New York, Iran, Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and North Korea
In March 1999, nine months before his 65th birthday, Dr. John LaNoue retired from his denominational career with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Baptist Sunday School Board / Lifeway Christian Resources, intending to write Walking with God in Broken Places. The next month, an annual physical with family physician Dr. John English returned a PSA reading of 4.5 ng/mL, above the era’s 4.0 ng/mL upper limit of normal. A seven-sample biopsy by Tyler urologist Dr. Charles T. Dickson Jr. returned five positive samples with a Gleason score above seven — aggressive disease. LaNoue’s longtime physician and 27-year ministry partner, Dr. Kerfoot Pollock Walker Jr. (an advisor to Amigos Internacionales), counseled him directly: “John, if it is cancer, GET IT OUT!”
LaNoue underwent a radical prostatectomy in mid-1999. When PSA rose again five months later, he received 33 radiation treatments; when it rose again, he began a chemo-hormone injection regimen administered every six months, continuing through the 2010 writing of the book and beyond. Chapter 14 records this as an 11-year cancer-management period during which LaNoue concurrently deployed to New York after 9/11, the Bam, Iran earthquake, the Sri Lanka tsunami, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia refugee work, and multiple North Korea missions — where Korean nationals came to call him “Halabaji” (Grandfather John). The chapter is written, LaNoue notes, from the back seat of the family car as his wife Kaywin drives him to a chemo-hormone injection appointment.
Chapter 14 is the chapter that proves Walking with God in Broken Places is discipleship literature, not disaster history. Chapters 1–13 had recorded LaNoue’s institutional acts of ministering to broken places — hurricanes, tornadoes, mobile clinics, earthquakes, cholera epidemics. Chapter 14 is the chapter in which the broken place becomes LaNoue himself. It is the primary first-person account of how a leader of a disaster-relief institution sustained eleven years of major international deployment — 9/11, Bam, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, North Korea — while concurrently managing aggressive prostate cancer through surgery, radiation, and chemo-hormone injection.
The chapter is also notable for documenting Dr. K.P. Walker’s dual role: the same physician who gave LaNoue the “GET IT OUT!” surgical counsel in 1999 was, across decades, an institutional advisor to Amigos Internacionales — a governance thread that ties LaNoue’s personal medical history directly into the Amigos institutional record.
Dr. John LaNoue — Patient, retired denominational worker, and book author; writes Chapter 14 from the back seat of the family car during a chemo trip.
Kaywin Joan Baldwin LaNoue — LaNoue’s wife of 45 years at diagnosis (56 at writing); caregiver and driver for chemo-hormone injection trips.
Dr. Kerfoot Pollock Walker Jr. (“Dr. K.P. Walker,” 1930–2022) — LaNoue’s physician and 27-year ministry partner; a Tyler, Texas internal-medicine physician with over fifty years of volunteer Christian medical-mission practice across more than thirty countries, and an explicit advisor to Amigos Internacionales.
Dr. Charles T. Dickson Jr., MD (“Chuck Dickson”) — Tyler-based urologist who performed LaNoue’s biopsy and radical prostatectomy; trained at UT Southwestern Medical Center; described by LaNoue as “a warm hearted Christian man who was an active witness for his faith.”
John LaNoue Jr., MD — LaNoue’s son, a pediatric surgeon at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, who bridged the medical referral chain by recommending Dr. English and helping confirm Dickson’s surgical credentials.
Dr. John English — LaNoue’s family physician in Dallas, a former intern under John LaNoue Jr. at Parkland Hospital, who identified the elevated PSA reading and made the referral to Dr. Dickson.
Lydia LaNoue Slinkard — LaNoue’s daughter, among the family members who received the diagnosis news.