McDonnall says a call for water led to sacrificed lives

MARIANNA (FBW)–She never heard the soft prayers of the soldiers who stopped to pray at her hospital room door or felt her mother’s tender hand on her forehead while she laid in a drug-induced coma for eight days, but Carrie McDonnall won’t ever forget the urgency of the call to provide water to some Iraqi families.

McDonnall, her husband, David, and three others comprising a team of humanitarian aid workers from the International Mission Board, were seeking to provide water to the Iraqi families who had taken shelter in a run-down factory in Northern Iraq and had only two metal bins for water storage. It was 2003 and both the temperatures and the hostilities in the region were rising at an alarming rate.

“All of us were excited about being welcomed and invited back,” McDonnall told an audience of missionary parents April 1 at the third National Parents’ Retreat at Blue Springs Baptist Conference Center in Marianna. McDonnall said the Iraqi men, women and children had already opened up and had begun sharing their stories with the workers.

“We looked forward to not only supplying them with a viable source of water, but also being able to share with them living water of the truth of who Jesus is,” McDonnall told the parents.

But it never happened.

Instead, just outside of Mosel, a group of men surrounded their vehicle and began shooting inside with automatic weapons.

McDonnall, riddled with bullets, was critically wounded. She was the lone survivor of the attack in which her husband, David, and three other IMB personnel -- Larry and Jean Elliott and Karen Watson -- died of automatic-weapons fire and blasts from rocket-propelled grenades.

Retelling the story, McDonnall said she had been flown to Texas after being treated in U.S. military hospitals. Devastated over the loss of her husband, and grieving over the loss of three friends, she faced an agonizing road to recovery.

“I couldn’t reach over and reach that nurse call button because my arms were bound up,” McDonnall remembered. “I couldn’t reach up to scratch my face. I couldn’t sit up. I could not sit up to hug my parents and they could not reach down and scoop up their broken child.”

Expressing surprise at being asked to speak to parents, McDonnall said, “I kind of was a little bewildered, honestly, because my story is kinda the story of the worst possible nightmare of most missionary parents, honestly.”

Reliving her parents’ experience for those gathered, McDonnall said they found out about the attack just hours after it happened when a good friend from the International Mission Board contacted them. Shortly thereafter they were on an airplane to Germany to be with McDonnall.

“My mom was at work when she received the news. She hit the floor before she could hang up the phone,” McDonnall said. “Many of you all can put yourself in their shoes. I’m sure your heart trembles at the thought of what they dealt with in those next few hours and then months later.”

McDonnall said her mother was confronted with what must have been a startling scenario every day.

“She came in and prayed over me and the only thing she could touch was my forehead because everything else was bandaged,” McDonnall said.

Later, one of the memories McDonnall’s mother shared with her daughter was of off-duty soldiers coming to stand outside the door of the young woman’s hospital room to pray.

Sharing her life story of receiving a call to missions as a teen, graduating from Texas A&M University with a degree in agriculture and serving for two years in Israel working among Muslims — McDonnall spoke briefly of her short engagement to David, their marriage in 2002, their first anniversary on a two-week mission trip to Northern Iraq, and their final assignment as full-time workers to assist in relief and development work in the same region.

In a story she calls one of “God’s faithfulness, of His undying love,” McDonnall said she “fell in love with the Arab culture” and the Arab peoples.

“My eyes were opened up to the vastness of that world and to the light and darkness that existed in this world,” McDonnall recalled. “All of these things I had been taught as a child didn’t hit home until I lived in this dark, penetrating darkness.”

Noting that Christ, however, is not just a light, but a “living presence,” McDonnall said likewise the darkness is a living presence.

“That’s why you pray for your children,” McDonnall said. “That’s why you pray for their presence. I encourage you as you miss your family and you miss your children, to continue to seek after Christ.”

The young woman, who can now walk without assistance and wandered the platform while she spoke, said she feels comfortable sharing with parents because she knows how each of their children prayed for God’s will before leaving for their place of service. “We left knowing our God is worthy no matter the cause,” she said.

“I thank you on behalf of your children and on behalf of my fellow workers in the field … for being support and encouragement to your children,” McDonnall said. “You have given your children the best gift you could possibly give by saying, ‘I support you, I encourage you. Praise God, follow after Him.’”

McDonnall tells her complete story in her book Facing Terror: The true story of how an American couple paid the ultimate price because of their love of Muslim people. It is available at www.Amazon.com and at bookstores.