New currents in the Deep Blue Sea - Baptist Bible Tribune

issionary
Bob Hughes
ministry extends far beyond earthly life
By Helen (Hughes) Sears with Keith Bassham
Editors Note: The following was originally published
in Our Baptist Heritage: The Lives of 32 Outstanding
Bible-Believing Baptists, which was published by the
Baptist Bible Tribune in 2000.
Theron Hughes worked hard for his father,
J. W. C. Hughes, who had a successful
farm, several hundred acres of land, cattle, and
sawmills. He and his wife Thelma lived in a
country house in the piney woods of East Texas,
close to the town of Center. In this country
house on the farm, Thelma Hughes gave birth
to her fifth son, Robert Earl Hughes, on August
8, 1932. Robert, or Bob, as he was later known,
had three older brothers, J. T., Jack, and Alton
(Dalton, Alton’s twin, was stillborn). And after
Bob’s birth, younger brothers Kenneth, Johnny,
Billy, Richard, and a younger sister, Mary, added
five more children to the family.
It was hard with such a huge family to
make ends meet, and Theron took on other
jobs to help support them. He was ingenious
with things mechanical and could repair almost
anything. He started a used furniture business.
He would buy old refrigerators for almost
nothing, repair them, and then sell them. All
his sons inherited some of that talent. None
of them had the privilege of going to college.
Some didn’t even finish high school, yet they
managed to do well in business of some sort.
The Hughes family touched by John Rawlings
In 1948, when Bob was 16 years old, John Rawlings,
from nearby Tyler, Texas, held a tent revival
in Center. From that meeting, a church was
formed. Several of the Hughes family, including
Bob’s mother, and later, his father, accepted
Christ. Bob himself made a profession of faith,
though he was not quite sure of his salvation.
A year later, just barely 17 years old, he convinced
his parents to sign for him to go into the
Air Force. After basic training, he was stationed
at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. He
learned sheet metal mechanics and worked on
airplanes.
The Texas church supported some missionaries
in the Philippines and they urged
Bob to contact them. He began going to Manila
where he visited Frank Hooge, Elmer Gullion,
and Joe Vella. All of them had an indelible influence
on Bob Hughes and he realized that he
needed to be born again. He was not saved in
any of their churches, but after one of his trips
to Manila, under deep conviction, he took his
small Bible and got on his knees all alone and
asked the Lord to come into his heart.
Bob spent two years at Clark Air Force
Base. He began to grow and continued his trips
to Manila to visit the missionaries. When he
left the Islands, he left with a sense of the great
need of the Filipino people, a burden so great
that he decided to go to Baptist Bible College
and prepare to be a missionary.
God chooses a mate for Bob
In the meantime, God was working on another
part of Bob’s future. In 1951 Frank Hooge and
his family returned to the United States for
furlough. They showed their slides at a Mission
Prayer Band meeting at Baptist Bible College
in Springfield, Missouri. One of the slides included
the face of Bob Hughes, and Hooge referred
to him as “the service man who had been
visiting me.” Helen Johnston, a BBC student,
was at that Mission Prayer Band and her heart
was touched by the need in the Philippines.
Though she had paid little attention to the pic-
8 | Baptist Bible Tribune | February 2011