Evelyn Carter

Evelyn Elizabeth Winham Carter, an emeritus International Mission Board missionary who shared the gospel among American Affinity Peoples in Mexico, died Dec. 2, 2019, in North Richland Hills, Texas. She was 93.

Carter was born on March 20, 1926, to Mabel and George F. Winham of Louisiana. She graduated from Minden (La.) High School and received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Louisiana College, Pineville.

In her application to become a missionary, Carter wrote about her early years of learning about missions. “I joined the Girls’ Auxiliary (now Girls in Action and Acteens) and here I received my first knowledge of missions and missionaries,” she wrote.

At GA camp, the camp pastor—who was also a missionary to China—”told us some stirring experiences which touched and thrilled our hearts,” she wrote. The final message, she said, “stirred my soul as nothing had ever done. I felt that at last I had been truly saved and was a child of God’s and willing to go wherever He led.”

But years later when her husband, then a pastor and seminary student, told her God was calling him to missions, she said no. Two years later, when he again told her God was calling him to missions, her heart had changed. “We stayed up half the night talking, and I prayed a long time silently about the matter. … My call came in a quiet and undramatic way in the silence of the night with the quiet conviction and knowledge that God needed us.”

Evelyn married Pat Carter on Sept. 5, 1946. They served God in full-time ministry in churches in Louisiana, Texas and California. They were appointed missionaries to Mexico on Oct. 14, 1958. They studied language in San Jose Torreon and did evangelistic work in Merida, Torreon, and Mexico City. Evelyn also taught English in Torreon and worked in the library of the Mexican Baptist Theological Seminary in Torreon and in its new location in Mexico City. During that time, Pat was a faculty member and later president of the seminary for 17 years.

Pat resigned as seminary president in 1983 to become a church planter in Mexico City. The couple started Anastasis Baptist Church, which had an attendance of more than 200 by the time they left the field in 1991 for retirement. The growth came despite community opposition that forced the growing congregation to find a new home.

They retired in 1991 and lived in Kingwood, Texas, where Pat served as associate pastor of First Baptist Church, Kingwood, until they moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth area in 2012.

Evelyn is survived by her husband of 73 years, Pat; their children, David Carter (Vicki), Linda Bullard (David), and Carol Martinez; six grandchildren; eleven great-grandchildren; and her brother, Ansel and sister, Georgene, and their families.

Funeral services were held Dec. 6, 2019.

Read an obituary here.