Don Hunt, director of missions for the Beauregard Baptist Association, learned more than he ever expected as a student at Louisiana College in the late 1960s, he said. It was at LC that Hunt began to learn about God’s provision.
DERIDDER – Don Hunt, director of missions for the Beauregard Baptist Association, learned more than he ever expected as a student at Louisiana College in the late 1960s, he said. It was at LC that Hunt began to learn about God’s provision.
Feeling the call to preach at 18, Hunt wanted to attend LC, but as one of 11 children, he knew funds were tight, he said. However, encouraged by his church, First Baptist, Lake Charles, Hunt applied for financial aid and enrolled.
“When the final bill for close to $2,000 came at the end of the first semester, I had no way to pay it,” Hunt said.
With the bill and final exams – which he couldn’t take until the bill was paid – hanging over his head, Hunt had a prayer meeting in his dorm asking that God would provide a way for him. That was on a Friday.
On Monday, with the bill still unpaid, he went to the business office intending to resign from college.
When a worker pulled his records, she discovered that Hunt’s bill had, in fact, been paid in full. Though she couldn’t tell him the benefactor’s name, the worker assured Hunt that his account was settled and that he could take his final exams.
“Two or three days later, just before a final [exam], a knock came on my door,” Hunt said. It was a trustee of the college, Carroll Hixson, affiliated with Hixson Brothers Funeral Home and a member at First Lake Charles.
Hixson told Hunt that he’d paid the bill and that he would continue to do so as long as Hunt maintained his grades. Hixson also offered to pay for Hunt’s books each semester.
“That was the Lord’s hand for me,” Hunt said. But God provided much more than just financial provision at LC for Hunt, the DOM said. That’s also where he met his helpmate and wife, Doris Virginia Williams.
“She was just so pretty,” Hunt said, remembering the day he met his wife-to-be in the library. “On our first date, we went to the school cafeteria.
“She’s been a partner with me in the ministry as a school teacher, mother, piano player, counselor, and women’s worker through the years,” Hunt added.
Hunt married his sweetheart and the two had four daughters: Jennifer is married to Shane Guillory; Kim is married to Ray McNeal; April is married to Frank Banks; and Kathryn is married to Freddie Doyle. Altogether, the Hunts have 10 grandchildren.
Hunt served nine years in Louisiana after graduating from LC. Once, as associational youth director in Beauregard and Acadia, Hunt attended a convocation in North Carolina where he met a DOM from New York who invited him to do a revival there, Hunt said.
Clinton Road Baptist Church, a newly established church in up state New York, called Hunt, to be their pastor. At the time, Hunt was pastor at First Baptist Church Chataignier, between Ville Platte and Eunice.
Hunt struggled with the idea of leaving Louisiana. With three daughters at the time, the idea seemed impossible, he said. But one night he shared his struggle with St. Clair Bower, a missionary, who told him: “If God calls, God is going to provide.”
His wife confirmed his decision, so Hunt called the deacon at Clinton Road, who also confirmed it. Finances became the next issue.
“We can’t pay you anything,” the deacon told Hunt. “We just think God wants you here.”
Hunt called the North American Mission Board (then known as the Home Mission Board) and applied for financial aid. His application was expedited and by the fall of 1974, he and his family were making their way to upstate New York, having learned about God’s provision yet again.
Hunt spent the next 12 years working at Clinton Road, which prospered and began works with other missions, he said.
Years later, when the Hunts were back home in Louisiana and pastoring at Dry Creek Baptist Church God provided for them yet again, Hunt said.
The position of director of missions for the Beauregard association had come available and one of the the search committee members suggested Hunt submit his resume.
“I did it reluctantly, and then met with the committee, but I still had such strong feelings for the pastorate at Dry Creek,” Hunt said. “We almost had the auditorium paid off, and we were getting ready to build again, and getting ready to elect new deacons. I was struggling with turning loose.
“I called the committee two days after I met with them and asked that they please take my name off the list of candidates. As far as I could tell I was where I was supposed to be. I felt like I was almost betraying Dry Creek.”
A few weeks later Hunt spent a week visiting some churches in Canada that Dry Creek had been supporting.
“I went from town to town to meet with those pastors and wives, delivering money to them that Dry Creek Baptist Church had sent,” he said. “But I also heard their prayer needs and they’d ask for advice, and I would share with them out of my pastoral background. By Saturday I felt the Lord saying, ‘This is what I had in mind for you.’”
But the opportunity to serve as DOM seemed gone, since Hunt had removed his name from the list of candidates, he said.
The next morning, after arriving home from Canada, Hunt received a phone call. The DOM search committee wanted to meet with him again. “I knew that morning that the Lord was leading me to be associational minister,” Hunt said.
As DOM, Hunt works alongside churches, pastors, and church leaders, he said, giving them insight and trying to meet their needs to help them do the ministry God’s called them to do, he said.
Hunt will have been DOM of the Beauregard Association for two years this November, after spending 40 years as a pastor, he said.