The newlywed Southern Baptist missionaries knew the risks of helping Iraqis

Five Christian missionaries were attacked by unknown men Monday morning, leaving four dead and one in critical condition. Immediately killed in the attack were missionaries Larry and Jean Elliot of Cary, North Carolina, and Karen Watson of Bakersfield, California.

A pair of newlywed Texas missionaries were among the victims of an ambush in Mosul, Iraq. The McDonnalls married after an earlier mission to the Middle East, when they were both journeymen missionaries. They were on leave from studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, spokesman Greg Tomlin said.

David McDonnall, 29 died Tuesday morning on the way to a military hospital in Baghdad after military surgeons worked to revive him. His wife, Carrie Taylor McDonnall, 26 was being flown by helicopter to a German military hospital Tuesday afternoon and is listed in critical condition.

The Texas couple were part of a team from the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention that was building a water purification system in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.

The McDonnalls had been married less than a year before they decided to help Iraqis rebuild from the destruction of the war. They were helping Iraqis by distributing food, organizing relief projects, performing odd jobs or renovating schools.

"With all the precautions you can reasonably take, there are risks, and these folks were well aware of those risks," said Erich Bridges of the International Mission Board.

The couple celebrated their first wedding ceremony last June, Brennen Searcy, 28, a student at the Fort Worth seminary befriended and worked closely shared the pleasant memories of that experience and of the McDonnalls' devotion to their missionary work. "David's compassion toward the Iraqi people was just relentless, he was unwavering in his determination to do whatever could be done to help the Iraqi people, to show compassion to them."

The McDonnalls' compassion manifested itself in many ways, Searcy said, "whether it would be helping a guy with his truck or carrying wood and paint to renovate an elementary school."

"They loved the Iraqi people so much that they were willing to sacrifice everything," Searcy said. "David has made the ultimate sacrifice so that the message of Christianity can be taken to the Iraqi people."

The passion to serve people, the love for people were what stood out most, colleagues said they were aware that they were doing a dangerous job in a dangerous part of the world.

The International Mission sends missionaries to the world's hot spots to offer humanitarian aid and spread the gospel, often where Christianity is frowned upon or illegal. More than 5,000 Southern Baptist missionaries are spreading their religious message outside the United States, Bridges said.

Four other Southern Baptist missionaries have died in violence overseas in the past 14 months, three slain at a hospital in Yemen in January 2003, and one killed in a bomb blast in the Philippines in March 2003.

The mission board has not determined that McDonnall's group was attacked because they were Christians, Bangham said, but most likely because they were foreigners. The group does not have plans to withdraw from Iraq.

In some places of Iraq, native Christians have fled their homes because of intense pressure from religious extremists. In other places, Christians have been welcomed as brothers into a tribe.

Since the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, Christian churches have the freedom to organize, and are finding that they need increasingly larger buildings to meet the needs of their growing numbers. Previously, the Presbyterian Church was the only legal Protestant church in the country. Now, independent churches have been established, and the Baptist Union of Iraq, founded in October, has five member churches enrolled. The opening ceremony of the National Evangelical Baptist Church in Baghdad, the first Baptist Church in the country was attended by 700 people.