Helen Jean Parks, former missionary to Indonesia and advocate for missions causes, died Sept. 13. She was 93. She was born Jan. 4, 1928, in Abilene to W.D. and Lula Mae Bond. She graduated magna cum laude from Hardin-Simmons University in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a minor in journalism. After graduation, she served in a variety of ministry roles—as Baptist campus minister for three colleges in Springfield, Mo., and at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Rice University and Baylor University College of Medicine at Houston and as youth and music director at First Baptist Church in Henrietta. She earned a Master of Religious Education degree in 1951 from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, where she accepted God’s call to foreign missions. In 1952, she married Keith Parks. Shortly after the birth of their first son in 1954, the Parks were appointed by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention as missionaries to Indonesia. During their 14 years in Indonesia, while her husband served on the faculty of the Baptist Theological Seminary of Indonesia, Helen Jean taught music and religious education at the seminary, led the Indonesian seminary choir, worked in small churches training Indonesians as teachers, and held conversational English classes with Muslim faculty wives of the Diponegoro State University. The Parks returned to the United States in 1968 when Keith was asked to be on the Foreign Mission Board staff, first as area director for Southeast Asia and then as president. She continued in her mission role as she spoke in churches and various conferences on missions, prayer and the Christian life in the United States and around the world. She visited countries around the world to meet local Christian leaders and people, and to encourage missionary families. In 1983, she wrote Holding the Ropes, a book on intercessory prayer for global missions. In 1994, she and her husband moved to Atlanta to help start the mission program for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Helen Jean Parks was awarded the HSU Distinguished Alumni Award, and in 2007, she was honored by the Logsdon School of Theology with the Jesse C. Fletcher Award for Distinguished Service in Missions. She is survived by Robert Keith Parks, her husband of 69 years; son Randall and wife Nancy, son Kent and wife Erika, daughter Eloise, son Stan and wife Kay; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to beyond.org to help spread the gospel where it has not been heard.
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