Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Firefighter answering his inner call

After 21 years of firefighting, Zephyrhills' assistant fire chief will retire four years early, sell his possessions and become a full-time missionary in Africa with his wife.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published April 2, 2006

	[Times photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes]
	For Zephyrhills Assistant Fire Chief Rex Guynn and his wife Melinda, shown here recently outside the fire station, previous mission trips -- to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Guatemala, Kenya and Uganda -- were always short. But now Rex, 49, is retiring early so that he and Melinda, 42, can work as missionaries in Africa.

Broken glass littered the streets. Smoke billowed from burning tires. Gunfire echoed in the distance. But what most scared them was the empty streets.

Port-au-Prince was desolate.

"When there's no people you know there's a problem," recalled Zephyrhills' Melinda Guynn. "Because Haiti has millions of people everywhere."

Anarchy gripped the Haitian capital in February 2004. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had fled into exile. His supporters took out their anger inside the city as rebels laid siege outside it.

From the countryside, Melinda and Rex Guynn carefully made their way into the city, to the airport, to safety. The missionaries had been there to help and to spread the message of the Gospel.

Instead, they found a message waiting for them.

"It was like the Lord (said) "This is where I want you right now,' " said Rex Guynn.

The Zephyrhills assistant fire chief and his wife escaped, only to return. It was in their visits to Haiti and places like it, amid poverty and despair, that they found purpose. In October that purpose will lead them to a new home:

Africa.

Their missionary trips were always short, leaving Zephyrhills to spend a few weeks in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Guatemala, Kenya and Uganda.

They made it out of Haiti even as it imploded around them. But that didn't keep the Guynns from making another visit four months later.

"We knew something was happening," Melinda Guynn said. "That's why we made the return trip. Was it emotion? Or was it God trying to speak to us? That's why we made the second trip . . . and we knew then it was much more than an emotion.

"It was something God was trying to (tell) to us."

Message received. The Guynns are selling all of their possessions and leaving behind family, friends and careers to become African missionaries.

Guynn, 49, will retire in October after 21 years at the Zephyrhills Fire Department, the past three years as the agency's second-in-command.

Talk about bad timing. Chief Robert Hartwig also retires in October after 33 years.

The assistant is passing up a chance to become fire chief in his hometown. He's also retiring four years early. It will cost him 25 percent of his pension.

"I think that's why a lot of people want me to see a psychiatrist," Guynn said.

Financially, as missionaries, they'll just get by.

"We're going to have to rely a whole lot on the support of friends and family," he said. "I don't know a whole lot of missionaries that are financially stable.

"The kind of work we're going into, you have a tendency to give away what you have to help others."

Both Pentecostals, they've always found ways to minister. There was the Christian Motorcyclists Association. Then prison ministry. Then they started going overseas. Six years ago they made their first trip to Haiti. Then it was Kenya. Then Uganda last year. That was the trip that convinced Guynn his mission couldn't wait until retirement.

"We always felt the Lord was calling us into the mission, I just thought I was going to do it after I retired," he said. "But since last year He just put it on my heart that it was time for us to go now."

Melinda Guynn, 42, gave up her job as a doctor's office manager 21/2 years ago. Now she volunteers at Missionary Adventures International in Orlando and helps organize missions overseas. After more than a dozen overseas trips, she still chokes up.

"It was just . . . oh man, nobody could ever have prepared us for what we saw," she said. "Seeing the people, the poverty, the hopelessness. But at the same time seeing the joy at such little things that we would never think about, it ripped me apart inside."

They'll have many goodbyes to make. Blake Nathe, 19, is Melinda Guynn's son from a previous marriage and a University of South Florida sophomore. Ryan Guynn, 26, is a Pasco Fire Rescue paramedic, following in his father's footsteps. And there is the son they said goodbye to three years ago.

Aaron Guynn died Thanksgiving 2003. He was 22, a Marine home from Iraq, when his motorcycle crashed 100 yards from his father, Rex's, home.

When dad felt the call to become a missionary, did Aaron's loss play some role?

"I wouldn't disagree with you," he said. "When something like that happens . . . . I've grown quite a bit from it, I would say.

"To us, we miss him. But we also celebrate him."

"We always felt the Lord was calling us into the mission, I just thought I was going to do it after I retired. But since last year He just put it on my heart that it was time for us to go now."

- REX GUYNN, the Zephyrhills assistant fire chief

It's not just familiar faces they'll miss. The firefighter will miss those calls in the middle of the night.

"Even as you get older it's still an adrenaline rush," Guynn said.

Modern amenities, they've learned to do without.

"We've taken showers with a coke bottle you pour over your head . . .," he said. "You can be used to not having TV. You'd be surprised with what you can find to occupy your time."

Helping people on the other side of the world is expensive. The Guynns will need a four-wheel drive vehicle to get around in. Even a 10-year-old truck can go for $25,000 in Africa. They'll spend thousands on plane tickets, visas, expenses and emergency cash.

No organization is sponsoring them. The Guynns won't have their Zephyrhills home to return to. They'll crash with family when they get back, rely on what they can sell, what money they can raise.

They'll have e-mail their first year in Uganda. After that, when they could be in Tanzania, or Kenya again, who knows?

The Guynns aren't going into this blind to the dangers. Uganda's north is terrorized by the Sudanese-sponsored Lord's Resistance Army. The LRA abducts children to be soldiers and sex slaves.

"We try to use common sense and normally we team up with good people who take care of us," Rex Guynn said. "Building a relationship will protect you quite a bit."

That harrowing trip to Haiti taught them much.

"If you have to pick a moment when we decided the fear wasn't going to stop us it was that trip," he said. "We felt if we can survive this, we can survive anything."

They'll minister by example, helping local ministers and communities with public works projects and whatever else needs to be done.

"By being there with them and showing them that you love them like brothers," he said, "you're also ministering to them with your actions, and that opens the door to minister to them with the Gospel."

It's what they have to do.

"We see the need, we feel the need, for the people, especially the children," Guynn said. "We want to do what God wants us to do. I think everyone has a calling, if you're a Christian, to do something."

[Last modified April 2, 2006, 01:24:20]