Mildred Beatrice McWhorter: Houston’s Mother Theresa

Mildred Beatrice McWhorter: Houston’s Mother Theresa

"Miss Mac," as she was affectionately known for most of her adult life, was born 26 June 1930 to Rev. Rufus Alexander and Stella Eley McWhorter, on her farm near Centralhatchee, Georgia. She attended school there, worked hard in the fields of her family’s cotton farm, and did heavy chores every day. She was a member of the Baptist church her father pastored and, when Mildred was thirteen, she realized that the “whosoever” in John 3:16 applied to her. She believed that God loved her, gave His only son for her, and that if she would believe in Him, she could know eternal life with Christ. She gave to Jesus her life and was baptized. She never looked back.
 
Mildred attended Berry College in Rome, Georgia, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and then went on to study at the Carver School of Missions and Social Work in Louisville, Kentucky. She sensed a call to missions, but her application was rejected by a foreign missions agency. This did not deter her. As she waited for God’s plan, she taught home economics in high school. Soon, a friend at the Home Mission Board encouraged her to consider missions in the United States. In 1958, she accepted a missions director position in Port Arthur, Texas, where she served five years before she was invited to work in inner-city Houston in 1963. She would spend the next thirty years and more right in the heart of that bustling city.
 
At first, Miss Mac had very little to work with. After much prayer, she opened the first of four mission sites on Fletcher Street and dozens, then hundreds, of hurting people flocked to receive help. In this predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Houston’s north and east sides, Miss Mac invited volunteers to come and help her. They came in droves. Seminary, college, and high school students worked elbow-to-elbow with laborers, mothers, business leaders, and medical personnel, black or white or brown, rich or poor, each wanting to be part of what God was doing there. They packed groceries for delivery, received, cleaned, folded, and distributed clothing, arranged for shelter, healthcare, and after-school and nursery care. Miss Mac called all of the volunteers her “Critters” and loved them like family. They loved her back, as did those who lived in the communities they all served together.
 
Over the years and under her leadership, those small help centers became the Mission Centers of Houston, a multiple-location social ministry that still serves kids, youth, and adults today. Because of partnerships with area churches and businesses, a second mission was opened in 1967, called Joy Fellowship Center. In the early 1980s, she opened the Gano Mission Center to serve as a gathering place for the many volunteers under her care, including youth and college students, who spent spring breaks and summers working there. Finally, in the later 1980s, the last of the mission sites was opened on Mason Drive.

By the 1990s, these four mission centers served more than 900 families each week, filling needs for clothing and food, and providing job training and education. The centers also taught English classes, Bible studies, citizenship training, conducted neighborhood recreation programs, and more. McWhorter fearlessly and quietly ministered to drug dealers, gang members, and prostitutes, depending upon God’s protection each day. As a no-nonsense but caring leader, she knew and respected the residents of the roughest neighborhoods, and the feeling was mutual.
 
Through the years, Miss Mac met many families who needed her love, but one particular family became her own. Three boys—Carl Guevara, Lloyd Lane and Terry Lane—arrived at the center when they were young. After their mother died, McWhorter reared them as her own sons. When she retired from the mission centers in 1992, she returned to Centralhatchee, where she started Bible studies with food and fellowship on Thursday nights for neighborhood teens and served in her local church again.
 
“Miss Mac” McWhorter went home to be with the Lord on 17 June 2018 at age eighty-seven after several years of declining health. Her legacy of strong leadership and the training of thousands of volunteers in missions continues to bless those who came to know God’s peace through the hard work of her capable hands. Both the givers and the recipients of God’s bounty were changed by her ministry.
-Karen O'Dell Bullock
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