CHANDLER, Ariz.—Carol Elaine Gaston, a missionary to Navajo Indians and later to truckers, died Aug. 22. She was 91.
Carol entered the world on Christmas Day in 1922. She was the second child in a Christian family. She met and accepted Jesus as her Savior when she was 7 or 8 years old. After graduating from high school, she began nursing training school at Alton (Ill.) Memorial Hospital. There she met her husband-to-be, Ellis. He was a patient, and she was his nurse. They married on Jan. 22, 1943.
In 1953 Carol and Ellis were accepted by Baptist Mid-Missions as missionaries to the Navajo Indians. The Gastons moved to Arizona, where they started serving the Lord as missionaries. Later they moved to New Mexico and then back to Arizona, where they retired after 40 years of ministry to the Navajos.
“For Ellis and his wife, Carol, doing the Lord’s work is a lifetime vocation,” says Daria Greening in her May 2003 Baptist Bulletin article “Ellis Gaston’s Truck Stop Ministry.” When the Gastons moved to Kingman, Ariz., they started a ministry to truckers at truck stops. Carol served alongside Ellis in that ministry until she fell, breaking her neck and injuring her leg. She could no longer attend the chapel services she and Ellis held at the Travel Center of America Truck Stop in Kingman; however, she could pray, and she did.
When Greening asked the Gastons what kept them strong in the ministry, Carol responded, “Reading the Bible, praying, and going to church.”
Carol was preceded in death by her oldest and youngest sons, Jeffrey and Joseph, and a granddaughter.
She is survived by her husband, Ellis; three daughters, Cherie Kirby, Jennifer Brake, and Elaine Reiter; two sons, Matthew and Timothy; 21 grandchildren; 39 great-grandchildren; one great-great grandchild; and her brother, Milford Tallyn.
