Missions - Leigh & Lea Betts Family
I was raised in Minnesota. I went to grade school in Moorhead and middle and high school in Detroit Lakes, where John and Connie Engesser were my teachers at the ACE school that they had there at the time. After graduation, I went to Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lea is the daughter of New Tribes Missions missionaries who served on home staff for their career. As such, she lived at several NTM facilities before she graduated and also attended Tennessee Temple where we met and were married.
From an early age I was familiar with and somewhat captivated by the idea of missions, at least as being a tremendous need and an exciting life-style, fighting off lions and tigers and bears and all. Lea with her background, had always assumed that she would become an NTM missionary, but like me, with no clear idea how or when that would happen, or what the first steps would be.
By the time we graduated from college, we were thinking about other things. We moved to Sanford, Florida, to be near her folks who were working at the time building the NTM retirement facility, and we helped out in the construction whenever and however we had the chance. It was there, rubbing shoulders with real live missionaries on a weekly or daily basis, that I began to see missions in a different light. Instead of being a good idea and a theoretical necessity, I began to see it as a practical necessity that could be accomplished only by consciously making good choices that would further the cause of Christ. I also came to be aware of the first step. After helping out on an NTM video one evening, I came home and asked Lea, “What if we just get ourselves out of debt and enter the NTM training?” Simple, practical, and non-theoretical, we took that step and have been taking next steps ever since.
God has blessed us with six children and wonderful partners, both foreigners and among the Karen believers, and with the honor of serving him among a wonderful people whose greatest need is the gospel.
