b.1930, single, retired missionary.
Betty was raised in Huntington, York, where she lives now. Her father was a gardener, her mother helped the family budget by doing cleaning jobs in town.
When Betty was 3 years old, her parents decided that they could no longer look after their dog, and gave it away. Betty missed her dog and one day wandered off to look for it. She did not find it and got lost herself. A kind couple took her into their house and looked after her until the police came to fetch her. The next time Betty came into contact with this couple was when she was 28. They met at a meeting where departing missionaries, including Betty, bid their farewell to York Christians. Somehow, the kind couple recognised Betty. They had prayed for her every day of the 25 years following their previous encounter. Betty did not think of asking their names and has never seen them since; but she considers their prayers a great blessing in her life.
As a child, Betty went to a Methodist Sunday School. She was the only church-going member of her family. Her mother suspected that she went to church to escape housework, but Betty in fact enjoyed listening to her Sunday School teacher, who made the bible stories come alive. The Sunday School teacher worked at a local post office and that is also how Betty made her living after she left school at the age of 14. In the end, however, Betty left the Methodist Church, because she found some of its teachings not to be biblically based. This was after she joined a mission for young people at St Saviourgate in the city centre. It was here that she came to the Lord and her life changed. She felt that everybody in the room (there were about 70 there) was going to heaven but she was not, because she did not know Jesus as her Saviour. She wanted Jesus to be her Saviour and went home to pray. She knew she had done a lot of wrong, but Jesus answered her prayers and she knew that He was there, to be her Saviour. In the post-office shop where she worked, the proprietor thought that she had fallen in love, for she was suddenly so radiant. Betty was nearly 19.
At a young people's conference, Betty decided that she wanted to be a missionary in Africa. God, however, did not call her to a mission field yet, and Betty stayed in York and trained to be a nurse. The call from God came when she was 28. She did not really welcome it by this time, because she had a boyfriend who did not want to leave England. The call caused "a bit of a tussle". In the end, Betty decided that she could do without her boyfriend but not without God. She cashed her health service pension fund and went to a bible school in Glasgow. At her interview there, she was told that she would have to delay her entry beyond the coming January, because there were no places left. She replied that she was coming in January, for God had told her to start in January; and she did. During her time at the bible school she received guidance from God in a dream, that Ivory Coast was the African country to which she was to go. Her teachers' view that she was not suitable for that country could do little to stop her. She learnt French (the lingua franca in Ivory Coast) and, at the age of 30, was ready to go. As she had to find her own money for travelling there and her savings were exhausted, she prayed to the Lord: "if you don't give me the money, I won't go, that's fine with me, I'm quite happy to stay at home". Within two weeks, she had more than she needed, in two anonymous gifts.
In Ivory Coast she learnt the Gourou language and, over the next 16 years, worked in several mission stations among the Gourou people. One of the mission stations was started new, after Betty and her colleague received a call from God to that particular place. Missionary work in large part consisted of sowing seeds of Christian faith in RE lessons in schools and in talks in villages, but it was through the healing ministry that people were actually coming to Christ. The pattern was that people suffering from physical ailments tried various kinds of help until eventually they came to church. When they were healed, they recognised the Lord and brought their families into the church as well. They never went back to Animist belief, as far as Betty knows. Delivering demon-possessed people was another important ministry. The cases of possession were usually very severe, like those described in the bible. Each case was treated by all of the mission station fasting and praying for three days. Most of the possessed were thus delivered. It was hard work, but encouraging. The men who were delivered stayed in the church and went out to villages to preach the gospel. In addition, the mission station set aside one day a week for fasting and prayer, after which the men went out evangelising. It was a basic life, Betty recalls, but they were happy times.
Betty's work in Africa came to an abrupt end when, aged 46, she was back home on a leave. Her father was taken ill with cancer and died. Betty stayed at home to support her mother. She joined the Gateway Church in Acomb, where most of the people who had been in the St Saviourgate youth mission now were, and spent much of her time in home visits and in accompanying the pastor to counselling sessions with female church members. It was not easy to settle back into life in York. She found herself coming back from shops empty-handed, because she could not bring herself to pay the prices. The people she used to know were different now, as she was indeed a changed person herself. In church she had to readjust to the low status implicitly accorded to single women, having got used to be regarded as a person in her own right, one of the "Jesus people", as the Gourou people called the missionaries. Betty went back to Africa for a fortnight once; the church sent her there, "to get it out of her system", because all her talk was "Africa this and Africa that". At age 50, she took a Christian counselling course - more for her own needs than in the expectation of starting a new career. It helped her, and enhanced further her ability to help others.
Betty joined York Community Church when failing eyesight made travel to Acomb too difficult. She spends time praying for specific needs that other people let her know about. For, she knows the blessing that a prayer to God for one's fellows brings. Although she does not say so herself, the people in church who turn to Betty for prayer are indeed many.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to select another biography
Home