Betty was devastated to watch her husband’s condition. She tried to assure herself that this was God’s assignment for them and that she had to leave the outcome in His hands.
When she realized just how much work was involved in helping her sick husband, Betty advertised for a theology student to come and board at the house who could stay with Addison on those times when she had to leave the house. A young man named Walter Shepard answered the advertisement. On the same day that Walter moved into the house in September 1973, Addison died.
Even though there was now no need for Walter’s help in caring for Addison, Betty decided to invite him to stay on anyway. She realized that she would be lonely in such a big house, and having someone young around the house would help as she got used to being a widow once again.
Soon Betty heard of a second man who needed a place to stay. His name was Lars Gren, an older student who had returned to school in midlife after a career selling women’s clothing. Betty took Lars in as a boarder as well. Like Walter, Lars was pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
This was an unusual and international group living in the big house in Hamilton. Walter was the son of missionaries to the Belgian Congo, where he had grown up. Lars had been born in the United States but had spent most of his childhood in Norway. And Betty, of course, had been born in Belgium, grew up in the United States, and had lived in South America.
At Christmas Valerie returned home for recess and finally met the young man her mother had written to her about. She and Walter got to know each other a little over the Christmas break, and Betty began to wonder whether they might be right for each other.
Betty continued with her various ministries. Her books about Jim and her ministry to the Waorani remained popular, and many people who read them wanted to know about her missionary life before she married Jim Elliot. In response, Betty delved into her diaries once more and wrote These Strange Ashes, an account of her year working with the Colorado Indians in the jungle of western Ecuador. She did not sugarcoat her experiences or her accomplishments, and many readers appreciated her candor in the book.
Betty’s intuition about Valerie and Walter proved correct, and the couple were married on May 1, 1975. Betty was thrilled that her daughter had chosen a godly husband. Soon after Walter and Valerie were married, Walter took up a position as a Presbyterian minister at a church in southwest Louisiana.
Meanwhile, Lars obtained his Master of Divinity degree, and his goal was to become a hospital chaplain. During the time he had been boarding with Betty, however, the two had become good friends. Betty never imagined that she would marry again, but when Lars obtained his degree, he asked Betty to be his wife. It was strange for Betty to think of marrying for a third time, especially since she could not think of three more different men than Jim, Addison, and Lars, except for one thing: all three of them were dedicated to living for Christ.
Betty and Lars were married on December 21, 1977, Betty’s fifty-first birthday. Lars was ten years younger than Betty. After their wedding, Lars put aside his plan to become a hospital chaplain in order to assist Betty in her ministry. What a relief it was for Betty when Lars took over the travel and financial arrangements. Betty did not realize what a burden they had become.
Betty enjoyed having Lars as her traveling companion. It was much less lonely being on the road with another person, someone she knew she would be going home with and could discuss her experiences with. Sometimes Betty would joke, “I only ever had two boarders. My daughter married one, and I married the other!”
In 1978 Valerie gave birth to a son, Walter Shepard III, making Betty a grandmother.
Betty’s life continued to be busy. She was invited to be a consultant for the committee putting together the New International Version of the Bible, and she still traveled and spoke around the country. She also continued with her writing. She wrote a book about the joys of being a Christian woman, titled Let Me Be a Woman. She quickly followed that volume with a book of inspirational essays, titled Love Has a Price Tag.
In 1982 Betty ventured out into another ministry avenue. She began writing a regular newsletter called The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter. Over the years people had suggested that Betty write a regular newsletter, but Betty had resisted, not wanting to be burdened with the details of getting it printed, managing a mailing list, printing labels, and mailing the newsletter. However, when Servant Publications in Ann Arbor, Michigan, offered its services in taking care of all the mechanics of putting together the newsletter and mailing it out, Betty accepted their offer. The first edition of the newsletter was published in November 1982. It included Betty’s insights from the Bible, practical advice, stories about Betty’s family, excerpts from letters she received, and prayer requests.
Many people wanted to be kept up to date on all of Betty’s activities and subscribed to the newsletter, which was published six times a year. The popularity of the newsletter expanded Betty’s influence around the world. Betty continued to travel and speak, and she especially enjoyed any opportunity to head to the southern states, which made it easy for her to visit Valerie and Walt and their growing family. When the newsletter began, Valerie had three children. Two more followed in rapid succession, making Betty a grandmother of five busy, bright grandchildren.
After starting The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter, Betty enjoyed one of the biggest thrills of her life. She was asked to write a biography of her favorite writer, the Anglo-Irish missionary Amy Carmichael. From the time she was introduced to Amy Carmichael’s books when she was a fourteen-year-old student at the Hampden DuBose Academy, Betty had been inspired by Amy’s writing. She had read and reread the books many times and loved to quote Amy in her own books and sermons.
As part of the research for the book, Betty and Lars traveled to southern India to visit the Dohnavur Fellowship, founded by Amy Carmichael. They got to see firsthand the ongoing work of the ministry Amy had started over eighty years before. They visited the school, the dormitories, and the nurseries that housed the children at Dohnavur Fellowship. They watched the daily meals being prepared and visited the sewing room where all the children’s clothes were made, the hospital, and the retirement home. Betty was impressed by the fact that the fellowship was run almost entirely by people who had been rescued as children from dire situations and had grown up at Dohnavur.
Betty and Lars spent nine enjoyable days at Dohnavur, staying in a small guest bungalow on the compound. When Betty entered Amy’s bedroom, called the “Room of Peace,” she felt as if she were standing on hallowed ground. She sat at the desk where Amy had penned so many of the stories, poems, and books that had enthralled Betty since childhood. Betty thought about the twenty years Amy had spent bedridden in that very room and how, despite her condition, Amy had managed to praise God for all the good things He had given her.
In fact, everything about Dohnavur inspired Betty. She found it easy to imagine many of the events she had read about in Amy’s books, and she returned home to the United States invigorated and ready to get to work on the biography. When the finished biography of Amy Carmichael, titled A Chance to Die, was published in 1987, it became an instant best-seller.
At the same time that the Amy Carmichael biography was being published, Betty’s mother died on February 7, 1987. Katharine Howard had been in declining health for three years, and on the afternoon of her death she had told her nurse that she was going to die.
The entire Howard family gathered for the funeral, the family’s first gathering in many years. The funeral was a wonderful tribute to Katharine Howard. Betty joined her siblings in giving eulogies. As Betty listened to her brothers and sister speak, memories flooded back of how her mother, through her letter writing, had loved to keep in touch with her family and keep her children in touch with each other. Betty’s mother had written a weekly family letter consistently for forty years. Betty’s sister, Virginia, spoke about how their mother had taught her what it meant to be a lady, while her brother Tom recalled how Katharine Howard had spent hours reading and singing to them all when they were children. Betty’s brother Jim spoke of seeing their mother year after year sitting in her cane rocking chair after breakfast each day reading her Bible and taking copious notes.
The funeral service concluded with all six of Katharine Howard’s children singing one last hymn together in honor of their mother. Betty thought the gesture was fitting, since their mother had instilled in them all such a deep love for hymns.
After the funeral, Betty sat down and reread her mother’s journals, family letters, and reminiscences. She was inspired by what she read and used the material as the basis for a new book, The Shaping of a Christian Family.
But there was still more for Betty to do.
Chapter 20
Gateway to Joy
You are loved with an everlasting love.’ That’s what the Bible says. ‘And underneath are the everlasting arms.’ This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking with you today about…”
As she continued, Betty surveyed the script in front of her and adjusted the microphone. It was October 3, 1988, and she was beginning a whole new adventure. It had begun several years earlier when a young woman named Jan Anderson introduced herself to Betty at a conference in Urbana, Illinois. Soon afterward Jan moved to Quito, Ecuador, to work with the Christian radio station HCJB. During her time in Quito, Jan wrote regular, long, vivid letters to Betty about her experiences there. Eventually Jan returned to the United States and came to a conference in Georgia at which Betty was the featured speaker. At the end of the conference she approached Betty and said, “I have made up my mind. You need to be on the radio, and I’m going to help you get there.”
True to her word, Jan approached the director of the Back to the Bible broadcast in Lincoln, Nebraska, and suggested that he might like to do a women’s radio program. The director declared his interest in the idea if Jan could come up with the right person to host the show. Of course, Jan already had Betty Elliot in mind. The members of the board of Back to the Bible had read many of Betty’s books and newsletters and quickly decided Betty was the right person to host the new venture, which was to be called Gateway to Joy.
It took some organizing to work out the details so that Betty could continue to travel as much as she did and at the same time produce five fifteen-minute broadcast segments a week. Mostly the segments were taped in the studio, but occasionally they were recorded at Betty’s home.
Each radio broadcast began with the same greeting, which included lines from two of Betty’s favorite verses, Jeremiah 31:3 and Deuteronomy 33:27. On the show, Betty talked about all sorts of things that she thought would interest her listeners: Bible stories, missionary stories of her own and of other people, poems and hymns that meant a lot to her, her travel adventures around the world, and updates on Valerie and the grandchildren. Betty was able to tell her listeners about the births of three more grandchildren, bringing the total number of children in the Shepard household to eight.
Gateway to Joy became a very popular radio broadcast, and with its popularity, the mail began to flow in from listeners. Betty read every letter and tried to respond to each one. She often read excerpts from the letters on the air and then answered listeners’ questions. When the volume of letters became too much for one person to handle, Lars pitched in and helped Betty answer them.
Betty continued to be in demand as a speaker and traveled widely, but in January 1996 she made a very special trip. Betty and Lars, along with Valerie and Walter and grandson Walter Shepard III, went to Ecuador.
