We’re spending the next few weeks highlighting Team Expansion’s support staff, International Services (IS). You’ll learn who they are, what they do, and how many people it really takes behind the scenes to keep missionaries successful, healthy, and on the field!

Betty Byrd

VP of Prayer, Operations & Personnel

Years at Team Expansion: 11

Number of Countries Visited: 27

Most Exotic Food You’ve Eaten: Ants, grasshoppers, caterpillars, cow intestines, chicken feet

Favorite Missions Experience: One of my favorite missions experiences was the trip PACE prayer journey/exploratory trip to Gateway (pseudonym for a closed country) in 2009 to search for the unreached people group, the Ansari, that Okolona Christian Church had been looking at to adopt.

This experience was a favorite because it combined the people I worked with at Team Expansion with the people I had served with at OCC for years as part of the missions team at the church.

We were stretched beyond our comfort zones, especially on harrowing road trips in the dark of night with crazy drivers and jaunts down dark alleys with rickshaw drivers. The night at Hak’s Inn was indescribable, but we all agreed that the $3 we paid to stay for one night was much over-priced.

The really cool part was, however, that God confirmed within the entire group that it was not the Ansari that we should purse (we never found even ONE Ansari in all the days we were there) but the Sylheti.

This trip led to Okolona’s adoption of the Sylheti people. Eight years later, we are still praying and working to the end that the Sylheti might be reached with the Gospel.