Portrait of Betty Smith. IMB Photo

Betty Marie Smith, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in Brazil, died Sept. 22, 2025. She was 93.  

Betty was born Sept. 15, 1932, in Diboll, Texas, to the late William Edward and Lillie Ophelia Smith. She graduated from Diboll High School and received the Bachelor of Science from East Texas Baptist College, Marshall, and the Master of Religious Education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas. 

After graduation from high school, she completed an executive secretarial course and began work for Texas South-Eastern Railroad in Diboll. Around this time, she began attending church regularly. While seeking missionary appointment she recalled, “Here God revealed to me just how little I knew and gave me a great desire to know more. Each day I read my Bible and prayed earnestly for God to reveal the meaning of His Word and message to me.” She began to feel the “tugging of the Holy Spirit to prepare more for God’s service.”  

In Sept. 1953 she started working her way through college and felt God calling her for mission service. In 1955, she dropped out of college and continued working for Texas South-Eastern Railroad. She wrote, “It was in my home church that I heard Miss Mildred Watts, missionary to Africa, speak, and I accepted God’s challenge to my heart and life and said I would go and do whatever He chose.”  

Betty went back to school and graduated in 1957. She spent the following two summers as a missionary for the Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) in California and Oregon. In January of 1964, after working her way through, she graduated from seminary. 

In the fall of 1964, the International Mission Board appointed Betty missionary to Brazil.

Betty was preceded in death by her sisters, Violet Waltmon, Margrete Hales and Julia Ann Torbert; her brothers, Eugene, Earl, Earnest, and Franklin Smith; and her sisters-in-law, Billie Christelle Smith, Florine Smith, Robbie Smith, and Helen Smith.  

She is survived by her sisters, Mary Sue Shelton and Earlene Chandler (Jerry); her niece, Brenda Martin; her brother-in-law, Warren Torbert; her Brazilian family, Beatriz Avila and Betty Nice Cardoso; and numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, and dear friends. 

A funeral service was held Sept. 27 at Gipson Funeral Home in Lufkin, Texas, with burial in Ryan Chapel Cemetery in Diboll.  

Read an obituary here.