Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Dennis LaMotte stands next to his trailer, his mobile mission, in downtown Billings
Dennis LaMotte’s Jeep, trailer, canoe and bicycle are all painted in camouflage green, but the paint wouldn’t hide it from the meter maids.
That’s why he was looking to make change for a dollar when I ran into him Monday morning a couple of blocks east of the courthouse. He had to feed two meters to accommodate his mission on wheels.
“I am out here preaching the truth of the Gospel, which is the grace of God according to the revelation of the mystery dispensed to the Apostle Paul of the Gentiles,” he said. “That’s according to Acts 20:24.”
LaMotte said he was actually in Billings for two reasons: to continue the preaching that has taken him to 13 states in two years, and to look for his brother Donald, whom he hadn’t seen in 45 years.
He said he found out Monday morning, at the post office in Huntley, that his brother died last September. He was on his way to the courthouse to get his brother’s death certificate.
After that he planned to go out near Laurel, find a good campsite for his trailer and then spend a few days preaching at nursing homes in the Billings area. That’s his “mission field,” he said, “nursing homes across the country.”
He goes to the homes in person, looks up the activities director and offers to preach. They usually invite him in, he said, unless they already have an evangelical chaplain. Such chaplains, he said, are not preaching the truth, “the finished word of Christ,” because they want to appeal to people of all faiths.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
LaMotte, at the downtown bus transfer station.
“They seek union through compromise,” he said.
LaMotte said he felt called to missionary work years ago, but he didn’t heed the call until 2012, when his wife was “murdered” in a Texas hospital. He said he met her in Tennessee, where she had endured 52 years with an abusive husband.
The years of abuse resulted in all kinds of heart trouble for her, leading to several bypass surgeries. At the hospital in Texas, he said, the authorities were simply tired of spending money on her.
“They withheld her medicine and watched her die in agony for 10 days,” he said. “That’s the same as first-degree murder.”
After her death, he abandoned the house he was building in the desert, bought a trailer to pull behind his Jeep and hit the road. The bike and the canoe are for recreation, especially the canoe.
“It’s a release valve when life gets a little hard and hectic,” he said.
“I carry everything I own,” he said. “Clothing, dry goods, canned goods.” But he does not own a phone, a computer or a television.
“I don’t want the lust of the flesh that’s all over TV,” he said. “Satan uses these things to get your mind off the word of God. … I want my mind clear so I can think of spiritual things.”
As for a phone, LaMotte said he’d rather spend his money printing Bible scrolls, handwritten teachings that he creates by taping sheets of paper together, rolling them up and tying them with yarn.
“I’m reaching many people,” he said.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
LaMotte stands next to all his worldly possessions.
As if to prove his point, a young man came up to LaMotte as we were speaking in the shade of the bus transfer station on Third Avenue North. As he chewed on a filled doughnut, he reminded LaMotte that he had met him a day earlier. He thanked LaMotte for giving him one of his scrolls.
“I can’t read that well, so I had a friend read your scroll to me,” he said. “I liked it.”
LaMotte said he is 71, a U.S. Marine who served from 1960 to 1964.
“Vietnam broke loose after I got out,” he said. He sometimes feels guilty about not re-enlisting, he said, because he heard his company took heavy casualties in the war. He’s fighting a different battle now, to bring people to Christ. He doesn’t know how long he’ll continue.
“I have plans,” he said, “but I’m not so sure of the Lord’s plans as yet.”
