Leola Avonne Leetch

Leola Avonne Leetch passed peacefully into heaven on Friday, August 14, 2026, at Circle of Life Hospice in Springdale, Arkansas. She was born on September 23, 1929, to LeRoy and Ella Main in Turlock, California. Growing up on the farm where her dad had lived since childhood, Leola learned the meaning of responsibility and hard work early in life. She milked cows, fed turkeys, gathered eggs, hoed corn, and harvested melons. She learned to drive the tractor at age 9 to help her dad feed the turkeys. Her playmates growing up were the animals on the farm. Life was hard work but simple, and as she grew older, most of her social activities revolved around the friends at the Evangelical Covenant Church that she, her brother Del, and her parents attended. Leola gave her heart to the Lord at age 9 during revival meetings at her church. This decision changed her life. Leola greatly admired her mother, Ella, when she would see her in her white nursing uniform. From her earliest memories, this stirred a desire in her to be a nurse like her mom. Music was a very important part of Leola’s life. She started piano lessons at age 10 and joined the church choir at 12. She loved going with her dad to choir practice on Thursday nights. She played the trombone in high school and later developed a love for the marimba, which would eventually bring her and her future husband together! At a missionary conference when Leola was 12, she dedicated her life to the Lord, where her desire to be a nurse was joined with a desire to be a missionary. After graduating from high school, Leola attended her church college, North Park College in Chicago, Illinois, for one year and then entered the nursing program at Swedish Covenant Hospital, also in Chicago. In July of 1948, after her first year of college, Leola committed to helping with VBS during the day and to heading up the special music in the evenings, playing her trombone and marimba, for camp meetings in Vallecito, California, being led by a young evangelist named Don Leetch. The rest, as they say, is history. Within three weeks, Leola and Don fell in love and were engaged! For the next four years, Don and Leola courted through letters and Don’s occasional visits to Chicago. Don continued to travel, conducting revival meetings, while Leola finished her nursing training. On April 26, 1952, Don and Leola were married in her home church in Hilmar, California. They moved to Norwalk, California, to help establish the Norwalk Nazarene Church and later the Norwalk Nazarene Christian School. For 11 years, Leola worked part-time at night as a nurse while also serving as a mother to Dona and David and as a pastor’s wife, helping Don grow the home church he had started before they were married. In June of 1963, with no clear path ahead but with the vision of “Doing what we can in our generation to make Christ known,” Don and Leola, along with Dean, who pastored a neighboring Nazarene Church, and his wife, Ruth, stepped away from their thriving churches and moved from Orange County to the San Gabriel Valley. As a result of this choice, a ministry/business partnership was formed that would last more than 50 years. After the move from Orange County to the San Gabriel Valley, Leola, as a nurse, and Ruth, as a teacher, worked full-time helping to support Don and Dean as they established a ministry-oriented printing business called Fellowship Press. Over the next seven years, while working full-time and raising Dona and David, Leola became involved with Village Covenant Church, serving as choir director, pianist, and Vice President of Women’s Ministry. A Friday night fellowship was started in Don and Leola’s home in the fall of 1963. In July 1970, Deanna was born, and that fall, Sunday morning services were started at the GO House in Azusa, California. This was the beginning of the church Don, Leola, Dean, and Ruth would lead, called Outreach Center Church. In the summer of 1971, Outreach Publications was birthed, which would eventually be named DaySpring. In July 1979, in an effort to allow DaySpring to grow, Don and Leola and Dean and Ruth led a move of Outreach Center Church and DaySpring out of Southern California to Northwest Arkansas. With this move, Leola retired from nursing and devoted herself fully to raising Deanna and helping establish the church and business in their new home. Leola had a love for people, hospitality, and beauty. She had a gift for making people feel welcome, and her love of beauty was reflected in the home and yard she so lovingly cared for. Over the years, she opened her home to countless people, hosting dinners, showers, parties, and weddings. But her hospitality went far beyond entertaining; she invested countless hours listening, counseling, mentoring, and praying with those who came through her door. Leola always carried a deep love for DaySpring and a sense of responsibility for its legacy. In a remarkable closing chapter, DaySpring officially came to an end on August 14, 2026, the very day Leola’s earthly life came to an end, with the two departing Siloam within minutes of each other. Leola’s life was always about loving God fiercely and serving others. Her family includes: 3 Children; 11 Grandchildren; 16 Great-Grandchildren. After Don’s death in 2014, Leola wrote: “The Lord had impressed on my heart when Don died that though Don’s life was complete, mine wasn’t and that I had another chapter to live. My responsibility is to bridge to this next generation of torchbearers that will be equipped to new levels to reach the unsaved and their generation for Christ.” Leola lived those words faithfully. She spent that final chapter loving God, loving people, and investing in the generations that would follow. She welcomed people into her home, listened to their stories, prayed with them, encouraged them, and continually pointed them toward Christ. She was a woman who lived with purpose, loved deeply, and served faithfully. The torch she carried has now been passed to the next generation. Leola faithfully followed her calling until the day the Lord called her home.

Leola Avonne Leetch

September 23, 1929 - August 14, 2026