The New Life Center Foundation ("NLCF") was opened by anthropologists Dr. and Mrs. Paul and Elaine Lewis. Supported by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (today known as "American Baptist International Ministries") Dr. and Mrs. Lewis worked with tribal persons in Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand for forty years. Seeing multiple changes in tribal culture, and witnessing first hand the number of women caught in exploitative labor, the Lewis’s opened the first residential program of the NLCF in 1987. Rev. Lauran Bethell served as the NLCF’s first director.