Thanks for the reply. The auto install script for letsencrypt did not work for me so I dove in to the thread for manual installation: How to: Install Let’s Encrypt certificates
It didn’t work the first time so I re-imaged my server and started over, only now I get a
"fatal: repository 'https://github.com/letsencrypt/' not found"
when I try to clone the repo. 
I tried the same command from a local virtual machine with a clean debian install and I got the same thing… An SSL certificate issue with the repo perhaps? How ironic. I guess I’ll have to try again later. There’s always something!
edit: I’m real dumb and didn’t enter the full URL. Shame on me