Thank You, Lottie Moon

Lottie Moon's trunk

Lottie's desk

Lottie's foot stool

Yesterday, I was visiting the Woman's Missionary Union in Birmingham, Ala. with my co-workers. For some of us, it was our first visit, so we were given a tour. Wow. The building is a museum full of artifacts. They have done a wonderful job of preserving items from history, like the items pictured above. The trunk was Lottie's trunk that she took with her on her missionary journeys, the desk was the the one that she used when writing her many letters, and her foot stool that shows years of propping her feet up. For those of you that aren't familiar with Lottie, here's a brief bio from the International Mission Board:

Born Charlotte Diggs Moon Dec. 12, 1840, in Albemarle County, Va., Lottie Moon served 39 years as a missionary, mostly in China's Shantung province. She taught in a girls' school and often made trips into China's interior to share the good news with women and girls. Lottie frequently wrote letters to the United States, detailing Chinese culture, missionary life, and the great physical and spiritual needs of the Chinese people. She urged Southern Baptists to greater missions involvement and support. One of those letters triggered Southern Baptists' first Christmas offering for international missions - enough to send three new missionaries to China. Lottie died aboard a ship in the Japanese harbor of Köbe on Dec. 24, 1912. She was 72 years old. (To read more about Lottie Moon, go to http://www.imb.org/main/give/page.asp?StoryID=5527&LanguageID=1709.)

To stand there and look at some of her belongings, made Lottie a little more real to me that day. This was a little lady, some say just over 4-feet tall, who gave her life to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the people of China. Thank you Lottie Moon for your example.