Women on Mission -December 2019
Who is this Lottie Moon, anyway?
Charlotte Diggs Moon, 1840-1910, better known as Lottie Moon, became a legend in her own time. A daughter of old Virginia and one of the best educated women in the South, Miss Moon was petite 4 feet 3 inches. Her voice is described as deep, rich, gentle, musical, which she used skillfully as a teacher/missionary. But no photographer ever captured on film the animated, attractive, charming, delightful, energetic, fearless Lottie Moon, although a few photos do exist.
For 40 years she represented Southern Baptists in China. Again and again she wrote back to America, “Send on the missionaries.” Once she wrote, “It is odd that the million Baptists of the South can furnish only three men for all China. I wonder how this looks in heaven. It certainty looks queer in China.”
After the Japanese-Russian war, economic conditions in China produced much poverty, but there were some new missionaries. Miss Moon welcomed them, advised them, mothered them, and loved their children, who adored her in return. The Chinese women and children came and went in her home as if it were their own. If the Pingtu Christians were starving, Miss Moon would not eat. By December of her seventieth year she was so frail the doctors sent her back to the States. But enroute on Christmas Eve, while the ship rode at anchor in Kobe, Japan, Miss Moon died. The memory of such a life never ends.
In 1918, Annie Armstrong, the woman who refused marriage to a China missionary so she could fulfill her calling as the leader of mission support among Southern Baptist women in the homeland, wrote: “Miss Moon is the one who suggested the Christmas offering for foreign missions. She showed us the way in so many things. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to name the offering in her memory?”* And so it was.
The Most Persecuted People in the World
Named “the most persecuted people in the world” by the United Nations, more than 723,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh from their homes in Myanmar (Also called Burma). An additional 100,000 remain in Myanmar living in IDP (internally displaced people) camps.
The Rohingya have been stripped of their homes, their citizenship and their rights. Living as illegal aliens in camps built on land annually destroyed by floods, these people have nothing - no education, no health care, no income, no land, no assets and, seemingly, no allies.
International Mission Study: Rohingya will introduce you to the Christian organizations who are working as the hands and feet of Christ among the Rohingya. From delivering buckets of hygiene supplies to planting grass to sharing words of hope, followers of Christ are engaging this crisis head-on. Through this study, you will a) identify with feelings experienced by Rohingya refugees; b) discover how to pray specifically for refugees; c) explore how to accept people who are different from you; d) learn ways you and your church can give through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, Baptist Global Response and the WMU Foundation. We pray this study would inspire you to reach out in love to refugees and other displaced people groups in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Our study is Wednesday, December 11th at noon in the fellowship hall. Please join us if you can.
Our Lottie Moon Christmas offering goal is $18,000. Offering envelopes will be made available to each family. Women on Mission will meet at 6:00 pm on Monday, December 9th at the home of Jean Hitchcock for a Week of Prayer program. We will carpool from the church leaving at 5:45 pm. We collected 1,180 boxes of mac and cheese for the Evansville Rescue Mission. Thanks you to all who made this possible.
*Excerpts from The Lottie Moon Story.