GOD USES ORDINARY PEOPLE: THE LOTTIE MOON STORY

Lottie earned both her bachelor's and Master of Arts degree in teaching. After the Civil War, Lottie taught at female academies first in Danville, Kentucky, and later helped set up Cartersville Female High School in Georgia in 1871. There she joined the First Baptist Church and ministered to the poor and poverty stricken families of Bartow County.

Lottie served 39 years as a missionary, mostly in China's Shantung province.

Lottie had joined her sister Edmonia at the North China Mission Station in the port of Dengzhou, and began her ministry by teaching in a girls school. Her sister had to return home a short time later for health reasons.

Living every day in China was very strange and making friends was hard. The Chinese people seemed to be afraid of Lottie in the beginning. She didn't know their customs or culture. One day she decided to bake cookies the children! At first the children would not eat them. Someone said the cookies would make them sick. She kept on baking cookies anyway. Soon the children came to her house and began to eat them. They started to call her the "Cookie Lady." As they ate the cookies, she told them about Jesus.

Lottie would go with some of the seasoned missionary wives on "country visits" to outlying villages, she discovered her passion: direct evangelism. In 1885, at the age of forty-five, Moon gave up teaching and moved into the interior to evangelize full-time in the area of P'ingtu.

She would often write letters to the US detailing Chinese culture, missionary life and the great physical and spiritual needs of the Chinese people.

In 1912, a terrible famine came to China. People everywhere were starving. Little children had nothing to eat. Lottie gave her food to the people. But soon it severely affected both her physical and mental health. In 1912, she only weighed fifty pounds.

So Lottie's friends put her on a ship to come back home to the United States. But she never made it. She died on Christmas Eve, 1912 while still on the ship. Lottie Moon gave her life so the people in China could learn about God.

Since her death at the age of seventy-two, Lottie Moon has come to personify the missionary spirit for Southern Baptists and many other Christians, as well. The annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Missions has raised a total of $1.5 billion for missions since 1888 and finances half the entire Southern Baptist missions budget every year.

He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the king will be his friend.