who was lottie moon?

I have attended a Southern Baptist Church all of my life.  I grew up knowing about Lottie Moon - the namesake of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions.  She was much like today's missionaries. Lottie was a hard-working, deep-loving Southern Baptist who labored tirelessly so her people group could know Jesus.  

Lottie wrote many letters home, urging Southern Baptists to greater missions involvement and support. One of those letters triggered the first Southern Baptists' Christmas offering for international missions.  By 1888, Southern Baptist women had organized and helped collect $3,315, enough to send three new missionaries to China.  In 1912, a severe famine came to China.  People everywhere were starving and Lottie gave her food to the people.  Lottie became sick and boarded a ship to the States to recover.  She died on that ship on Christmas Eve, 1912.  On Christmas Eve.

Lottie Moon Christmas Offering

In 1918, Woman's Missionary Union (WMU) named the annual Christmas offering for international missions after the woman who had urged them to start it. 

*** ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!***

In 2013 Southern Baptists celebrated 125 years of annual giving to support international missionaries. More than 3.5 billion has been given to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, whose namesake inspired the first collection of gifts in 1888 so the world might know Christ. Then, as now, every penny you give to Lottie Moon supports missionaries as they share the Gospel overseas.   

June 5, 2013 RICHMOND, Va (Erich Bridges)  —Southern Baptists gave $149.3 million to the 2012 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

The 2012 Lottie Moon offering, finalized June 5, totaled $149,276,303.72. It surpassed last year’s offering of $146.8 million by more than $2.4 million and marked the third-highest amount given in the offering’s 124-year history.