Lottie Moon served as a missionary in China for nearly 40 years. Her letters home kept begging for more workers and more support, and in 1888 Southern Baptist women started a Christmas offering for foreign missions. It began at about $3,000 and grew to more than $82 million by 1993, and it was later named for her. Near the end of her life a terrible famine struck the people she served. She gave them all she had. She wrote, “I hope no missionary will be as lonely as I have been.” Literally starving, she grew weaker and weaker. A nurse started home with her, but Lottie died on Christmas Eve, 1912, aboard ship in the harbor at Kobe, Japan.
