SWBTS to house Lottie Moon collection

FORT WORTH?When Mike Smith laid eyes on the house in China where Lottie Moon lived during her final years, he wished all Southern Baptists could share the experience. Seeing the humble setting in which she immersed herself in the Chinese culture, Smith gained a greater understanding of the sacrifice of the beloved missionary.

As one of the first single women appointed to the mission field by Southern Baptists, she set sail for China in 1873 and joined her sister in Tengchow where they began a girls school. The child of a plantation owner, Moon was described by John Broadus as "the most educated woman in the South," having studied classic and modern languages.

The very short-statured (4-foot-3) Moon attained legendary status even before her death from starvation in 1912. The mission board dispatched missionary Cynthia Miller from Pickton, Texas, a nurse by training, to travel to China to bring back the "frail and rapidly deteriorating Moon, but it was too late," recalled Keith Harper in his edit of Moon's letters called "Send the Light."

Miller was with Moon when she died aboard a ship in the Japanese harbor of Kbe on Dec. 24, 1912 at the age of 72.

Of the eight missionaries sent to China in the 15 years after she arrived, three died, three returned home in broken health (including Moon's sister), one left the faith and only one remained on the field, according to a biographical sketch by Susan Verstraete drawn from books written by Catherine Allen and Keith Harper. (See resources on Moon, page 9.)

"She, who had known wealth in America, lived on a pittance in China. At the end of her life she gave away to others what little she had until she began to starve," wrote IMB President Jerry Rankin in his book on Moon's "Journey of Faith and Sacrifice." "And in death she gave to many, many others the vision of what it truly means to follow God wherever he leads."

After moving to P'ingtu in 1885, a three-day journey from her friends and any government protection, Moon adopted the style of dress of the Chinese, fully embracing their culture though standing firm in her Christian convictions. By the end of her 39-year tenure, she eventually saw native churches established and over 2,000 converts baptized in the area.

Generations later, there remain Christians who trace their introduction to the gospel to the seeds planted by Moon's witness. In the P'ingtu house where Moon lived, Smith met a 90-year old man by the name of Mr. Sun whose family took up residence there after Moon left.

At the time of his visit to China 2007, Smith learned that the property was about to be destroyed along with other 19th-century Chinese houses due to modernization efforts in P'ingtu City. His interest piqued, Smith said he wondered about transporting elements of this house and its belongings to the U.S. to serve as a memorial to Moon's legacy that would inspire others to consider a call to missions.

Initially discouraged in early efforts to acquire the property, Smith lacked necessary contacts in China to arrange for the purchase, packing and transportation of the artifacts. His wife, Susan, had kept a file on the project at the associational office in Jacksonville, Texas, where she served as her husband's assistant in his role as a director of missions, often making notes of local men who were willing to make the journey to China to dismantle the house piece by piece. But no one could speak the language or manage the logistics on the ground.

"When we packed up to move to Fort Worth in 2008, I looked at that file and thought, that's the end of that," Susan recalled, equally disappointed as her husband was at the time. Not long after Smith became minister/church relations director for the SBTC, a conversation with a former seminary classmate provided the encouragement he needed to resume the