Charlotte Digges (“Lottie”) Moon was the fourth single female missionary appointed by the IMB.  She was born December 12, 1840 in Albemarle County, Virginia, and in 1873 joined her younger sister Edmonia in the city of Penglai Shi, Shandong Province (then called Tengchow).  Lottie and Edmonia were trained in rural evangelism by missionary widow Sallie Holmes and Martha Foster Crawford, whose husband Tarleton P. Crawford was pastor of the Monument Street Baptist Church in Tengchow.

Lottie served most of her missionary career in Tengchow, with a few years spent in P’ingtu (modern-day Pingdu Shi, Shandong Province).  Besides her “country trips,” where she went house to house visiting women in rural villages, she taught school and wrote articles for publication in IMB periodicals.  Her correspondence was valued highly by two successive IMB presidents (then called corresponding secretaries), Henry A. Tupper and Robert J. Willingham.  Her persuasive pleas for more generosity from Southern Baptists inspired women’s missionary societies to inaugurate an annual Christmas offering.  After Lottie’s death in 1912, the offering was named after her and continues today as the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.  100% of gifts to the LMCO enable gospel transformation among the unreached.