Lottie Moon

While we were on vacation in June, our family visited the First Baptist Church of Charlottesville. This is the church in which Lottie Moon Diggs, our daughter's namesake, was baptized.

It was a special day trip for us for sentimental reasons. We took several pictures and I am glad to finally have a chance to share them with you.lottie 1

Inside the sanctuary, this church has plaques commemorating several past members of their congregation. After we stopped into the church office, they took us to see the plaque for Lottie Moon.

lottie 18

Next, we visited the Lottie Moon Prayer Garden. It was a peaceful place surrounded by tall trees.

lottie16

There is a commemorative stone across from the bench. The plaque on the bench reads:

Born Dec. 12, 1840 at Viewmont in Southern Albemarle County. Accepted Christ as Savior and was baptized at lottie 15First Baptist Church, Charlottesville, VA on December 22, 1858. Accepted God's call to missions in China. Departed for the mission field Sept. 1, 1873 and served faithfully for 39 years until her lottie12death on her way home, December 24, 1912. A quotation from the margin of her Bible -

"Words do fail to express my love for this book, my gratitude for its Author, for his love and goodness: how shall I thank him for it?"

It was incredibly moving for me to be there and feel the impact of our decision to name our daughter after this woman who gave her life to the service of the Chinese people.

Charlotte is too young to really know it now, but I am fully aware that our little girl is watching us. She is watching to see if our love for Jesus is real or if we just named her Charlotte Moon to show off for others. My daily prayer is that I remain passionate about the right things, not so my Charlotte can grow up to follow Lottie to China, but so she will follow Lottie to heaven.

lottie 14

I plan to follow John Piper's advice for 10 ways to help kids love missions.

Comments

  1. EdiSun Jul 20, 08:16:00 AM EDT

    I enjoyed reading about how you named your daughter after Lottie Moon. Our son also shares the name of a famous missionary...we didn't name him for the missionary - just liked the name and it fit :)

    I checked out Piper's 10 ways article. We have accumulated many missionary biographies over the years - and I want to start reading some to the children.

    We tend to think that children will only enjoy "children's fiction books" but I don't think that is true. I enjoyed mission stories growing up and one of my sisters is an overseas missionary now...so that helps with a few of the other "10 Ways" items.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JenniferMon Jul 21, 10:13:00 AM EDT

    I love reading missionary biographies. The last one I read was about Amy Carmichael, by Elizabeth Elliot. Her life was amazing too!

    ReplyDelete

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