Lottie Moon - Spiritual Awakening

Spiritual Awakening

A spirited and outspoken girl, Lottie was indifferent to her Christian upbringing until her early teens (1853). She underwent a spiritual awakening at the age of 18, after a series of revival meetings on the college campus. Leading the revival service wherein Moon experienced this awakening was John Broadus, one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

There were very few opportunities for educated females in the mid-19th century, though her older sister Orianna became a physician and served as a Confederate Army doctor during the American Civil War. Lottie helped her mother maintain the family estate during the war, and afterward settled into a teaching career. She taught at female academies, first in Danville, Kentucky, then in Cartersville, Georgia, where she and her friend, Anna Safford, opened Cartersville Female High School in 1871. There she joined the First Baptist Church and ministered to the impoverished families of Bartow County, Georgia.

To the family's surprise, Lottie's younger sister Edmonia accepted a call to go to North China as a missionary in 1872. By this time the Southern Baptist Convention had relaxed its policy against sending single women into the mission field, and Lottie herself soon felt called to follow her sister to China. On July 7, 1873, the Foreign Mission Board officially appointed Lottie as a missionary to China. She was 33 years old.