Who was Janie Chapman? She was the wife of Dr. J.D. Chapman, pastor of First Baptist Church Anderson in upstate South Carolina during the early 1900s. But she became the first South Carolina Woman's Missionary Union president in 1902 and served for twenty-two years, described as disciplined with inner strength and a gentle spirit (Baptist Courier).

      While her husband shepherded their congregation, Janie shepherded a vision far larger than one church could contain. She saw mill villages where women worked dawn to dusk, children growing up without hearing the gospel, and families struggling in poverty across South Carolina. She understood that missions wasn't just about sending people overseas—it was about seeing the neighbors next door.

      In November 1899, at the annual meeting of Woman's Missions Societies of the Baptist Denomination in South Carolina, members voted to establish the first state missions offering, collecting $235 in September 1900 (GuideStar). But Janie knew prayer had to fuel the giving. Eight years later, in 1908, she initiated a Season of Prayer to accompany the offering—a practice that would become sacred tradition.

      Her words carried the weight of conviction: "Spiritual power is the greatest power…The object of our work is soul saving at home and abroad." When WMU celebrated its 25th anniversary, Janie wrote: "We do not want to live too much in the past – just an occasional reminder of the stalwart and true souls who dared to blaze new trails." (Grassypond) She was blazing one herself.

      The results spoke volumes. In 1919, she challenged South Carolina WMU to raise $1,100,000 over five years for the 75 Million Campaign. They gave $1,487,647—exceeding the goal by nearly forty percent. Under her leadership, the state missions offering grew from $908.32 in its first year to $32,667.28 by 1920 (SCBaptist).

      Janie lived by 1 Corinthians 15:58: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." She embodied those words until her death in 1948, buried in Old Silver Brook Cemetery in Anderson, where a memorial plaque honors her legacy.

      In 1937, WMU named the state missions offering "The Mrs. J.D. Chapman Offering for State Interests" to honor her strong missions leadership (GuideStar). The name was later simplified to the Janie Chapman Offering, and it continues today—supporting church planting, disaster relief, ministry to international students, and camps across South Carolina.

      The pastor's wife from First Baptist Anderson started something that wouldn't stop. Her gentle spirit moved mountains. Her disciplined faith mobilized thousands. And every September, when South Carolina Baptists gather for the Week of Prayer for State Missions and give to the Janie Chapman Offering, they remember the woman who dared to believe that one person's faithful stewardship could change an entire state for the gospel.

      Janie Chapman proved that the smallest act of obedience, sustained over decades, leaves a legacy that outlasts lifetimes.

      Who was Lottie Moon? She was a contradiction wrapped in four feet three inches—a Virginia-born prankster who once told classmates the "D" in Charlotte Digges Moon stood for "Devil," a rebellious girl who skipped chapel twenty-six times before Jesus captured her wild heart and redirected it toward China.

      In 1873, at age thirty-three, Lottie sailed into the unknown. The Chinese recoiled from her foreign face, calling her foreign devil. So this tiny woman did something remarkable—she became one of them. She traded her Western dresses for Chinese robes, moved into a simple home, and lived as her neighbors lived. When children still ran from her, she baked cookies. One by one, they came, drawn by sweetness and staying for stories of heaven.

      For thirty-nine years, Lottie poured herself into the people of Tengchow and Pingtu. She taught, she fought against foot-binding's cruelty, and she wrote urgent letters home: Send more missionaries. Send money. The harvest is ready. Her passionate pleas stirred Baptist women across America to create a Christmas offering—a gift given in honor of The Gift.

      But Lottie's final act defined her completely. In 1912, famine ravaged China. At seventy-two, watching her friends starve, she made a choice that would cost everything. She stayed, continued to share her food until her seventy-two-year-old frame withered to near nothing. By the time fellow missionaries noticed and forced her onto a ship home, it was too late.

      On Christmas Eve, on a ship between China and America in a harbor of Japan, Lottie Moon died—her life poured out as completely as the Savior she served.

In 1918, Annie Armstrong suggested naming the Christmas offering after her. Today, more than a century later, we still give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and missionaries around the world serve because a small woman cast an eternal shadow. The cookies are gone, but the legacy remains—a testament to what happens when ordinary devotion meets extraordinary surrender.

      Who was Annie Armstrong? She was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 11, 1850, into a long line of prominent Baptists SCBaptist. As a young woman, she declared she could be anything but Baptist. Then at age twenty, she experienced a spiritual awakening under the preaching of Dr. Richard Fuller and was "born again" SCBaptist—a conversion that set her soul ablaze with a fire that would never go out.

     Annie didn't just believe in Jesus; she fell desperately in love with His mission. Her faith wasn't something she kept politely contained—it spilled out into every broken corner of Baltimore and beyond. Tall, stately, outspoken, and strong-willed, (Lorisfbc )she taught Sunday School for fifty years while pouring herself into the lives of mothers, immigrants, the sick, and anyone else who crossed her path.

      In 1880, when she heard about destitute Indian children at a mission school, Annie and other women sent 240 sets of clothes—saving the school from closing South Carolina WMU. That single act of compassion sparked a lifetime of holy obsession.

      In 1882, at thirty-two, she helped organize what became Woman's Missionary Union and became its first president South Carolina WMU. What followed was extraordinary: Annie wrote 18,000 letters by hand over a decade, advocating for missions Grassypond—each one a love letter to a God who demanded everything and a world that desperately needed Him. She refused a salary and traveled at her own expense, visiting missionaries and carrying their stories back to churches SCBaptist. Why? Because if Christ held nothing back, neither could she.

      Under her leadership, WMU grew from 32 delegates in 1888 to thousands of women from more than 20,000 churches Baptist Courier. In 1895, she led them to give $5,000 to save the Home Mission Board from debt, birthing the Week of Self-Denial for home missions Lorisfbc. Her rallying cry echoed through church halls: "Go Forward!"

      She never married. Never had children of her own. Never sought payment or fame. But when she died in 1938, she left spiritual children by the thousands. In 1934, WMU named the Easter offering for home missions in her honor SCBaptist—an offering that has now raised over $1.1 billion.

      Nannie Burroughs said it best: "Miss Armstrong fired my soul."

The tall woman from Baltimore proved that one person armed with unshakable faith and relentless love could move mountains. She believed the gospel demanded "a bound, a leap forward, to altitudes of endeavor and success undreamed of before."

      Annie Armstrong dreamed those dreams because she was madly in love with Jesus. Then she picked up her pen and changed the world—one handwritten letter, one sacrificial gift, one obedient step at a time. Her legacy whispers still: when faith meets passion, impossibilities bow and kingdoms advance.

      The letter writer who refused to stop left us a simple truth—love like that never dies. It just keeps moving forward.