The Purpose of WMU is to equip adults, youth, children, and preschoolers with missions education that they may become radically involved in the mission of God. WMU also promotes the offerings each year for Lottie Moon at Christmas and Annie Armstrong at Easter.

At Isle of Hope Baptist, there are two WMU circles (or groups). The Morning circle meets the last Tuesday of each month at 11 a.m. in the bride's room at the church. The night circle meets on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. at the home of one of it's members. The circles don't meet during the summer months.

At our monthly meetings, a member presents a program from the Missions Mosaic magazine, missionaries here and abroad are prayed for, friends, family and church needs are lifted in prayer, and mission projects are discussed. The circles participate in various community and mission projects, for example, hygiene bags for the Seamen's Ministry, feeding the World Changers for a week each summer, providing lunch once a year to the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at Armstrong State University, and contributing needed items to the Savannah Baptist Center.

Annie Armstrong was born in Baltimore at a time when women were not expected to lead. She served, challenged churches to action and rallied support for missionaries. Ultimately, Annie was recognized as a national Southern Baptist trailblazer renowned for visionary missions leadership.

Contributions
•Started Bay View Mission for Baltimore’s poor and addicted
•Served as the first executive of Woman’s Missionary Union, the largest protestant women’s organization in the world
•Led the formation of missions’ organizations for children
•Raised support for missionaries to Italian and Jewish immigrants
•Refused a salary because she would never give to the Lord “that which costs me nothing.” (2 Samuel 24:24)
•Initiated fund-raising “brick cards” to build churches in Cuba
•Gained support for the first black, female missionaries
•Secured funds to relieve China missionary, Lottie Moon, who had served for 11 years without a furlough
•Advocated for Native Americans and impoverished mountain people
•Honored in 1934 when The Home Missions Offering was re-named for her to encourage more to follow her sacrificial example

Today, over $1 billion has been given through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®. All gifts—100%—support thousands of missionaries in church planting and compassion ministries across the U.S. and Canada.

While living in China, Lottie wrote letters to the Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board) and to Baptist women. She asked for more missionaries and for money to grow her work among the Chinese.

Because of Lottie’s determination, WMU collected a Christmas Offering to give to the Foreign Mission Board. In 1919, Annie Armstrong suggested that the offering should be named for Lottie Moon.

Today, we still give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering in honor of her work and sacrifice to keep our missionaries on the field.

10 things you should know about Lottie Moon:

Lottie was born in Virginia on December 12, 1840.
Her name was Charlotte Digges Moon, but everyone called her “Lottie.”
She was 4’9” tall.
Before she became a Christian while in high school, Lottie missed required chapels 26 times.
Lottie loved to pull pranks on others. Once, when asked what the “D” stood for in her middle name, she replied, “Devil.”
Lottie was appointed to China as a missionary at age 33 and served there 39 years, primarily in Tengchow and Pingtu.
She wore Chinese clothes and lived like her Chinese neighbors.
Lottie had several nicknames in China—foreign devil, foreign lady teacher, heavenly book visitor, and the cookie maker. (Lottie baked cookies to win the hearts of the children and families who were frightened of her.)
Lottie led in the campaign to end the practice of bound feet. The Chinese believed small feet made a woman more beautiful, so girls' feet were bound tightly with cloth. Girls with bound feet could hardly walk, and infections, gangrene, and even death were common side effects of this practice.
In 1912 at the end of her career, famine, flood, and war encircled her China. Her friends were starving. In a final act of empathy, Lottie stopped eating and gave all her food away. When her friends realized the depth of her sickness, they put her on a boat to return to the United States. Lottie died on Christmas Eve while en route to the U.S.

One hundred percent of the offering goes to the missionaries, none to administration.