The Little Lady with the Funny Accent

I grew up in the Chilton Baptist Association, though if you had asked me back then, I could not have told you what that meant.

Like a lot of people sitting in our churches today, the association was shaping my life long before I knew it had a name.

What I knew was Kids Camp. And what I knew about Kids Camp was that it was run by a little lady with a funny accent.

Years later I went on my first mission trip. Same little lady.

She took us to Salem, Massachusetts, and sent us out door to door in a town known around the world for witchcraft. I was a Chilton County kid a long way from anything familiar. Very little about that week was comfortable, and very little has done more to grow me.

And it was not one church loading up a van. It was several churches deciding to go on mission together. I did not think twice about that at the time. I think about it nearly every day now.

The little lady with the funny accent was Mrs. Myrtle Littleton. The accent was British, which in Chilton County meant she stood out everywhere she went.

I had no idea that this thing called a Baptist association would one day be my vocational calling.

That is what associational missions actually looks like. Not a program you sign up for. A woman who gives a week to a room full of kids, puts churches on a bus together that might never have met otherwise, and forms something in them they will not be able to name for another twenty years.

Mrs. Myrtle is gone. Those kids are not. Some of them pastor churches in this association now. One of them ended up in the seat I am sitting in.

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The Mrs. Myrtle Littleton Memorial Offering

Her heart for missions never stopped at the county line. The photograph above was taken in India, one of the places that passion carried her.

The offering that carries her name funds the same work she gave herself to: children at camp, churches on mission together, and people being formed long before they can name what is forming them.

There are three ways to give:

• Through your local church
• By check to the CBA office, designated MLMO
• Online at chiltonbaptist.online/give, choosing the Myrtle Littleton Memorial Offering in the fund list

The offering will be received at the Annual Missions Celebration on Sunday, October 18 at 3:00 PM.

Photograph of Mrs. Myrtle Littleton in India, courtesy of her family.