Pursuit of mission

It began in the church; she was the young wife of a Baptist minister.

Growing up, Wanda Lee’s church never taught about the mission work of Southern Baptists, but the women of her church in Tuscaloosa lost no time in teaching her about the different programs. 

“I was hooked,” Lee said. “I just saw a great avenue for training up children to have a broader view of the world than what they sometimes had living in their small community. We were in a rural church, so sometimes they didn’t even know what it was like in the city.”

Soon her story expanded beyond her rural church, and now she lives by Highland Lake spending her time along the U.S. 280 corridor at the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) or with her children and grandchildren. 

Lee’s path led her to work as a registered nurse in the field for 30 years, to participate in missionary trips in Guatemala, the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caribbean and China and to serve as director of the national organization WMU for the past 14 years. 

“We have done a little bit of everything from being a missionary to pastoring churches in Georgia and Alabama, and then I always worked as a nurse where ever we lived,” Lee said. “I never dreamed that I would shift professions at that stage in life, but it has been good.”  

Missionary Work 

After learning about the missions projects offered through the Baptist church, Lee remembers one of her very first missionary trips — a trip to China. 

Thinking back, Lee said it was eye-opening. Beijing is a big city, but she said outside the city is much different. Lee remembers seeing the small communities and witnessing how hard they had to work to survive. 

“I went in very naive about how the rest of the world lived,” Lee said. “I was a bit overwhelmed by the poverty and by the lack of opportunity for education in many places in the world.” 

Even harder, she said, was putting her experiences into perspective once she returned home to the states. Since then, she makes an effort to prepare her mind before all her trips. She studies the culture more thoroughly to determine what she will most likely face during her trip.  

Lee was in the Balkans in Bosnia during the ceasefire in 1999, and she took an immersion trip to the Middle East into a Muslim setting where she dressed as Muslim woman. She said she was trying to encourage the few believers she knew were there. 

 “My faith [is] understanding that I play a role in helping not just the people I meet everyday in Birmingham or wherever I was living,” Lee said. “The moment I fully understood that I could have a part in sharing the kind of love and care that the Lord has provided for me. That was a pretty overwhelming feeling of responsibility.”

Her most recent trip took her to Guatemala with a team of nurses from all over the country. The Florida Baptists Children’s Home has a ministry in Guatemala through a malnutrition center. The center is in the poorest part of Guatemala with dirt roads, people living in primitive conditions and many of the children suffer from malnutrition. The center offers feeding programs to better educate parents about nutrition while also housing the sick children. 

When Lee visited there were about 70 children in the center. She said her group was able to work alongside the regular caregivers for one week and use their skills to access the children. 

“I would say most of my adult life I have been looking for ways to be a good steward of the love I have received and know that it is a message that many people need,” Lee said. “So I do my part in whatever way I can.” 

Women’s Missionary Union

Spending time as a missionary helped Lee learn a lot about WMU and what the organization did to support missionaries. After spending time in the Caribbean as a nurse, she moved back to the states and got involved with a local community WMU. 

After some time there, she became WMU’s Georgia state president and then she went on to be the national president. In 2000 when the previous director retired, her involvement in the national organization transitioned into her new role as director. 

“Now at this stage, and especially in leadership here, I have the privilege of helping other people discover [ways to steward the love they have received],” Lee said. “So it is at the point of equipping others now.  I am in the stage in life I need to be helping others understand and find their place and how to use their gifts. The more you multiply yourself, the greater the impact. “

During her 14 years as director, Lee has faced the challenges of two difficult financial situations and WMU has remained true to its purpose. Lee said the last four years of the recession and 9/11 were hard on non-profit organizations, and they either focused on what they did well or they stayed scattered and failed. 

 “I felt like WMU understood that they had a singular purpose and that was missions,” Lee said. “While there were many good things we could do, if we focused on communicating our missions, message and involving people in missions that the Lord would guide us through those tough years.”

WMU continued raising money and supporting itself through those years through three different business lines that make WMU totally self-supporting. The women of WMU have been funding it separately from the denomination since 1888. 

WMU raises funding through its curriculum base of missions resources such as magazines for the church, the book publishing arm that publishes about 24 Christian books a year and its fair trade ministry that sells artisan products from around the globe. 

Lee said she will continue to clarify WMU’s overall purpose and make sure what it does is measured against the words of its vision statement: “Challenge believers to understand and be radically involved in the mission of God.”  

She said she has ventured a long way from the young pastors wife who knew nothing about mission trips and WMU, and she wants to be an equipper for others now. 

“I think that’s how it happens,” Lee said. “I think you begin where you are with what you know. If you respond step-by-step and you are open to the Lord teaching you, I have learned that he will do that. He will give you what you need: the next step.” 

For more information, visit wmu.com.