When Morgantown native Opal Morgan became a Christian in 1944 at the age of 19, she was drawn to share the message of Christ with others. For almost 70 years, she donated monthly to missionaries and missions projects. Since her death in 2012, her impact continues to assist ministers and missionaries around the world through the Opal Morgan Memorial Missions Fund.
Opal graduated from Lee University in Tennessee in 1947 with hopes of becoming a missionary, but at that time the Church of God Missions Board was not endorsing single women as missionaries due to global unrest after the Second World War. Disappointed, Opal returned to Morgantown and continued her education at USM, still donating monthly to missions. She became a teacher and taught in California, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi, including the Oak Vale and West Marion schools locally. She also assisted with local church ministries and was an active member of Morgantown Church of God upon her return to Marion County in the late 1950s.
Opal’s commitment to missions never dimmed. She prayed daily for missionaries, corresponded regularly through letters and gave sacrificially each month. Her impact touched every continent except Antarctica. In addition to Church of God projects, she formed a friendship with Dutch missionary “Brother Andrew” van der Bijl and sent money to purchase some of the Bibles he smuggled into countries closed to the Gospel. She financed a church building in Mozambique through Christ for the Nations (Dallas, Texas) as a result of her friendship with Gordon and Freda Lindsay, and she purchased Bibles for distribution in various native languages in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Opal financed projects in Japan through her friendship with educator Mary Grace Comans and to both Arabs and Jews in the Middle East through her friendship with former classmate and missionary Margaret Gaines. She also helped finance several refugees fleeing their homelands because of religious persecution.
In the 1950s, Opal taught English to Latino students and served as the secretary to the president of the International Preparatory School (IPI), a Church of God missionary training school in San Antonio, Texas. It was at her suggestion that Church of God schools were opened in Latin America to train students closer to their home regions.
When Opal died in 2012, her wish was for money to be donated to assist missions schools and a fund was established through Church of God World Missions. Initially, family members and members of the Morgantown Church of God gave a significant donation of $15,000 to finance the Opal Morgan Memorial Library at Discipleship College (Eldoret, Kenya, East Africa). Since then, the fund is sustained through the generosity of family and friends. Some projects include providing college tuition for orphans studying in Africa, roofing a children’s center in Belize, helping provide clean water access to villages in Africa and Asia and, most recently, financing a month’s expenses for a rehabilitation home in Thailand that rescues children from sex trafficking.
Last year, the fund provided the start-up finances to launch The Opal Network (Online Publications and Academic Library Network), a partnership of Lee University and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary to provide academic resources to help train Christian educators, counselors, pastors and missionaries at Church of God certified educational institutions internationally. This initiative assists major schools on almost every continent and has made it possible for several schools to receive accreditation by their appropriate governments.
Last month, the Central American Pentecostal Bible Seminary (SEBIPCA) in Guatemala acknowledged Opal Morgan’s impact on missions education by naming the technology lab and student commons room in her memory at their recently renovated library.
Church of God World Missions manages the Opal Morgan Memorial Missions Fund, and each project supported is personally researched and selected by Dr. Louis Morgan, her great nephew.
“Every penny donated goes to the projects,” he said. “Not one penny is kept for overhead or administrative expenses. I am careful to select only credible projects I know Aunt Opal would want to support.”
Morgan also explained the importance of these projects to him personally, “Aunt Opal was a significant influence in my life, spiritually and educationally. Sharing the love of Christ and His message through missions was a core part of her life, and it is important to me to honor her life and memory by continuing to support missionaries and missions projects. It is part of her legacy, and I know she would approve and be so happy about these projects.”
From Morgantown to various regions of the world, Opal Morgan’s influence continues to have a significant global impact.
