Berdie Lou Hope

When Ben Hope asked Berdie Moose, "Will you marry me?" she didn't say yes. She said "Will you go to the mission field with me?" She knew he was committed to ministry, but she was called to missions. And if he was not as committed to that as she was, she was willing to walk away, to go to the mission field as a single missionary. That's the kind of person she was.

Ben and Berdie married in 1956, when she had just graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University, and he still had two years to go. After he finished college they moved to Fort Worth, TX, to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Two and a half years in Cleveland, OH, gave them the experience in church planting they would need on the mission field, and by July 1968 they were boarding the SS Argentina bound for Brazil, along with their two children, Janet and Joel.

They spent a total of 32 years in Brazil, and during that time, Berdie organized libraries in small seminaries and Bible institutes, directed choirs, learned to play the pump organ, and shuttled her children back and forth to school. In the 1980s, she learned computer programming and wrote a program to automatically print out library cards (before card catalogs became computerized).

In 2000, when the time came to retire, they moved to Southside, AL, to be close to Ben's sister Mary Wade and her family. They spent a little time traveling, but then settled down as members of White Springs Baptist Church, where Berdie took over the job of church librarian. She also volunteered in the library of the Etowah Baptist Association.

Everywhere she went, she played the piano, sang for as long as she could, and organized books, whether it was in the church library, the library of the independent living facility in Huntsville, or the books at the assisted living in Hazel Green. She organized a choir at the assisted living, and played the piano throughout the pandemic, even when people could not come into the room to sing with her. When she moved to the nursing home she found they had a piano in the dining room and she began playing that before every meal, encouraging people to sing along with her. She found ways of blessing people around her even as her memory failed her.

Ben went to Heaven ahead of Berdie, in 2015. She joined him there on July 9, 2026. They leave behind their daughter Lori with her husband Karl and daughter Kaede, their son Joel with his wife Heather and daughter Sunny, and their foster daughter Janeth Cruz with her husband Josenil, their children Raquel and Breno, as well as Breno's wife Helena and two daughters Miriã and Lis.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent in her memory to the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, which helps support mission work around the world.

A Memorial Service will be held on October 10, 2026 at 11:00am in the Rock Chapel at Locust Grove Baptist Church, 171 County Lake Road, New Market, Alabama 35761.