Portrait of Emogene Harris. IMB Photo
Emogene Harris, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in Nigeria, died Jan. 21, 2026. She was 92.
Emogene was born Feb. 6, 1933, in Brandon, Mississippi, to the late Willard and Emma Harris. She graduated from Puckett (Mississippi) High School and received the Bachelor of Science from Mississippi State College for Women (now Mississippi University for Women), Columbus, and the Master of Religious Education from New Orleans (Louisiana) Baptist Theological Seminary.
After college, she taught home economics at Columbia High School in Mississippi for three years. During the summers, she worked as a staffer at the state Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) camp. While seeking missionary appointment, Emogene recalled that as she grew in her faith, she felt God might be leading her to home mission service.
She wrote, “As I worked with girls, became acquainted with missionaries, and felt the challenge of missions each week, I was more convinced than ever that God wanted me as a missionary.”
In Sept. 1958 she entered seminary on a scholarship provided through the Mississippi WMU. During her first year, Emogene began to feel God’s call was to foreign, rather than home, mission service. She wrote, “I had felt before that I could not possibly meet the qualifications of the Foreign Mission Board and that home mission work must be the thing God wanted me to do. … I know God has called me into mission service. I want to go and I am ready to go if I meet the qualifications.”
In 1960, the International Mission Board appointed Emogene as a missionary to Nigeria. Over 35 years, she served in various areas, including teaching Bible and home economics, community center work, city missions and relief work, and as an advisor for WMU projects.
Emogene was preceded in death by one brother, George Calhoun Harris, and two sisters, Evelyn Louise Windham and Ruby Joyce Buckley.
A funeral service was held Jan. 26 at Cato Baptist Church in Mississippi, with burial in Salem Cemetery, Cato.
Read an obituary here.