“I never prayed sincerely and earnestly about anything, but it came at some time; no matter how distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably the least I would have devised, it came.” Adoniram Judson
October 1811 – Boston, Massachusetts: When Adoniram Judson applied to the American Board for Foreign Missions to become a missionary in India, he discovered that single men were not accepted into the program. Up until that point, the 23-year-old son of a minister, Brown University valedictorian, and Andover Seminary graduate had never considered marriage.
Judson prayed about it. If marriage was a requirement, he was certainly willing, but he had never even had a girlfriend. The lady at the mission board agreed to help him find a wife. They created an ad that ran in several newspapers: “Single missionary seeks adventurous female. Looking for a young, educated, fit, and reasonably good-looking missionary-minded woman.”
Ann Haseltine, a 21-year-old Boston schoolteacher, responded to the ad. The Judson’s were married less than three months later, January 5, 1812. Ann’s new husband was ordained as a Baptist missionary the day after the wedding. One week later, they set sail from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, headed for India.
Upon arrival in Calcutta in mid-June, the British East India Company ordered them to leave and return to America. The government had recently banned the proselytizing of Hindus. After hurriedly leaving Calcutta, the Judsons spent six months exiled in France before giving up on India. Still feeling called as missionaries to Asia, they fervently prayed for direction. God confirmed their destination in a missionary magazine. On July 13, 1813, the Judson’s arrived in Rangoon, Burma, now Myanmar.
They were the first American missionaries in Asia and the first to set foot in the jungle country of two million Buddhists. Adoniram had read that Burma was impermeable to Christian evangelism. He was about to find out. At the time of their arrival, the sentence was death for anyone who renounced Buddhism for Christianity.
The Judsons had two goals: pastor a church with 100 members and translate the Bible into Burmese. They immediately found a tutor and devoted 12 hours each day to learning the language, which many believed to be the second most challenging language after Chinese. It would be three years before they were fluent and four years before Adoniram held his first public meeting. Fifteen men attended.
On June 26, 1819, after more than six years in Burma, Adoniram baptized his first convert, Moung Nau, a young fisherman. Judson wrote in his journal that day, “Oh may it prove to be the beginning of baptisms in the Burma Empire which will continue to the end of the age.” A decade after the Judson’s arrival, their small bamboo and thatch chapel had 18 members.
In 1824, when war broke out between Britain and Burma, Adoniram was arrested for preaching the gospel. He was imprisoned for 20 months in the infamous Ava Prison, where he was frequently beaten and hung upside down by his feet with just his head and shoulders resting on the ground. Except for the urgent pleas, powerful prayers, and regular visits by Ann he would have died there.
In October 1826, two months after Adoniram was released from prison, Ann Judson, the first American female missionary, died of a tropical fever. With a sad heart, Adoniram buried her in Kyaikkam, Burma, and returned to his work.
For hundreds of years, Burmese folklore foretold of a man who would one day come with the Book of Truth. In 1832, almost 20 years after arriving, Adoniram completed a draft of the Burmese New Testament. Two years later, he finished the Burmese Bible, which is still used today.
Adoniram Judson served in Burma for 37 years before dying of a tropical disease in 1850. He was buried at sea in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Burma. Today, more than 200 years after Adoniram and Ann Judson arrived in Burma, there are 5,000 Baptist churches and about 3.8 million Christians in Myanmar, which represents one of the highest percentages of Christianity of any country in Asia.
In a small cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts, a simple gravestone reads, “Adoniram Judson: The ocean is his sepulcher, the Burmese Bible his monument, his record is on high.”
Very brave people. Thank you Pete