Adoniram & Ann Judson
Peculiar Prospects for the Mission Field

The life of Christian missionaries has never been what one would term "idyllic." In the early 1800s, it was far more of a challenge and commitment than it is today. Some of our present-day short-term mission projects in their entirety don't last as long as the nauseating, hazardous voyage by sail from America or Europe to the mission field destination. Once there, the Word planters couldn't be at all certain when they might return home. They were completely incommunicado from the outside world for months and years on end, surviving as best they could.

Into this scenario in 1812 sailed a pair of newlywed Americans, Adoniram and Ann "Nancy" Hasseltine Judson. Before her conversion to Christianity, Ann had been a "belle"—a pampered teen-age socialite. Adoniram, for his part, had been an actor and at best a spiritual agnostic. Fired by the Spirit, he became a Congregational preacher. They decided to make their new life together as missionaries to India.

When they arrived, they found the British authorities altogether unfriendly. Perhaps the overlords in the British East India Company were nervous, not wanting to agitate a native population who had the European authorities outnumbered by an astronomical proportion in a delicate colonial arrangement. Basically, the Judsons were given to know they had two choices: 1) leave voluntarily or 2) be expelled.

The Judsons made their way to Burma, where they were allowed to remain but under horrible conditions. Ann Judson might have died from either of two dangerous illnesses that overtook her, smallpox or spinal meningitis. But she survived long enough to see her husband released from two years of primitive imprisonment. Then she passed into glory, along with their child.

Adoniram went on to translate the Bible into the Burmese language. The church the Judsons founded there grew to 7,000 members.

Reflecting back to their beginnings. . . . Suppose someone had suggested to proper Miss Ann Hasseltine that she would die young of a tropical disease in Burma, a willing Christian servant. Suppose an admirer or colleague of scornful actor Adoniram Judson had predicted backstage that he someday would lead thousands to Christianity on the other side of the world. . . . [peels of riotous laughter] [curtains]

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