Adoniram Judson was the first American foreign missionary. The USA was a young country when he left, going first to London in 1811 to seek the support of the London Missionary Society. On the way there his ship was overrun by privateers....and that's as far as I've gotten. I know he survives, though, because, again, he was the first American foreign missionary and he went to Burma!
When he was still planning to be a missionary he fell in love with a young lady named Ann. Ann was the youngest daughter of wealthy parents. Adoniram wanted to marry her, so he wrote to her asking if they could "formally commence an acquaintanceship" (remember: it was 1810). She made him wait a week (it would have been unseemly for her to respond too quickly) and then said only that her parents would have to approve.
Now here was a tough letter to write: "He wondered how he was going to tell Ann's parents that he would like to marry their beautiful, talented daughter and drag her off to the Far Ease, where they would probably both die."(p 58) He wrote it, and told them exactly what Ann could expect as his wife: want, degradation, persecution, and quite possibly a violent death.
Amazingly enough, they didn't say no. They admitted that they didn't want her to go (really, what parents wants that type of life for their daughter?), but the wouldn't stop her if she wanted to marry him.
And she said yes. Even knowing what type of future she was likely to have with him, she married him and they went off to the mission field together.
As for exactly what happened: well, it's been a long time since I read about Adoniram Judson (and that was a fiction book and didn't give a lot of details about his life) and I'm only up to the privateers. I'll try to post again after I finish because I think he led an amazing life of service to the Burmese people.
No comments:
Post a Comment