Adoniram Judson in 1846. The first American to be sent overseas as a missionary, he and his wife Ann landed first in Calcutta, but found that neither the Indians nor the British wanted him to proselytize among the Hindus. So they moved on to Burma, where the dominant religion is Buddhism, and avoided overt evangelizing for the most part while he worked on his language studies and she made friends with the high-born and low in the marketplace and developed her own linguistic and social fluency. He did eventually make 18 converts after a dozen years. Then war broke out between Britain and Burma, Judson was imprisoned and tortured for over a year before finally being released. Burma ceded some territory, the area was opened to Christian missionaries, and Judson’s work began to thrive – among the animists, not the Buddhists. However, his wife Ann died after all the hardships, separation and privation, and his own health was damaged. He developed a lung disease, was advised to take a sea voyage as a cure and died aboard ship at 61. (George Peter Alexander Healy)
Daily Office Asia-Pacific 
