Carey House
William Carey (1761 -1834)
Carey was born in England in 1861, the son of a weaver. He grew up in a household where God was honoured and where he learned to read and love the Word of God. In his small village he trained to be a shoemaker. As a young man Carey became a school master and then a Baptist pastor. He became convicted of the need to evangelise the Christian gospel to the whole world. Carey worked hard, often with much opposition, to convince others of the urgent need to evangelise. In 1792, with 13 others, he founded the Baptist Missionary Society and sailed to India the next year. In India he developed almost every kind of missionary agency, translated the Bible into many languages, founded a Christian college and gained the confidence of one Governor General after another. Carey worked tirelessly in India and won great respect both there and overseas. “Taking his life as a whole it is not too much to say that he was the greatest and most versatile Christian missionary sent out in modern times.” Shortly before he died in India in 1834 Carey said to another, “When I am gone, say nothing about Carey. Speak instead of Carey’s Saviour.”
Judson House
Adoniram Judson (1788 - 1850)
Adoniram Judson was America’s first foreign missionary. He was born in the USA in 1788, he was the son of a parson. By the time he finished university he was a convinced atheist. It wasn’t until a university friend later died that he began to question his beliefs. He dedicated his life to Christ in December 1808. With five other young men he dedicated his life to bringing salvation to lost people in the east. At that stage there was no overseas mission organisation in the USA. After attempting to serve as a missionary in India, Judson became convinced that his work was to be in Burma. In 1813, after many hardships and disappointments, he and his wife Ann arrived in Burma. Attempts to establish a mission in Burma before this time had failed. Over the years in Burma, Judson lost his wife and three children to illness, and he was imprisoned and endured persecution and opposition. Judson’s work in Burma bore tremendous fruit. Despite the difficulties he left a Burmese Bible, dictionary and grammar. He died in Burma in 1850. At his birthplace in Massachusetts a marble tablet tells his story.
Taylor House
Hudson Taylor (1832 - 1905)
James Hudson Taylor, born in England in 1832, is often referred to as “the father of modern missions.” After spending time in the study of medicine and theology he went to China under the newly formed China Evangelization Society in 1854. During 1865 he formed the China Inland Mission. Hudson Taylor established many new churches in China. It has been said of him that, “Few men have been the instrument in God’s hands for proclaiming the good news of His salvation to such a vast population and bringing so many Christian churches into being." Although he retired from the mission in 1901 he stayed in China, dying there in 1905.