In October, the Houghs and their printing press finally arrived in Rangoon, along with a supply of paper and Burmese type faces, generously made up for them by the head printer in Serampore. The first thing to be done after their arrival was to build a small hut for the printing press. Then it was time for George Hough to learn as much as possible about the Burmese language so that he could set the type.
While helping to set up the printing press, Adoniram kept busy translating the book of Matthew into Burmese. He also held nightly meetings with local Burmese men. Ann was busy, too. Her school for girls was flourishing, and she also had set about assisting Adoniram with the task of writing some simple Christian literature to help the Burmese people understand about God. This task was much more difficult than it may have sounded to their Baptist supporters back in New England.
Most Burmese people were Buddhist and did not believe in an eternal God. They had no concept of such a being. For them, human life was an endless wheel of reincarnation, of being born and reborn from one life to the next. This cycle was marked by endless suffering caused by a person’s passions and selfish desire for things that could not satisfy the spirit. The only hope of salvation for these Buddhists was to follow the Noble Eightfold Path laid out by the Buddha more than two and a half thousand years before. A person who disciplined himself and followed this path could eventually reach Nirvana—the state of no longer being alive—and so be freed from the cycle of being born and reborn. It was a bleak outlook, completely at odds with the hope and promise of salvation from sin and a new life here and now and in heaven to come, held out by Christianity, which Adoniram and Ann were trying to share with the Burmese people.
It took a while, but finally Adoniram and Ann produced a seven-page tract that they felt explained the gospel in a way that Burmese people could understand. They concluded the tract by noting the date it was completed, according to both the English and the Burmese calendars: “In the year of Christ, 1816; in the Burman year 1178; in the 967th day of the lord of the Saddan elephant, and the master of the Sakyah weapon; and in the 33rd year of his reign; in the division Pashoo; on Tuesday, the 12th day of the wane of the moon Wahgoung, after the double beat, this writing, entitled The Way to Heaven, was finished. May the reader obtain light. Amen.”
The type was set for the tract, and in early 1817, a thousand copies were printed by George Hough. At first no one seemed very interested in reading the tract, but slowly word got around that the foreigners had a “holy book,” and men began to stop by the mission house and request a copy of it. Sometimes they would stay and ask questions, but most often they just took the tract and quickly left. It was surprising, then, to Adoniram when one day in March 1817 he answered the door to find a man who wished to come inside and talk.
“My name is Maung Yah,” the man said. “I have come to visit you.”
“Please sit down,” replied Adoniram, taking note of the man’s expensive clothing. “Where are you from?”
“North of here,” replied the man rather vaguely. “I have come to Rangoon to worship at the Shwe Dagon pagoda.”
Adoniram nodded. In Burma, March was Tabaung, the last month of the Burmese year and the month in which huge Buddhist festivals were held. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over Burma flocked to Rangoon to worship at the pagoda where eight hairs of the great Buddha were said to be enshrined.
Maung Yah leaned towards Adoniram, his voice low and steady, his dark eyes gleaming. “How long will it take me to learn the religion of Jesus?” he asked.
Adoniram stared for a moment. In his four years in Rangoon he had never been asked this question. Could it be that this man wanted to become a Christian? “Well,” he began, stumbling over his words, “it’s impossible to answer that question. It depends on how serious a person is in his inquiry. If a man or a woman sincerely wishes to become a Christian, God will give them light. If a person does not sincerely wish to become a Christian, they will never truly understand the Christian message.”
“It is more complicated than I had imagined,” replied Maung Yah.
“God is there to help anyone who asks,” said Adoniram gently. “Tell me, how did you come to hear of Jesus?”
Maung Yah’s face brightened. “He is the Son of God,” he said. “And God is a being without beginning or end, who is not subject to old age or death, but always is.”
A chill went up and down Adoniram’s spine. Those were the exact words of the tract he and Ann had written. Sitting cross-legged in front of him was proof that the printed word could make a difference with the Burmese people. Maung Yah was the first Burmese person Adoniram had ever heard speak directly of an eternal being.
“Wait here,” said Adoniram, hurrying over to his desk to retrieve a copy of a new tract Ann had just finished writing. “I see you are familiar with my writing,” he said.
Maung Yah nodded as he took the tract. “Yes,” he said. “These words speak of the right way. This is the true God.”
Thinking that the man was ready to become a Christian, Adoniram began to tell him more about Christianity, but Maung Yah did not want to talk anymore.
“I need more of the writings,” he told Adoniram several times. “What can you give me to read and meditate on?”
Adoniram felt deflated. He had not yet finished translating the book of Matthew. He explained to Maung Yah that if he came back at this time next year he would have a big book for him with the entire life of the Son of God recorded in it. But Maung Yah was not to be satisfied. “You must have something,” he said.
In the end, Adoniram handed him the proof sheets George Hough had printed of the first five chapters of Matthew. Although they had many mistakes in them, Maung Yah seemed happy to have the pages.
“I will read them every day,” he promised Adoniram. “I will guard them as a great treasure.”
For weeks Adoniram waited for news from Maung Yah. Surely he must have become a Christian by now, he told himself. Still no news came. In frustration, Adoniram talked to his language teacher about the difficulty the mission was having in making a single convert.
The teacher’s answer was simple and to the point. “We are from Burma, the Golden Country,” he said. “Everyone who is from Burma is a Buddhist, and just a few are Hindu like myself. That is the way it is. Your religion might be good for foreigners, but not for us; we are from Burma. Look around. Do you see even a single native Christian in all of Burma? No. Even if your religion was truer than ours, our people would rather dwell in hell with their families than in heaven alone.”
Adoniram sighed deeply at the response. But it was true. During the past year, hundreds of people had taken a tract or come to listen to him or Ann talk, but not one of them had become a convert. There had to be a key to unlock their hearts, but Adoniram had no idea what it might be. Somehow he had to find a way to convince Burmese people that they could become Christians and still be Burmese.
Chapter 12
The Voyage to Nowhere
It was December 1, 1817, and Adoniram was halfway through his early morning walk around Rangoon when he stopped dead in the middle of a muddy street. “Why didn’t I think of it before,” he laughed out loud to himself. “Of course. That’s the answer.”
Adoniram hurried home to Ann, the idea percolating in his head as he walked. “Ann, I have the answer!” he called as he walked into the courtyard of the mission house.
“To what?” Ann called back from the other end of the house.
“To the problem of being Burmese and being a Christian.”
Ann walked into the courtyard and gave her husband her full attention.
“Remember the letter we received last week from William Carey?” asked Adoniram.
Ann nodded.
“In the letter Carey said there is a handful of Burmese Christians living in Chittagong. Well, I’ve been thinking. What if I were to go to Chittagong and invite one or two of these Christians to join us in Rangoon. They could preach and answer questions. Surely then the people here couldn’t argue that it’s impossible to be Burmese and a Christian. We would have a Burmese Christian to introduce to them and prove them wrong.”
Adoniram watched as his wife’s eyes shone. “It’s a wonderful idea,” Ann said. “Just what the Burmese people need to see. And now’s a perfect time to go to Chittagong. The Houghs are here to help run the mission. And a sea voyage is just what you need to give your eyes a rest,” she added.
“Yes,” said Adoniram. “It won’t be easy, though, finding a ship going that way, but I’ll start looking.”
Adoniram began keeping a close eye on ships coming and going from Rangoon, hoping to find one headed for Chittagong, a small seaport at the northern end of the Bay of Bengal, about two hundred miles east of Calcutta and fifty miles west of Burma’s border with India. Since Chittagong was so close to Burma, many Burmese people from the neighboring province of Arakan lived there. A Dutch missionary had also taken up residence there and was busy sharing the gospel with these Burmese people.
With favorable winds, it normally took about two weeks by ship to get to Chittagong from Rangoon. Adoniram hoped to find a ship headed northwest to Calcutta that would make a detour and stop in at Chittagong so that he could disembark. Once he had convinced one or two of the Burmese Christians there to return with him, he would search for a ship that could bring them all back to Rangoon.
After a week of looking, Adoniram could hardly believe it when the Two Brothers sailed into Rangoon. The Two Brothers was apparently about to make a round trip to Chittagong, something he had never heard of a ship doing from Rangoon before. Surely, he told Ann, this was God’s way of telling him now was the right time to go.
On Christmas Day 1817, the Two Brothers hoisted sail and headed off down the Rangoon River bound for Chittagong. Almost immediately Adoniram became violently ill. He thought it was a combination of seasickness and the intense headaches he had been experiencing as a result of eyestrain. The captain assured him that they would be in Chittagong in ten or twelve days, and Adoniram reassured himself that he could easily endure any discomfort for that length of time.
By the end of the second day, the Two Brothers was being lashed by strong headwinds. The captain visited Adoniram, his sole passenger, and explained that the voyage might take a day or two longer than first thought because of the adverse winds. He was wrong. The Two Brothers was buffeted by the wind and pummeled by the seething ocean for an entire month, first in the Gulf of Martaban off Burma and then out in the Bay of Bengal. By the end of January, Adoniram was convinced that the captain had no idea how to manage his ship or his crew. At the rate they were proceeding, it would take them three more months to reach Chittagong, and they were already running dangerously short of food and fresh water.
On February 1, 1818, long past the date Adoniram had anticipated being in Chittagong, the captain finally decided it was hopeless trying to reach their original destination. He gave the order for the crew to turn the ship southwest and follow the prevailing winds to Madras, India.
The whole turn of events reminded Adoniram very much of when he had been kidnapped by privateers in the Atlantic Ocean. Once again he was half-starved and headed to somewhere he did not want to go.
With the wind at her back, the Two Brothers made good time crossing the Bay of Bengal. But as the ship approached the coast of India, the winds shifted and conspired with the tides to beat her back. The captain spent another month trying unsuccessfully to maneuver the ship close enough to land to drop anchor off Madras. By now it was the end of February, and the situation onboard was desperate. There was no food or water left on the ship, and the only way to get any was to beg it from the few native boats that ventured out that far into the Indian Ocean. On a good day, each person aboard the Two Brothers was lucky to get a cup of water and a spoonful of moldy rice.
