The story of Judson College students Sau Nam and Ja Htoi started 200 years ago when another young woman, Ann Judson, got on a ship in Massachusetts and sailed to Burma (now Myanmar).
“She was a young woman who left with her husband to go across an ocean to a life of the kind of hardship, adversity and loss that’s unknown to most of us,” said David Potts, president of Judson College in Marion. “Any hostility we face today pales in comparison to the sacrifice of Adoniram and Ann Judson.”
Their legacy is not lost on Nam and Htoi.
“I said goodbye to my parents and my family when I came to Judson, but I know I’m going back in four years,” Nam told messengers to the state convention via video. “But when the Judsons left their family, they didn’t know what would happen to them. They had so much confidence in God. They just obeyed God.”
And now there are millions of Burmese Christians, said Judson senior Paula Fendley.
“God said, ‘Go,’ and the Judsons said, ‘OK.’ They were faithful,” said Fendley, who is studying missions at Judson. “God will be faithful to multiply the fruit of your labor.”
Potts said over the past dozen years or so Judson has had the privilege of hosting students who are “the spiritual beneficiaries of the work of Adoniram and Ann Judson.”
The college also has fostered an environment bent on continuing their legacy, he said.
Last year 85 percent of Judson College undergraduates participated in service-learning, reaching out to the people around them in Perry County and around the world.
Students and the college’s missionary-in-residence worked over spring break to help families from more than 60 countries living in a housing complex in Nashville.
This was one of many missions efforts over the academic year, according to the Book of Reports.
Because of its efforts, Judson College earned a place on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll “with distinction,” a designation only given to three of the seven Alabama colleges on the list.
And to commemorate the Judsons’ departure in 1812, Fendley, Nam and Htoi traveled to Salem, Mass., earlier this year.
“We enjoyed the history and the legacy,” Nam said. “It touched my heart. I asked God, ‘Please help me obey you like Adoniram and Ann obeyed.’”
Those three students, as well as many others at Judson, are “laser-focused” on sharing the gospel, Potts said.
“Be faithful, Alabama Baptists,” he said. “As the Judsons would say, ‘Bless God and take courage.’ Thank you for all you do to keep the Judson legacy alive to the world.”
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