William Carey was an English shoemaker’s apprentice who became convinced that the church should be taking the gospel to the whole world. In 1792 he helped organize a missionary society and preached a sermon with the call, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!” Within a year he and his family were on a ship to India. The early years were miserable. Money ran short and the work was hard. He labored seven years before baptizing his first convert, Krishna Pal, in December 1800. He kept going. Over the next 28 years he and his helpers translated the whole Bible into six of India’s major languages and parts of it into more than 200 others. He spent 41 years in India without a furlough.
