William Carey took his wife and family with him to India, where he and his team became pioneer missionaries. Carey had four sons. Three of them were saved by God’s grace and had begun to serve their Saviour – two of which were missionaries themselves. However their younger brother, Jabez, made no profession of faith and had every intention of becoming a lawyer. Back home in England, Carey’s friend, John Ryland, was doing all he could to encourage and support the work of foreign missions. On one occasion, after twenty years of Carey’s work in the East, Ryland was preaching to a crowd of two thousand people in London. During his message, the Holy Spirit led him to mention unsaved Jabez Carey. As he thought about him, Ryland began to weep, eventually asking the crowd to pray for the salvation of the young man. Little could Ryland know, but at the exact moment of those prayers, the Lord was touching the soul of Jabez Carey and giving to him the new birth. The young man immediately forsook his plans in law and surrendered to become the fourth Carey to serve as a missionary. It was on this day in 1814 that Jabez Carey left for Amboyna, an Indonesian Island, as one of the Lord’s missionary ambassadors.
