It was on a Saturday afternoon during the month of August 1806 that five young men from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, met together to pray near a grove of maple trees north of the campus. As a thunderstorm rolled in overhead, lightning and rain forced the students to run and take shelter in a haystack. As the storm raged and the lightning flashed overhead, the students prayed that God would send them across the seas to share the good news of Jesus Christ with a lost world. God heard their prayer.