After spending just one day in America, John Wesley already had grave concerns about the new colonies. He wrote in his journal on February 19, 1736, "Beware America, be not as England!"

Just over a year earlier, John and Charles Wesley had stood at their father's bedside as he died. John was asked to accept the Epworth parish, but he declined because he needed the spiritual rigors of the Oxford Holy Club.

Three months later one of the trustees of the Georgia colony challenged John and the Holy Club to go to America and minister to the Indians and colonists.

John worried about leaving his mother, but she spiritedly responded, "Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice that they were all so employed, though I should never see them more." Instead, only two sons boarded the America-bound Simmonds, and she saw them both again within two years.

On February 4, 1736, the Simmonds came within view of the shoreline of Georgia. John read in his Bible, "A great door and effectual is opened," and he added this ...

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