mission On April 1, 1743, after a brief period serving a church on Long Island, Brainerd began working as a missionary to Native Americans, which he would continue until late 1746 when he became too ill. In his late life, he also experienced depression, loneliness, and lack of food. His first missionary assignment was working at Kaunameek, a Mohican settlement near present-day Nassau, New York. Brainerd remained there for one year. In 1743, he was reassigned to work among the Delaware Indians along the Delaware River northeast of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he remained for another year, during which he was ordained by the Newark Presbytery. After this, he moved to Crossweeksung in New Jersey. Within a year, the Native American church at Crossweeksung had 130 members, who moved in 1746 to Cranbury where they established a Christian community. In these years, he refused several offers of leaving the mission field to become a church minister. He continued his work converting Native Americans, writing in his diary: '[I] could have no freedom in the thought of any other circumstances or business in life: All my desire was the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God: God does not suffer me to please or comfort myself with hopes of seeing friends, returning to my dear acquaintance, and enjoying worldly comforts'. Death In November 1746, he became too ill to continue ministering, and so moved to Jonathan Dickinson's house in Elizabethtown and later to Jonathan Edwards' house in Northampton, Massachusetts. Apart from a trip to Boston in the summer of that year, he remained at Edwards's house until his death the following year. In May 1747, he was diagnosed with incurable consumption. In his diary entry for September 24, Brainerd wrote: 'In the greatest distress that ever I endured having an uncommon kind of hiccough; which either strangled me or threw me into a straining to vomit'. During this time, he was nursed by Jerusha Edwards, Jonathan's seventeen-year-old daughter. The friendship grew between them and eventually they were engaged. He died from tuberculosis on October 9, 1747, at the age of 29. He is buried at Bridge Street Cemetery in Northampton, next to Jerusha, who died in February 1748 as a result of contracting tuberculosis from nursing Brainerd. After his death, his younger brother John Brainerd (1720–1781) continued his work. Legacy Impact on the church and mission He made