Wilder was raised on an American Protestant mission in western India and committed himself to missionary service at the age of 10, believing "that there was nothing else to do, since the need abroad was greater than in America.
Inspired by conservative Baptist holiness and mission advocate A. J. Gordon, Wilder organized a college foreign missionary society to encourage a religious revival among Princeton students.
[1] He left Princeton in 1884 because of poor health and spent three months working on a cattle ranch in Nebraska before returning to school and graduating in 1886.
They became known as the “Mount Hermon Hundred” and later, as more members joined, became the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (SVM) in 1888.
[citation needed] Wilder briefly went to Norway to recover health in 1891 where he met and later married(1892) Helene Olsson of Gjovik.
[citation needed] In 1915, World War I forced Wilder and his family to leave for Norway before heading to the United States in 1916.