Amy Carmichael was a missionary to India in the 1800s, and she is most famous for her courage, and kindness in reaching out to and rescuing many children from child trafficking. But there are a few interesting details about her life that you may not have known, so I invite you to listen in and get to know her a bit more today.
Listen in to our Third Episode, on Amy Carmichael. You can find the episode above, and please follow us on Spotify to tune in to future episodes coming soon.
Find more art work in the Gallery, and the Shop. Thank you for stopping by!
.
Sources:
50 People Every Christians Should Know, Warren Wiersbe
50 Women Every Christian Should Know, Michelle DeRusha
Amy Carmichael was born in 1867, on December 16th in Northern Ireland. Her family owned several
flour mills so they were well provided for financially.
Amy had somewhat unusual features for a little Irish girl. Amy had dark hair, dark eyebrows, and dark
brown eyes, but she desperately wanted to have blue eyes like her Irish mother. Amy’s mother was a woman of great faith, and taught Amy that God answers prayers, so every night, for many nights when she was a little girl, Amy begged God to change the color of her eyes. She was extremely disappointed when this didn’t happen after many days of praying.
You often hear stories about the saints, and we think of them as being flawless, and perfect, and Amy truly was very special, but she also had some interesting stories that make her a relatable character, and her life story is a good reminder that God allows ordinary people to participate in His extraordinary plans.
Amy was the oldest child in her family, and her six other siblings looked up to and followed
her, but she did not always set the best example. One time, there was a tree in the Carmichael’s yard, and the tree supposedly had poisonous seeds, so her parents warned the children never to eat from the tree, but one day, when Amy was outside with her siblings, Amy challenged the other children and said, “Lets see how many we can eat before we die!” And they all started eating the seeds.
Thankfully the information was incorrect, and the seeds were not actually poisonous, so they
were not too harmed, but as a child she liked to lead her siblings into trouble, and deliberately disobeyed
instructions.
If you are familiar with the movie, The Sound of Music, Amy sounds like one of the mischievous children. Amy had lots of siblings, and her parents often hired someone to help them take care of the children. But whenever Amy’s parents invited a governess to help with the children, Amy rounded up her all siblings, and they did whatever it took to torture the governess, and cause her to leave. Amy brought all kinds of animals into the house in an effort to scare away the governesses. One time, she brought a frozen mouse to the dinner table, and during the meal it revived, and started running all over the house, of course scaring
the governess, and causing her to leave.
Amy continually got herself into trouble. One time, one of her parents was chasing her around the house and Amy said to them, “If you knew how much naughtier I could be, you wouldn’t think I was naughty at all.” She had a tendency to be incredibly mischievous, and led her siblings into trouble as well.
Perhaps this contributed to her parent’s decision to send her to boarding school. Amy was educated at a
Weslyan Methodist boarding school for a few years, and when Amy was 12 years old, she dedicated her
life to Christ and started to make noticeable changes in her behavior.
Although she had a tendency to be rebellious, Amy also had another side to her; she was very
compassionate, and generous in spirit, and these virtues continued to develop as she grew older.
On one occasion, Amy was inside a tea shop with her family, and she saw a little girl in a ragged dress, bare
feet, peering longingly into the shop window, and she was filled with compassion. Amy went home that evening and wrote the poem,
When I grow up and money have
I know what I will do
Ill build a great big lovely place
For little girls like you.
Amy desired to help others, and was deeply moved by people of poverty, and this continued to influence her ministry.
In 1883, the Carmichael family moved to Belfast, and her family established the Welcome Evangelical
Church. Two years later, when she was just 18, Amy’s father passed away, leaving behind his wife and seven
children. This significantly changed the financial situation for Amy’s family. Although they had quite a bit
of wealth previously, they no longer had the same financial stability, so they did not have the liberty of
hiring governesses anymore. This forced Amy to take on a lot of family responsibilities. Without a
father to support them, Amy helped her mother raise her six siblings. During this time, she also became involved in local ministry.
Amy’s mother was a woman of strong faith, and she had a great influence on Amy. A memorable incident that Amy writes about which illustrates this, was, on one Sunday morning, Mrs. Carmichael and the children were returning home from church, and they encountered a poor woman carrying a heavy bundle. When they saw the woman, Amy and her two brothers quickly went to the woman, and helped her carry her bundle. The woman was going the opposite direction to the Carmichaels, so they turned around, and they walked all the way back from where they had just come from. Since they were just coming from church, there were people from the church still standing and lingering outside, so they had to walk back through a group of very poshly dressed Presbyterians, who (ironically, because they were supposed to be Christians), looked down on Amy and her family for helping this poor woman. They must have thought, “How can you do something like that? It is so below your dignity!” Amy had grown up in a wealthy family for the earlier part of her life, and there was a great distinction in class. But although she grew up in a more upper class society, this did not deter her from reaching out to the poor. When she writes about this moment of walking back through the pretentious crowd of people, Paul’s words from 1 Cor 3 flashed through Amy’s mind: “Gold, silver, previous stones, wood hay, stubble; every mans’ work shall be made manifest. The Day shall declare it and the fire shall try every mans’ work of what sort it is.”
And Amy writes, “We went on. I said nothing to no anyone, but I knew that something had happened that had changed life’s values. Nothing could ever matter again but the things that were eternal.”
This was quite a crucial event for Amy, because shortly after this, she became very involved with the homeless and the poor in her town, especially young girls and women who worked in factories under terrible conditions. Amy launched a Bible study in Belfast for a small group of mill girls, and because the girls were too poor to buy proper coats or hats for church, they wore their shawls as head coverings, and they called themselves the “shawlies.” The group got together regularly for Bible Studies, and Amy ministered to them.
This little mission grew quickly, and before long Amy had several 100 people attending. She was forced to find a larger place to accommodate at least 500 people. Providentially, Amy received $500 in donation, and one of the mill owners that Amy was ministering to donated a plot of land where a hall could be
built. Amy created a space for people to meet, and this place was called The Welcome Hall. Over the
back wall of the sanctuary she had the words inscribed, In all things He must have preeminence. This
was representative of how Amy viewed her ministry; she hoped that God would be the provider, and
would be glorified in her ministry and whatever she did. The building was sort of a fulfillment of her
poem from earlier: This was the “great big lovely place” that she was able to build, and it still stands
today, and is called The Welcome Evangelical Church, and is located in the city of Belfast, Ireland. Many people came to know and follow Christ through Amy’s ministry there.
At some point in her early life, Amy developed neuralgia, which is a nerve disease that caused her to
experience chronic pain throughout her body. But this did not stop her from pursuing a life of ministry.
In 1886, some friends invited Amy to visit Glasgow, England, where she attended the Keswick
Convention. This was an important event in Amy’s life, because it was during this conference that she
heard about the founder of the China Inland Mission, Hudson Taylor, and this is what first inspired her to
become a missionary.
During this time, Amy also met an elderly man called Robert Wilson. He was a widow, and an old friend
of the Carmichael family, and he was also the Keswick Convention Founder. Robert was disabled, and in
a wheelchair, and when he met Amy and got to know her, they developed a special father-daughter type
of connection, and he asked Amy to be his secretary, and caregiver. So Amy devoted herself to caring
for him. Over time, Robert became a spiritual mentor to Amy, and he played an important role in her
life over the course of her ministry. Amy affectionately called him the D.O.M. which stands for Dear Old
Man, and before she left on her first ministry trip, she adopted his last name. So she is sometimes
known also as Amy Wilson Carmichael.
While Amy lived in Manchester, England, she started a similar ministry to what she started in Ireland,
and she worked with factory workers among the slums, teaching the poor about Christ. Throughout this time, she lived in a small apartment that was infested with cockroaches. Amy sought ways to serve and minister to the people around her, even if it meant relieving herself of her own comforts.
In 1892, Amy claims to have heard an audible voice speaking to her, saying, “Go ye,” and then again, as
clearly as a human voice, “Go ye.” You might recognize these words from Jesus’ command to his
disciples before he ascended into heaven. In Mark 16, Jesus says, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” When Amy heard the audible voice speaking to her, she believed this was the voice of God calling her to pursue missionary work. One year later, Amy set off to Asia to serve as a missionary.
Initially, Amy volunteered to work with the China Inland Mission, but she was refused because of her
health issues. She appealed instead to the Keswick Community, who were supportive of her calling, and on
March 3, 1893 Amy sailed for Japan as the first missionary sent out by the Keswick Convention.
Amy spent 15 months doing ministry in Japan, but she met some disappointments during this time. She
struggled with the Japanese language, the missionary community she worked with seemed to have
issues with unity, and Amy’s health continued to deteriorate. So Amy made her way to China to rest. She then spent a brief period of time in Ceylon (known today as Sri Lanka), but after she had only
been there a few months, she received news that Robert Wilson’s health had declined, so she quickly
returned to England for a year. During this time, Amy applied to and was accepted by the
Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, and they sponsored her to move to India as a missionary. She sailed for India in 1895, and this became her new home.
At the age of 28, Amy arrived in Madras, India, and for three weeks she stayed with a missionary family where she rested after the very long boat ride from England to India. She then traveled to Bangalore,
and unfortunately, shortly after she arrived in Bangalore, Amy contracted dengue fever, which meant
she was not able to do very much for some time. But, as soon as she had recuperated, Amy made every
effort to start learning one of the local languages, Tamil.
The hot and humid temperatures Bangalore, were a major adjustment for Amy, especially after coming from England. Amy writes about her experience of spending hours and hours trying to learn the local language, and she describes the sticky warmth that crawled over her body, and hugged her close in a mesh of heat. Her sweaty dress stuck to her wet skin, making her uncomfortable and itchy, and in all of this discomfort she sat for hours and hours, trying to learn the local language. Amy also had to endure the pesty discomfort of flies, and mosquitoes. On top of all this, she continued to wrestle with her health issues, which entailed ongoing headaches, and persistent body pain.
You sometimes hear of stories of saints like Amy, and you do not always realize that they struggled with
many of the same feelings that we struggle with today. Throughout this time, Amy describes wrestling
with feelings of self-pity and discouragement. She had to fight an ongoing battle of her spirit that was
willing, but her flesh that was weak.
Tamil is not an easy language to learn, but Amy fully committed herself to the task, and kept making every effort to learn the language.
When Amy was in Japan, she witnessed many people turning to the Christian faith, but her early
experience in India was quite different. There was a very active church in Bangalore, and people would
come to meetings, and sit for hours and hours, attending these services, but according to Amy, they would simply go back home, and their lives remained unchanged. Whatever they learned during the meetings did not seem to reflect in the way they lived their lives, and Amy felt an ongoing burden to witness people truly turn their lives over to Christ in a way that proved transformative.
During this time there were other missionaries in India that Amy interacted with, but she struggled to fit into their community. Other missionary ladies liked to sit around and drink tea, and chit chat, but Amy wanted to actively see people turning to Christianity. There had not been a single conversion in over a year, and Amy faced discouragement, and felt alone in her efforts to really reach the local community. Amy felt like a misfit during her time in Bangalore. On one occasion, she asked for permission to live with a
native family in a mud hut in order to fully immerse herself in the culture, and learn Tamil properly from
them. This really shocked some of the other missionaries, and they did not encourage her efforts. On another occasion, she writes about riding her pony after a very long day of trying to learn Tamil, and she describes galloping, and racing, with her hair flying in the wind, her skirt all ruffled up, and Amy felt very relieved, and free, “relaxed, and almost cheerful.” But some missionaries observed her wildness, and looked upon her with disdain, viewing her as a disgrace. Amy was very different to the other women missionaries of her time, and this left her feeling very isolated. Amy writes about one occasion when she felt a lot of despair and loneliness, and says that when she was praying on her knees, the verse, “He that trusteth in me shall never be desolate,” came into her mind, and she found this verse to be a source of encouragement to her throughout her ministry in India.
At some point, Amy was advised to move further south, to Tamil Nadu, where Tamil is the only Indian
language that’s really spoken. This was in the hope that she might find it easier to learn Tamil. So, Amy
moved further south to a little village called Donhavur, and she lived with another missionary family, the
Walkers. The Walkers were a solid, Christian family, and they had a good understanding of the Hindu
religion, and how to reach the local community. So, Amy teamed up with the Walkers, as well as a group
of other Indian women who had converted to Christianity, and they worked together to minister within
Tamil Nadu. Indian Christians in the area referred to the group as The Starry Cluster, which was inspired by the verse in Daniel 12:3, “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.” The local Indians saw this group of missionaries as a light shining brightly in this dark area of India.
A rather funny incident prompted Amy to make some changes in the way she went about. On one occasion, Amy and her Christian Indian sisters climbed into a bandy, or a bullock-cart (which is a cart that’s pulled by two oxen), and they came to a little village where they hoped to meet some people, and minister. Amy was dressed in a long white dress, and a wide straw hat, and this brought a lot of attention to her. A little child nearby said, “Oh, come and see! A giant white man is here! Oh what a terrible sight!! Run, everyone!” More people joined, and giggled as they tried to figure her out. After they realized she was a woman, they bombarded her with questions: “Are you married? …Where is your family? …Why have you left the and come here? …Do you eat rice and curry like we do?”
After this experience Amy decided it was important for her to find a way to blend into the environment
so her appearance wasn’t a distraction, so she started dressing in a sari, and straw sandals, and did
everything she could to blend in.
During her ministry, the Indian caste system proved to be impenetrable. Amy found that those in the
lower castes “lived in a sort of twilight, far from the true Gospel light.” she writes, while those in upper
castes like the Brahmans, and Vellalas, forbade anyone “unclean” from entering their homes, including
foreigners, and especially missionaries. Nevertheless, Amy spent her time traveling to and camping in
villages, reading the Gospel aloud, and praying with women, earnestly seeking to convert them to
Christianity.
In spite of her health challenges, Amy poured all of her time and energy into her ministry in India. In
1901, she had an important encounter which transformed the direction of her ministry. On March 6th,
Amy met a seven year old little girl called Preena. The girl had fled from one of the Hindu temples and
sought refuge at Amy’s missionary compound. Preena begged Amy to protect her. Amy quickly learned
that the little girl had been sold into child trafficking by her parents, and had been forced to serve as a
temple prostitute. After this incident, Amy and her coworkers sought every opportunity to rescue girls
from similar situations. This resulted in multiple arrests and imprisonments, but one by one, several
little girls found their way to Amy’s safe haven, and they called Amy their Amma, which is the Tamil word
for mother. Amy’s strategy was to cover her whole face and body, except for her brown
eyes, and she would walk right into temples, and use her disguise to help rescue girls from temple
prostitution. For perhaps the first time, Amy was grateful to God for her brown eyes! If God had answered her prayer as a little girl, and given her blue eyes, it likely would have been much harder for
Amy to blend into her environment, and disguise herself so she could rescue these girls.
By 1904, Amy sheltered seventeen young girls in her care, and then in 1918, she began taking in boys as well. Many young boys were sold to the temples for the same evil motives. Her rescue home became known
as the Donhavur Fellowship, and was comprised of 12 nurseries, and dozens of infants, toddlers, and
young children.
Amy did not go about her missionary work the same way many others did, and others considered her quite a radical. Rather than asking for financial assistance, Amy insisted on praying and asking God to provide for her ministry’s needs. She writes, “We do not tell when we are in need unless definitely asked, and even then not always. We rely upon the verses which assure us that our Father knows our needs, and we take it that with such a Father, to know, is to supply.”
Amy’s faith proved to be rewarded over and over again, and her ministry in Donhavur was provided with the very resources needed, and at precisely the right time. The compound expanded and Amy had the resources necessary to build a hospital, which continues to serve thousands of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in the Dohnavur area today.
Amy inspired other missionaries to join her work in India, and when she wrote back to England to report
about her ministry, she encouraged missionaries to invest their time in Scripture, and prepare
themselves for a great spiritual battle in India. As she prepared her book, Things as They Are, she wrote
very matter-of-factually about the conditions that the young children had to endure as temple prostitutes. However, her publisher returned it to her, saying it was too discouraging and negative. Nevertheless, she refused to change it, and when it was finally published in 1903, the public was disappointed, as they hoped to read stories of success, hope, and redemption, and Amy presented an un-sanitized report of what it was like for many of these children in India.
When young missionaries arrived to help her in India, Amy bluntly told them, “We follow a stripped and crucified Savior. Those words go very deep. They touch everything – motives, purposes, decisions, everything. Let them be with you as you prepare your spirit for the new life.”
Amy significantly impacted the community through the Donavur Fellowship ministry, but everything
changed for Amy on Oct 24, 1931, when Amy suffered a serious fall, which confined her to bed, unable
to move, and in constant pain.
Amy became fully reliant upon the help of others, but even from her bed, Amy continued to minister.
During the next few years, Amy wrote several books, including Gold Cord, which was an account of her
time at the Donhavur Fellowship. Over the course of her life-time, she wrote a total of 35 books,
hundreds of songs and poems, and thousands of letters, both to other missionaries, and to her beloved
Donhavur children and Family.
Even from a young age Amy wrestled with doing the right thing, and expressing the best emotions, and
those who knew her knew she was far from perfect. She had a tendency to be stubborn, occasionally
self-righteous, and complained about her health struggles. She was clearly a human being! But her flaws
were generously overshadowed by her virtues of humility, steadfastness, her courage, and her
tremendous zeal for serving others. Amy died in 1951, and she left behind the beautiful and challenging testimony of her life. The Dohnavur Fellowship continues to thrive, and has ministered to thousands of
needy children.
Before Amy died, a young missionary describes seeing Amy in her old age, and says, “I have seen the Lord
Jesus,” when she looked at Amy’s face. Christ’s presence was so evident in Amy Carmichael. It is important to note that Amy saw the Lord Jesus in every person that she encountered, and this is what
led her to love others so selflessly, and effectively. How differently might we love and interact
with others if we too saw Jesus in them the way Amy Carmichael did, and loved and served them as we would Jesus?