Amy Carmichael: Rescuer of Precious Gems

20 min read

2. Shadow in the Attic

  • Sep 12, 1882 the great September comet, wanted to see the comet but the school had a curfew at 9pm.

  • 14 years old 1882, was a natural leader, though the school principal didn’t allow her to see the comet at night. She had a plan, that worked partly because they were found out

  • went to school in Marlborough House boarding school

  • Ms. Kay the school principal

  • Plan with a thread, tie to big toe. Amy would tug so they wouldn’t fall asleep then at 12, a double tug to signal they would go to the roof

  • she had 6 younger sisters and brothers

  • Mother’s name was Catherine Carmichael

  • Father was David Carmichael

  • Uncle was William Carmichael

  • They owned the mill for more than 100 years

  • Had to leave in the middle of school because of the milling industry. They returned to another house because the family moved to Belfast while they were away in boarding school. And they were losing money so no money for private school

  • Changes in the milling industry(pg 24- 25)

    • the new fast steamships made it possible to mill the wheat from America and send it straight to England
    • Ireland mills have to produce their flour cheaper and cheaper to compete
    • They were losing money, and so no money for private boarding school

  • Her father had loaned 1000 pounds to a friend, but the friend lost the money. The father didn’t want the friend to go in bankruptcy by asking for the money. And so Amy was taken out of private school.

  • Instead, she began to tutor younger children at home

  • Apr 1885, Mr. Carmichael got pneumonia (from worrying about money?), and within weeks he was dead (Amy now 17, while he died at 53)

  • Everything changed after her father’s death. Being the eldest she had to take on responsibility

3. A Voice from the Fountain

  • They regularly attend Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church
  • Amy’s parents were strong Christians
  • Amy’s two brothers were Norman and Ernest
  • An old beggar women was there on their way back from church
    • the 3 children helped the old woman
    • the children were dress in their Sunday best, and the old women was in raggs and mud
    • The other church goers started to catch up to them, and they felt embarrassed
    • Amy heard a voice, when looking at a fountain
      • “Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw… the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.”
    • After this, Amy held her head high, no longer embarrassed
    • Later the day Amy, found the verse and reflected on what it meant for her
  • She would no longer waste time on things that weren’t important in God’s eyes
  • She would never worry about what people though of her. If what she was doing was pleasing to God, that would be enough for her.

1 Cor 3:12-14

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

  • One instance, when she was having a cup of tea and some scone, she noticed a beggar girl peeking though the windows. She wrote a promise to the girl

QUOTE

When I grow up and money have,
I know what I will do
I’ll build a great big lovely place
For little girls like you.

  • Amy after Sunday service would invite children to her house and lead bible studies

  • “Morning Watch Club”, Saturday mornings

  • Visit the Belfast slums

    • The Shawlies
      • many of them as young as 10 years old
      • worked 12 hours a day in the linen mills
      • too poor to buy hats, so they pulled their shawls up to cover their head

  • Sunday meetings at church for the Shawlies

    • some members were not happy about the Shawlies in the church
      • They spoked to the pastor, they spoke to Amy directly that they didn’t want the Shawlies at church

  • September 1886, she was sent to Scotland because her mom thought she needed a vacation

    • The speaker wasn’t anything particular to Amy but the closing prayer did something
    • The closing prayer howerver “Oh Lord, We know you are able to keep us from falling…”

  • He would keep her from falling no matter where she went, what she did, or what happened to her while doing it. Any if God keeps her from falling, there is nothing she couldn’t do. Amy went back to Belfast with Big Plans

Having the Downcast and Rejected (riff-raffs) in our church building?

How comfortable would we be to have those that society looks down upon in our church?

4. Tin Tabernacle

  • She is no longer confined to what she though she could do, but she put her mind to what God can do though her.
  • The Shalies sunday meetings had grown to be in the 400s, and she needed a bigger space
  • Amy dismissed marriage, because it would be hard to find men who would like to do what Amy felt God has called her to do in life.
    • different from other girls her age
    • didn’t like “Returning calls” either (tea hangouts)

Money

  • She looked through journals for buildings, and found a Iron Hall that could be built for 500 ($140,538 CAD?)pounds for 500 people
  • She didn’t like asking for money because of one bad experience helping out her grandmother’s charity. She asked a rich christian who lived in an expensive house, but he didn’t want to give any money.
    • “Real Christian people, she decided would gladly give money to help others. SO why bother to ask people who didn’t want to give?”

Christian, Generosity, and Hypocrisy

Perhaps, Christians should just be very generous and give without being asked

  • Kate Mitchell, met during a “returning call” , daughter of a wealthy businessman. Paid for the entire price of the Iron Hall
    • The cost for the land was 1/10 of the real value of the Land
    • God had anser her prayer
  • The building was finished on Jan 2, 1889
  • Offically called “The Welcome”, but people called it the “Tin Tabernacle”
  • Schedule
    • Sunday 4:30 P.M> Bible Class

Finding Staff

  • Not partnering with people who wants to do good but Godly people
  • she would only accept people who served out of their dedication to God
  • not to those who felt they need to do a little bit of “charity work” in their lives

Moving to England

  • Mrs. Carmichael invested most of the money after Mr. Carmichael passed away to live off of the interest
  • but the invest has gone bad, and they now have no money
  • They have to move to England, and her siblings went all over
  • Kate Mitchell took over The Welcome

5. Out of the Blue

  • After moving to England, she decided to live in the slums
    • leaning about the rats, rough men, and roaches
  • She believed it made perfect sense to live with the same group of people she wanted to reach
  • many know her and attended her bible study in the slums
  • Beside the living condition, things went well for about a year before she fell sick
  • This led her to Robert Wilson, a wealthy goal mine owner and a good family friend
    • she got invited to live in the Broughton Grange, with better living condition to get better
  • when she got better she started to look for things to do
    • writing letter for Robert Wilson
    • host and entertain guests
    • started a bible study for children
  • After a year at the Grange, Amy remember Hudson Taylor’s message at the first Keswick Meeting about the 4000 Chinese who die every year without hearing the gospel
    • Jan 1892, she started praying about it, it was not even a few minute untill her hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she heard “Go ye”
    • “Got ye into all the world and preach the gospel”
  • She though about what it meant, does it mean she had to leave Robert Wilson, and all the work that she is doing here, and after Robert Wilson’s become so dependent on her? What about her mother who depends on her to make family decision?
    • Robert Wilson was okay with Amy leaving, but not his two sons, and the Keswick Meeting leaders
  • Where would she go? She would follow Hudson Taylor to China
  • In August 1892, Robert Wilson and Amy set off for London to apply for CHina Inland Mission
    • a formality as Hudson Taylor knew Amy quite well
    • On the application She wrote “Amy Wilson Carmichael” as requested by Robert Wilson to show there father-daughter relationship
    • She was ready to go, and CIM was ready to sent her. Except for her health. Her health while in the slums greatly weakened her and she was not able to go due to the diseases and illness she could get in China.
  • What had gone wrong?
  • God would send her elsewhere.

6. Laughing in the Rain

  • a few month after being rejected by China Inland Mission, she felt the call to go to “Japan”
  • On March 3, 1892, she left for Japan on the SS Valetta at Tilbury
    • back then going out to see is like a funeral you never knew if you will come back again
  • She had left behind her mother and her adopted father to follow God’s calling
    • Later she would say that it is the most difficult thing she had ever had to do
  • Within a week, she started a bible study on the ship
  • The ship reached Colombo, Ceylon and waited several day for the transfer ship
  • On the second ship SS Sutlej the condition was terrible, rats, cockraches infesting the ship.
    • memories of living in the slum
    • But Amy found a large cardboard and wrote the words “In Everything Give Thanks”
    • Her attitude piqued the interest of the captain, and she was able to share her faith. And soon the captain wanted to become a Christian

In Everything Give Thanks

How out attitude and thanks giving can pave the way for the gospel.

  • The ship arrived at Shanghai, where Amy waited for the 3rd transfer to Japan
  • SS Yokohama Maru
    • the ship ran into a fierce typhoon.
    • She got there but in a storm
  • She traveled around half the world and was now stuck on a dock in Japan in the midst of a typhoon with not the slightest idea of what to do next
  • Two japanese men helped her, they took her to an Amrican trade, who knew the missionaries she was or supposed to meet.
  • “God can make things work out, even when things seems to be going wrong”

7. Enough of English Clothing

  • May 1, 1893, when Amy arrived at the ancient town of Matsuye

  • Barclay Buxton and other missionaries who made up the Japanese Evangelistic Band

  • The Mission Org followed a schedule similar to that in England with breakfast, morning prayer, school, and then tea time with more study before lunch

  • many of the food there were imported from England

  • The missionaries continued to wear English clothing except on Sundays

  • The missionaries did take their shoes off in doors

  • Amy wanting to start right away, but language study was slow. So she asked for an interpreter (Misaki San)

  • after learning about the Japanese culture from her interpreter and studying her dress, Amy decided to wear the same native clothing

    • Kimono and obi, wooden shoes, and hair in a bun

  • Wearing England clothing were a distraction

    • the old lady that couldn’t focus on the gospel message but the glove in stead

  • Frustrated, she became the first missionary in the organization to wear native clothing

  • Amy wondered if the Japanese confused the Christian God with the Buddhist gods

    • Amy no longer used pictures of Jesus since it might have confused the Japanese with their gods, since they believe that the idols themselves are gods
    • And soon many other missionaries followed

  • Amy also was strict on telling new converts to get rid of their idols. Where as the other missionaries thought it would make it hard for buddhist to convert

  • Amy felt lonely and prayed about whether she would marry. She went into a cave and prayed for several hours. She heard God said “None of those who trust me shall me lonely”

    • If Amy knew, she would have hundreds of children by her side, and she would never would of complained that she was lonely

  • Hirose, Shimonoseki

    • 1 convert
    • 4 weeks later, 2 convert
    • 2 weeks later, 4 convert
    • 8 converts
    • over the course of 4 months Amy saw 15 converts

  • Amy’s health gets worse and worse with each visit

8. Get the Head out of Japan

  • Amy fainted in one of the meetings and she was speaking!

    • Diagnosed with “Japan Head”

  • She was sent back to China to rest, and then to Caylon

  • What would the people back in England think? It looks like she’s touring Asia

  • July 28, 1894, she headed for Colombo

  • Amy refused to rest completely as the doctor had suggested

  • Nov 27, 1894 she headed back to England because Robert Wilson had suffered a serious stroke

  • For the next 6 months, Amy spent time writing about her time in Japan, in “From Sunrise Land”

  • After the book, Amy was eager to go on mission again.

    • Amy received a letter from a friend in Bangalore, in Southern India who is a nurse that is part of a hospital suppoted by Church of England’s Zenana Mission Society

  • The climate in Bangalore is very pleasant, not too cold and not too hot

  • On July 1895, Amy was accepted by Zenana Mission Society to work in southern India

9. A Fish out of Water

  • India was under British rule since the 17th century
  • English was the business language
  • English people who live in India were like royalties, they had the best of everything and Indians were their slaves/workers
  • India had an ancient christian history. Thomas came as a slave and spread Christianity
    • there’s a group of native Christian who call themselves the “Thomas Christian” tracing their root back to Thomas
  • Telling the truth in a missionary report, even though it is not a happy ending
    • A muslim girl staying a Muslim because of family pressure
  • She got sick with Dengue fever on the train to Bangalore
  • There was no Indian Christian who would do Christian work without being paid by a missionary or the church to do it. And this really bothered Amy. The other missionaries expected it
    • The shawlies would have gladly done the work to help the Welcome.
  • “Shouldn’t’ they all be on their knees begging God to forgive them for failing to inspire any devotion in the local population?”
  • When asked about the new convert class; there was none, not needed
  • Loyalty:
    • Suttee: widow have to commit suicide by throwing herself into the remation fire with her husband
    • Religion: becoming a Christian means to become an infidel; disloyal to their religion, society and family. Thus, often killed by their own family for bringing disgrace
    • “But isn’t the power of God greater than the power of Hinduism?”
  • Amy found out that the Christian schools were ran by Muslims or Hindus
    • Amy thought back to the Welcome

10. Going Native

  • View of English men’s being served by Indian servants

  • Back then “going native” was frowned upon, even in the mission circle. It was like shunning Queen Victoria and the empire.

  • The English can only see the Indians as servants

  • Thomas Walker/ Iyer Walker, Chairman of the CHurch mission society of India. That oversaw the owrk on the Zenana Mission

    • stubborn and opinionated as she was
    • offered to move in with the family to learn Tamil from them

  • Getting tricked by “false” converts (pg 115)

    • Pappamal wants to “become a Christian”
      • It would cause a big issue
        • she would had to be smuggled away from her family since they would try to kill her
        • persecution
          • people would force mission schools to close
          • vandalize churches
          • beat up missionaries
          • file endless lawsuits
      • Once word got around that Pappamal has left her family and broken caste
        • no one would speak to the missionaries
        • Indian parents pulled children out of chool
        • indians declared they would rather die than visit the medical clinic run by the missionaries
    • it turned out she didn’t want to be a Christian
      • what she wanted was to be married to a man from another caste
    • She and her boyfriend came up with a plan
      • she would say she want to become a Christian and the missionaries would help her escape
      • and once they escape, the boyfriend would declared himself to be christian and they would be married
    • The missionaries were enraged, they send her back to her father even when her father didn’t want to see her anymore
    • returning Pappamal didn’t end the matter
      • her father filed a lawsuit against the missionaries
        • since she was under 16, he claimed that they had “seduced” a minor
        • Pappamal would filed her own lawsuit saying she had been kidnapped by them and held against her will
      • took more than a year to settle this and the Hindues never forgave the missionaries for their “seduction” and “kidnapping”

11. The Starry Cluster

  • Amy finished her language study and wanted to go around talk to people and share the gospel
  • Wearing native clothing
    • Since India is a British colony, people made it a thing to show that they were british. This meant to hold tea cup with the pinky out, wear stylish clothing
    • Doing thing the Indian way seems to be letting the English team down
  • Amy gather a band of Indian women to start “touring” preaching the good news, called the “the Starry Cluster”. Started around Dec of 1897
  • Amy tried to pay the band of sisters, but they returned the batta and said “We don’t need this money. We can do with out it. We would rather you spent it on missionary work”
  • The women also took off all their jewelries. In India it was common for women to wear jewelries to show their status. Not wearing any jewlery is something the untouchables would do.

12. Let Me Stay in the Light

  • A girl who was a secret Christian went to Amy.
  • She was then dubbed the “Child snatching Amma”
  • the parents would drug, beat, torture the children so they lost interest in Christianity
  • Things As They Were, Amy’s first book about mission in India
    • at first the publisher didn’t want to publish it because it was too depressing
    • but after two women friend who came to visit Amy, and saw what Indian was like. They took the manuscript back and it got published

13. Child-Stealing Amma

  • Preena, 7 years old girl who lived in the Hindu temple house in Great Lake village
    • Her father had died, and her mother sold her to the temple as a prostitude to gain favor form the Hindu gods
    • she tried to escape at 5 yo, thinking that her mother would be happy to see her. But to take her back now would be stealing from the Hindu gods
    • She was sent back, and her hand were burned with red hot iron as a reminder she would never tried escaping again
  • Preena was told that she would be “married” to one of the hindu gods, this terrifeied her
  • She was told about the child-stealing amma, and wanted to go to her

14. Tied Feet

  • By June, 1902. Amy had about 8 girls, 4 of them baby girls
  • until Arulai got sick with “typhoid fever” a sure killer of children in that part of India and the bandy had to stay put, so they can nurse Arulai
  • prayer answered and Arulai got better
  • The ministry then turned into a stationary one where they would care for the children, teaching them to read and math. And it was safer. It was an difficult decision for Amy, since there were many people that still needed to hear the Gospel.
  • Amy prayed, and decided that God wanted to “tie her feet”
  • They went to Dohnavur
  • Iyer Walker left to England to take care of his wife who became very sick in Nov 1903

15. Little Gems

  • Amy send letter to pastors and missionaries around India that if they found any temple girls, they can send them their way
  • In March 1, 1904 Amethyst was given to Amy
    • then another called “Sapphrie”
  • By June 1904, 6 months after the Walkers left. Any had 17 girls to look after
  • The money for the nursery was send from someone, and Amy never asked for money
  • June 19, 1905, Robert Wilson passed away

16. A Strange Sense of Joy

  • A girl who was left with Amy because she wanted to keep the dead husband’s family money
    • The other family wanted the “uncle?” to marry the girl (a grandfather marrying a girls in her early teens?)
  • The girl had a strong faith but Amy and her was put in a strange circumstance
  • A court case dragged on to see who would have custody of the girl

17. She’s a He!

  • 1918, Jan 14 a baby boy was given to them

  • difficulty

    • Hindu custom, boys and girls would have to be kept in different rooms. In most Indian home, there is a boys side and a girls side.
    • How to have boys and girls in the same class room withtou offending people?
    • Only men would be able to raise boys, there was only one men there, a good Christian but not a strong leader
    • Sons were more valuable than girls, there would be more hostility for “snatching” away a son

  • Jan 15, 1918. Amy prayed that God would give the resource for a nursery for boys (100 pounds)

    • The fund was given yesterday!

  • 1919, 52 year old Amy received Kaiser-iHind medal for her services to the people of India

    • she was horrified that so many people knew about her work, and tried to reject the award
    • she wondered why she should be awarded for doing God’s work, and she’s been rewarded enough for the love of the hundreds of children she had rescued

  • More and more boys arrived

  • in 1926, they had 80 boys aged from newborn to 14 years old

    • Godfrey webb-peplore came to help out
    • Dr. Murray Webb-peploe came to visit

  • Prayer for a proper hospital to be built

    • Support came for a house of prayer first. Which were done on Nov 1927

18. Amma

  • at 63, Amy suffered a fall that broke her leg and ankle while checking the renovation of a rented house in a near by village (for a nursery)
    • she was partially crippled due to injury to her back
  • Amy had to get used to not walking as much because she was so use to doing things
    • she called her room the Room of Peace
    • she got more time to read books that friends send to her but never got the time to read
  • Amy found it difficult to be served by others and being the center of attention
  • She wrote books
  • She passed away on Jan 18, 1951
  • She was buried under a tamarind tree
  • The family had promised her to not place a headstone but they placed a stone bird bath over her grace. With a single word: Amma.