Amy Carmichael

Amy Carmichael with two children

Amy Wilson Carmichael (* 16th December 1867 in Millisle, County Down , Northern Ireland; † 18th January 1951 ) was an India - missionary and author. She opened an orphanage and founded a mission station in Dohnavur . For 55 years she worked in India without home leave and wrote many books about her missionary work.

Early life

Amy Wilson Carmichael was born in the small village of Millisle, County Downin Northern Ireland, the eldest of seven siblings. Her parents were David and Catherine Carmichael, devout Presbyterians . It was said from her childhood that she often prayed that Jesus would give her blue eyes instead of her brown eyes. She was very disappointed when she did not get blue eyes. As an adult, however, she realized that she was much more accepted by the Indians because she was also the color of their eyes, and that with blue eyes it would have been much more difficult for her to gain a foothold there. Amy's father died when she was 18.

Carmichael was the founder of the Welcome Evangelical Church in Belfast . The parish's history began with the mid-1880s collecting a Sunday morning class for " Shawlies "; these were working-class girls who wore scarves instead of hats ( mill girls ). They met in the meeting room of Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church. This work turned out to be very successful. The “ Shawlies ” gatherings grew so much that Amy eventually needed a hall with space for 500 people. It was at that time that she saw an advertisement in The Christian magazine offering a hall made of iron that could hold 500 people and cost £ 500. A donation of £ 500 from Miss Kate Mitchell, plus a donation of land from one of the mill owners, enabled the first Welcome Hall to be built on Cambrai Street and Heather Street in Belfast in 1887. Amy worked at the Welcome Church , until she received a call from Manchester in 1889 . She was asked to work there among the Mill Girls before she finally went into missionary work.

In many ways she was unsuitable for this job. She suffered from neuralgia , a nerve disease that made her feel weak and in constant pain. She was often bedridden for weeks. At the 1887 Keswick Convention , she heard Hudson Taylor , founder of the Inland China Mission , talk about missionary life. Soon after, she was sure of her missionary calling. She applied to the China Inland Mission and then prepared for the mission in London. There she met the writer and China missionary Mary Geraldine Guinness, who encouraged her to go on a mission. Although she was ready to travel to a mission area in Asia, she was found unfit due to her state of health. She postponed her missionary career with the Inland China Mission and decided to join the Church Missionary Society .

Work in india

Initially, Carmichael traveled to Japan for 15 months, but after a brief period of service in Lanka, she found her lifelong calling in India, for which she was commissioned by the Church of England Zenana Mission . She experienced temple prostitution and child trafficking: There were temple children, young girls who were often forced into the temple as prostitutes when they were only five years old in order to earn money for the Hindu priests ( Devadasi , actually temple dancers), and as victims of the Parents to the gods. Carmichael dealt with them and was able to save some from forced prostitution. The Dohnavur Fellowship she founded became a refuge for over a thousand children. Dohnavur is located in Tamil Nadu , 30 miles from the southern tip of India.

In an effort to respect Indian culture, members of the organization wore Indian clothing and the children were given Indian names. Carmichael also wore Indian clothes and used coffee grounds to dye her skin to make it darker. She often traveled long distances, sometimes only to save one child.

While working in India, Amy received a letter from a young woman who was considering serving a mission herself. She asked Amy: "What is missionary life?" Amy simply wrote back: "Missionary life is simply a way of dying."

Carmichael was also an extremely prolific writer; she published 35 books, a. a .: Mission Work in Southern India (1903), His Thoughts Said ... His Father Said (1951), If (1953), Edges of His Ways (1955) and God's Missionary (1957).

Past time and legacy

In 1931, Carmichael was handcuffed to bed after falling. She suffered from the injury and its consequences until her death. She died in India in 1951 at the age of 83; and she asked not to get a tombstone, but a bird bath with the inscription "Amma" - in Tamil "mother".

Her example as a missionary inspired z. B. Jim Elliot and his wife Elisabeth .

Works (selection)

• From Sunrise Land: Letters from Japan. Marshall, 1895
• Things as they are; mission work in southern India . Morgan & Scott, London 1905
• Overweights of Joy. 1906
• Lotus buds . Morgan & Scott, London 1912
• Walker of Tinnevelly . Morgan & Scott, London 1916 (biography of Thomas Walker)
• Ragland, pioneer . SPCK Depository, Madras 1922 (biography of Thomas Gajetan Ragland)
• Plowed Under: The Story of a Little Lover. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), 1934
• Candles in the dark. Christian Literature Crusade, 1982
• Rose from Brier. Christian Literature Crusade, 1972
• Mimosa: A True Story. CLC Publications, 2005
• If. Christian Literature Crusade, 1999
• Gold cord. Christian Literature Crusade, 1957
• Edges of His Ways. Christian Literature Crusade, Fort Washington 1955
• Mountain Breezes: The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael. Christian Literature Crusade, 1999
• Whispers of His Power. CLC Publications, 1993
• Thou Givest They Gather. CLC Publications, 1970
• Kohila: The Shaping of an Indian Nurse. CLC Publications, July 2002

Biographies

• Elisabeth Elliot: A Chance to Die: the Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael. Fleming H. Revell Company, Old Tappan, NJ 1987, ISBN 0-8007-1535-7 .
• Sam Wellman: Amy Carmichael: A Life Abandoned to God. Barbour Publishing, Uhrichville, Ohio 1998, ISBN 1-57748-364-2 .
• Derick Bingham: The Wild-Bird Child: A Life of Amy Carmichael. Ambassador-Emerald International, 2004, ISBN 1-84030-144-9
• Frank Houghton: Amy Carmichael. The story of a great woman. R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal 1990, ISBN 3-417-20830-0 .
• Hildegard Horie : Because gods don't cry - Amy Carmichael and her temple children . Esras.net, Niederbüren, 2017 (2nd edition) ISBN 978-3-905899-92-4 .