AMY CARMICHAEL

AMY CARMICHAEL

Dohnavur Fellowship, India

Amy Carmichael was born on December 16, 1867, in Northern Ireland, the daughter of a respected mill-owner. When Amy was only seventeen years old she began holding Sunday classes for the "shawlies"—the girls who worked in the mills and wore shawls. These meetings grew so rapidly that Amy decided they needed a building. Her faith and vision were contagious, and soon the mill-girls were meeting in a new hall named "The Welcome" for Bible study, music practice, night school, sewing club, mothers meeting, and a monthly Gospel meeting open to everyone.

In 1892, when she was twenty-four years old, Amy heard God’s call to take the Gospel to foreign lands. Recommended by leaders of the Keswick Convention, she was accepted by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and sent to India in October 1895. Little did anyone know she would never return home again.

Amy threw herself into studying Tamil, the language of southern India, and eventually gathered together a group of Christian Indian women who called themselves the Starry Cluster. These women went from village to village preaching the Gospel. As they traveled, Amy Carmichael became aware of the "temple children," young girls who were "married to the gods" in the Hindu temples, a practice that included prostitution. To provide a home for these girls, Amy established Dohnavur Fellowship. Soon Amy Carmichael became Amma ("mother") to dozens of little girls. Later the ministry expanded to include little boys.

In October 1931, at the age of sixty-four, Amma fell into a pit, breaking her leg. She never fully recovered, and spent the next twenty years confined to her room. She wrote thirteen books after her accident, in addition to updating her earlier books. These books capture many stories of the lives of boys and girls, men and women, whom God brought to Himself through the work of Dohnavur Fellowship.

Amy Carmichael died on January 18, 1951. But her spirit lives on in the work of Dohnavur Fellowship in south India, still going strong today.