8. A Choice Jewel: (1902-1938, Dohnavur’s growth)
“Never mention a need until it has been supplied.”
Amy Carmichael
“Then said the giant, ‘You practice the craft of a kidnapper gathering up women and children and carrying them into a strange country, to the weakening of my master’s kingdom.’”
John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
8
A Choice Jewel
1902-1938, Dohnavur’s Growth
In the beginning God created the heavens and earth. While He was working on India He looked down through the ages and saw Amy and the children and knew they would need a secluded spot for safety, far from any well-traveled road. He made almost a desert spot, dry, dusty, with not even any green grass, for it must be unattractive to others. In order that it might blossom as quickly as the violet passion flower, which opens its petals exactly at 9:00 A.M., He created an underground river of sparkling clear water, not exactly under the choice spot, lest flooding be a problem, but close enough so that many streams of water flowing from it were available.
And the Son, without whom was not anything made that was made, saw that it was good. Dohnavur—a choice jewel—but hidden for centuries. He laid a sub-artesian basin so that the well-diggers many years later would rush in great excitement to Amy, saying, “We have struck river sand! Not red earth, but river sand, proving there is a river underground that no one ever knew was in this spot!”
For a family that would use 150,000 gallons of water a day, that was good news! There was no danger of hitting impenetrable rock while well-digging.
At one spot, water spurted out from the barren red rock and scorched sand from only ten feet below the surface, drenching the workers so they were obliged to stop. The inflow of that well proved to be 5,000 gallons an hour.
The Lord God could see ahead to the necessary daily baths, which were a delight to the babies and a rather chilly pleasure to the two-year-olds who sat under the pumps. He could see the fun the Lotus Buds and Teddy Bears would have swimming in an irrigation pond, imitating rotifers they had just seen under a microscope.
And of course He saw Chellalu, that incorrigible child. “Do not go near the well,” Amy had warned, “for if you fall in you will drown.”
Drown—die—go to heaven—see Jesus. Five-year-old Chellalu smiled widely, all innocence, but her toes wiggled in anticipation.
She had discovered the door to heaven—it was the well! The minute Amy turned her back, going into the supply room to order rice, the minute the coolies left for home, Chellalu began to pile bricks against the well wall, trotting back and forth as fast as her bare feet could manage. She intended to climb up on the slippery rim of the well and go to heaven without further delay.
Dohnavur was a jungle village located in the southwest corner of Tinnevelly District down in the tip of South India, close to the last high rocks of the Ghaut Mountain Range. The barrenness of the place was relieved only by a row of tamarind trees with yellowish wood, covered with pods and red and yellow flowers. The people of the village belonged to the caste called palmyra-climbers.
In 1902, Amy, Ponnammal, the Walkers, the children, babies, and three nursemaids moved to a spot near Dohnavur where there was a church built in 1824 by money from a German Christian, Count Dohna. The name means “town of Dohna.” The family lived in a few broken-down cottages. Walker Iyer taught divinity students of the Church Missionary Society, who met at the church. The “choice jewel” was several miles from the road, not too near the village, twenty-four hours from civilization, healthy, and free of malaria.
“God knew what He was doing. He hid you from the eyes of the world for the children’s sake,” said an Indian Christian lawyer.
Amy still made quick trips into surrounding villages with the Starry Cluster, but more and more she was tied to the babies and children who saw no good reason for her leaving them for a single moment.
Invitations came to speak and teach at conventions from the Reformed Syrian Church in Travancore, but Amy refused. Calls to address large groups came from other parts of India. Her reply to all was no. She grieved over the many people, willing to sit and listen to God’s Word, without a teacher, but was comforted remembering that Jesus once washed feet. He “took a towel” (John 13:4) and by that raised work to a high and dignified level anywhere but especially in a land where such work of child-caring was left to the lowest. There were no English “nannies,” and Amy would not allow unbelievers to raise the children.
“Demeaning work,” a Christian pastor said, discouraging the only woman at the time who thought of volunteering.
But Amy knew if she reared Indian children to be strong Christians, they could do more for Him among their own people than a foreigner ever could. She would be multiplying herself over and over in the lives of the children, helping India evangelize India.
In 1903, the Walkers returned to England, since Mrs. Walker was very ill. The little handful at Dohnavur were left completely unprotected, humanly speaking, with only a low mud wall around the compound. There was no man with them to even deter evildoers.
The arrival of the second infant, Sapphire, made Amy do some serious thinking and praying. She had prayed for more and more babies to be prevented from entering the temple stronghold of Satan. More babies meant more nurseries. Bricks would be needed. How to begin?
The Imp and Tangles and eleven-year-old Lotus and eight-year-old Mouse all slept comfortably next to Amy in one of the cottages, but babies needed their own special place.
Amy went for a walk and prayed as she walked, adding sums in her head, figuring the cost of bricks. When she returned, she found the mail had arrived, and in it was a check for the very amount she had decided upon. And, a third baby was rescued.
She purchased a small piece of land, a field, right there and immediately received an anonymous gift of two hundred rupees earmarked “for the nursery.” Who knew of the need? She had told no one.
In India a small plot of land may be owned by dozens, even scores, of people through a system of inheritance called “fragmentation.” When a man died his land was divided among his sons, perhaps six sons. When the six died, their land was chopped up again among male heirs. If the six sons each had four sons, the original small plot of perhaps one-half acre was then twenty-four slivers. One person might own 1/6 of the northern quarter of a sliver. Each reluctant paternal uncle’s cousin’s third wife’s sister’s son had to be found and friendship established, before any negotiations could be made.
Sometimes fractions of slivers of land were owned jointly by several people, one of them refusing to sell, and with no visible boundary lines to be seen. The total land in Dohnavur was purchased in 171 pieces ranging from 1/100 of an acre to 7 and 38/100 of an acre. Patience! A most valuable virtue in the East.
The year passed quickly, and Walker Iyer returned from England with Amy’s mother. Mrs. Walker stayed behind, too unwell to travel. Mrs. Carmichael was delighted to be part of a family of thirty people, from the youngest nine-month-old baby to their thirty-four-year-old “Amma”—Amy. Mrs. Carmichael loved them all in the special way a grandma loves.
Everyone slept on grass mats, with a cotton sheet on top if the weather was cool. Days, the mats and sheets were rolled up and stacked out of the way. All the children helped scrub the red floor tiles until they shone, especially since the dining table was just a banana leaf laid on a mat on the floor. Most meals were rice eaten with curries, chutney, or pickles. The children learned to dip only the fingers of the right hand into the rice, and no deeper than the first knuckles of the fingers.
“Hate not laborious work. Joy, joy is in it.” The children sang one of Amy’s made-up choruses as they swept paths clear of garbage and carried buckets of water from well and pump to keep flowers and plants alive.
Then, out of the clear blue Indian sky, measles struck down seven children, and being Indian they took it ten times harder than their English cousins.
No doctor, no registered nurse, no foster mother. “It is not our custom,” the village women said to Amy after she made a desperate trip into town with a dying baby in her arms, hoping for a wet nurse.
The beloved Amethyst came down with dysentery, weakened, died. Amy’s mother, who had raised seven healthy children, tried everything, studied the few medical books they owned, but had no idea what to do. No one did. Indian children seemed to come into the world weak and tending to illness.
In studying the Bible together, in reading the lives of saints and pioneers, Amy and Ponnammal both saw a pattern laid out that God gave to His servants in all ages, a little at a time. At the center of the pattern like the hub of a wheel, was this: Seek God’s will before asking anything. Then ask, and it will surely be given. Sometimes the prayer must be, “Thy will be done—whatever it is.”
Whoever said, “Make haste slowly,” described the way the Dohnavur Fellowship was built.
Not, “Hear, Lord, for Thy servant speaketh,” but, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant is listening.” Amy learned more and more to listen. The work she was called to do was too time-consuming and expensive to make mistakes. There was only one possible exception in regard to waiting, but even that was based on the knowledge of God’s will. Whenever they heard of a baby or child in danger, not a moment was wasted. One of them left immediately to the rescue.
The giving or withholding of financial help was taken, as it has been from time immemorial, as an indication of the Father’s approval. No one was on salary. Neither did they ever go into debt.
She often read from the life of George Mueller of Bristol, England, where he said something like this: People say that I am unique in trusting God alone to supply the daily bread for the thousands of orphans. They say only George Mueller has this special gift of faith. True, the work was begun to take in these homeless children, but that was not the number one purpose. I wanted to show the world that God is alive and will answer prayers of faith, and the orphanages are to be a living memorial to that fact.
And love, shining love, that set no limits, bound all the family together.
The London Missionary Society at Neyyoor, one and one-half day’s journey away by bandy, was a medical mission. They agreed to help Amy open a nursery there, where the weaker babies might stay close to doctors and nurses. In September 1905, Ponnammal braved a hurricane and took some of the ill babies to Neyyoor Nursery. Eight months later, she was in charge of fifteen babies in four small houses with the help of three nursing women and five young Christian girls in nurses’ training.
The next year cholera swept through the area surrounding Dohnavur in a raging epidemic, but never entered the compound of the family. Amy visited the village people, having nothing but permanganate of potash to give plus her own cheerful encouragement.
After six new converts were baptized, Satan retaliated by attacking the babies at Neyyoor. Sixteen came down with dysentery, and ten died. Each one of the ten had been redeemed at great personal cost to someone. But they had cost Jesus most, said Amy. “He is only an owner in name who has no right to do as he will with his own.”
Amy herself was so worn out that the doctor ordered her to the cooler heights of Ootacamund for a rest, and she took twelve of the children with her. Oh, for another Ponnammal! The need for helpers with medical training was imperative.
Overcrowding in the nursery at Dohnavur promoted the spread of any infection, so Amy rejoiced when money came earmarked for “new nurseries.” Ponnammal was then able to return, bringing the babies. She had been gone two and one-half years.
Chellalu kept dropping in to liven things up.
“Chellalu, come down,” Amy had called softly, so as not to startle her. That incorrigible one reluctantly turned her back on the door of heaven and did not jump into the well. She devoted her time, instead, to language usage, for she had learned some English words.
A foreign lady was visiting and spied Chellalu, sitting in the middle of the path, hoping to be noticed. “What is your name, little girl?”
“Yesh-no.”
“Are you happy here, sweetheart?”
“Yesh-no.”
“And what did you have for dinner, dear?”
“Yesh-no.”
Dates are dull, but necessary. Dates are as impersonal as pages of a calendar turning over, but they serve to give a quick overall picture of how the Dohnavur Fellowship grew.
In 1907, the first registered nurse, Mable Wade, arrived at Dohnavur, the first European to join the Fellowship. At nicely spaced intervals God also sent three trained teachers.
In 1909, Lotus Buds, the book of photos and vignettes of nursery life, was published. Three years after, when the civilized and Christian world began to hear of temple children, Queen Mary wrote Amy a note of sympathy and encouragement.
During one of those days, a note and small gift of money arrived from a little girl in England: “I wanted so much to buy a doll and name it Chellalu, but after I prayed I decided to send you the money instead to save another baby.”
There was one Sunday morning when all who loved Chellalu feared she may have been destined for a stage career. As the family sat in church and Walker Iyer preached, enlivening the sermon with magnificent gestures, Chellalu slipped away from her mat and somehow managed to get behind him. She mimicked him perfectly. She waved an arm, clenched a fist, stalked foward, stepped back, keeping right behind the Iyer‘s long legs.
Amy and all watched in horrified silence, but Chellalu tactfully ended her performance after a few minutes and dropped down upon her mat.
By 1917, the Dohnavur family numbered 140. The weather, as usual, was hot—hotter—hottest! The hill resorts for Europeans could be reached only by long, expensive railroad trips. Nine miles from Dohnavur, high in the green mountains, 3,000 feet above sea level, lay an abandoned coffee garden of forty acres with a pool of pure water on the property. The Muslim owner asked for 100 pounds, an out-of-sight price for Amy. She prayed, and God sent three separate gifts of 100 pounds each, confirming her desire three times over. She bought the land and remembered her own earlier words, “The secret of going on is to get away.”
She and the children climbed up the mountainside and camped there to supervise the building of Forest House for much-needed vacations. There was a shrine to the “Demon of the Chain” on the site, and after Amy and the children knocked it down, the laborers alternated between fear, complaining, mutiny, and squabbling over caste. Of work they did little until, shamed by the way the little ones pitched in to help, carrying loads of sand and stone up a steep slope from the river bed, they grudgingly put in a little time. Twice the walls they built fell almost on top of them.
Each night Amy held a meeting, and two of the men were converted to Christ. All who had threatened to quit, stayed. For, Amy explained, if they were to go the angels would surely come down and help.
Forest House was surrounded by mountains on three sides. To the east, the jungle dropped down to red plains and the distant blue sea. A river cascaded through a rocky ravine. The deep pool was christened the “Emerald Pool,” perfect for diving and swimming. Wild pineapples and oranges grew in profusion.
The place was blessed with birds and bugs and flowers of rare species. Elephants, tigers, panthers, bears, deer, wild dogs, monkeys, and mountain goats promised excitement.
Forest House spelled a blessed relief from the worst of the heat, a place where a tired sittie or accal might sleep all day if she chose.
Amy discovered that baby boys also were in moral danger in the temples, and in 1918 the first baby boy was rescued. The year 1923 saw thirty nurseries filled with fat, jolly babies and growing children. In 1924, Dr. May Powell joined the Fellowship. In 1925, the family amicably ceased to be affiliated with the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and was legally organized the following year as the Dohnavur Fellowship.
Dr. Godfrey Webb-Peploe came to work with the little boys, and his brother, Murray, followed.
Another interruption from Chellalu. She had been very naughty, and her sittie wrote all the crimes down on a note and sent her to Amy. What would “Amma” say, and—worse—what might she do? Chellalu dared not throw the note away. She dared not avoid Amma. All at once she saw the solution.
“Amma, it is Chellalu.” She waited on Amy’s doorstep.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“Sittie sent me with a note.”
Amy looked stern. “Where is the note?”
Chellalu beamed at her charmingly. “Amma, I’ve eaten it!”
By 1929, the family of 700 began to build a hospital called Parama Suha Saloi—Place of Heavenly Healing. Though Amy could no longer visit the villages, the villagers now came to her. She had first prayed about a hospital in 1921. Fifteen years later it was completed.
A gift of 1,000 pounds was prayed for as a sign from the Lord. On Amy’s birthday in 1929 a cable reported the gift was on its way. Soon after, another 1,000 pounds was given. The rest of the 10,000 pounds needed for a hospital was made up of small amounts, some of it pennies from children around the world who heard of Dohnavur. By 1938, the Dohnavur Fellowship was spread over 170 acres.