10. Jewels of the Ledger: (1900-1935, The Father’s provision)
“If everyone who reads this letter will sit down right now and write out a check for $25—$50—$100—we might be able to pay our bills and not go under. We are deeply in debt, and only you …”
Newsletter today
“Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.”
Matthew 6:32
10
Jewels of the Ledger
1900-1935, The Father’s provision
“Why not just pray for a thousand pounds?” asked a Lotus Bud, watching Amy carefully recording sums in a ledger book. “That would make everything so nice and easy.”
“Nice and easy,” Amy explained, “would turn our faith to jelly.” Then she was obliged to explain “jelly” to the Indian child.
Prayer was a part of Amy’s life since her very first prayer at age three, to which the answer was no. This chapter deals with Amy’s answers to prayer from the beginning of her work with children, centered mainly on the ledger that reported needs, requests to the Father, and answers in black and white.
In 1904, a letter came from a pastor friend who lived a six-hour journey by train from Dohnavur telling of a child about to be dedicated to Siva. “They have spent 100 rupees on the festivities. Can you send the money at once to repay them? They will give you the child.” (Fifteen rupees then equalled one pound sterling.)
Amy had less than an hour to decide. How could she refuse? Ponnammal left with the money and returned safely with the little girl, but Amy and Ponnammal were both disturbed over paying money directly to the devil. Amy prayed for a sign of God’s approval, a round sum of 100 rupees to replace the money sent. It arrived. “I was writing out a check for a different sum but Someone changed my mind,” read the note with it.
After that, every journey to save a child was expensive in time, money, and energy, but “special sums dropped as if from the skies to meet these unexpected charges.”
Babies demanded nurseries. Amy was given enough money to build a room 24 by 12 feet. “Why not add on a porch for shade and play space when rain prevents outdoor exercise?” someone asked. The Indian builders too, were puzzled over the lack of a proper veranda.
That it was very sensible Amy agreed, and replied that their heavenly Father would give that if they asked Him. She stopped the building of the nursery for four days so they could pray about it. Two days later (not even on their usual mail day), a letter arrived with 200 rupees labeled, “For a new nursery.” Then another 100 rupees. Then fifty. The Hindu masons were impressed. Truly, Amy’s God was alive and listening and very kind.
Once Amy was in the crowded railroad station at Tinnevelly Bridge praying for a need she had not even mentioned to Ponnammal or Sellamutthu, her closest companions. An unknown hand tucked an envelope of money into her hand just as she hurriedly boarded the train. “God’s ravens,” she called such friends, flying about where ravens are not usually found.
Amy kept a cash box with small amounts of money in it to be used only for quick trips to save babies and children.
Dohnavur was four hundred miles away from their bank in which funds for the work were kept. And a check could be obtained only by going to the mission office at Palamcottah, a day’s journey away. A rash of robberies on the roads between had discouraged any communication. One day a telegram arrived by usual government mail: “Send money order by return mail to save this child 800 miles away.” Impossible? Along with the telegram was a money order gift from Canada for the exact sum of money needed. All Amy had to do was sign it, slip it into an envelope, and hand it to the waiting postman. The child was saved.
“I thought Indian babies lived on rice water!” was one woman’s remark after hearing forty pounds had been spent on milk.
When Ponnammal was at the Neyyoor Nursery with the sick babies, skimping and doing without for herself as much as possible, always economical, it was necessary to pay a bill of 100 rupees. Amy didn’t have the money, but she prayed. The next week a money order arrived for 151 rupees.
One day Amy stood on the porch of a new nursery and gazed across a long field reaching clear up to the outskirts of a village on the north.
“Ask for that piece of land,” came the inner voice she had learned, to recognize.
“Lord, I don’t want that piece of land!”
“Ask anyhow.”
Such an experience had never been hers, to ask for something she didn’t want. Obediently she asked, adding candidly, “But have we not enough?”
Gifts of money began to come for the field, one all the way from Africa. A large gift arrived from one who wrote, “I am sure the Lord wants you to expand.”
In later years, Amy could look back and see the reason for buying the unwanted field. Without actually encroaching on the land, villagers were moving closer and closer to Dohnavur, sinking wells and staying permanantly. “We feel safe, living near you,” they said. However, they also would have bought up bits of the field, slice by slice, until Dohnavur would have been smothered and unsafely close to too many people. Now, the north was bounded by fields of rice and grain.
Babies were bound to grow up into children. Children meant schooling. Amy asked God to show her a pattern for a schoolhouse, if it was His will. Again, the pattern shown was “too big, too large. And why so costly?” Amy had received a sum of money to cover a smaller building. The estimate of the larger building given on January 17, 1910, far exceeded the money on hand.
Amy, already embroiled in another court case to save a child, studied the sketch of the proposed large schoolhouse, perplexed. Would they ever have children to fill that space?
On the twenty-ninth of the month, 36 pounds arrived by mail, enough for the foundation of the new building. “We will build only as money is supplied,” Amy told the masons.
In February, a delayed letter arrived, dated January 17, the day Amy had prayed about the pattern for building. “One hundred pounds is on its way” was the happy message. Amy ran out into the field and showed the letter to the masons. After that, there was a steady surprise of gifts, over and above usual needs, earmarked “for building.”
When finished, the school building was large enough to seat all the family whenever they celebrated festivities and held Sunday worship. Because birthdays of the children were mostly unknown, the “Coming Day” of each one’s arrival at Dohnavur was celebrated. Written on the wall of the schoolhouse was a verse that had for the family a double meaning, “I will bless the Lord Who has given me counsel,” chosen by the child Amy won in the court battle.
Things did not always operate smoothly and routinely in a “prayer-answer, prayer-answer” way. One month, when funds on hand amounted to 15 pounds instead of the average 66, a letter arrived from an Indian who claimed that a fraction of one of the land slices was his, sold while he was out of town. He was prepared to take the matter to court. Amy had barely recovered from two years of court trouble (and its expenses), and a nursery was already half-built upon that gentleman’s “slice.”
What was there to do? Amy prayed.
And that was the end of the matter. No more letters came, and the gentleman never made an appearance. God made up for the lean month, and that year ended with an excess of 262 pounds.
On December 23, 1913, Amy prayed for guidance and a sign if she was to purchase another slice of land whose owners asked 450 rupees as a down payment. Land was added, little by little. The very next day, the Christmas Eve mail produced 500 rupees from an unknown giver. “Great cheer!” Amy wrote in her diary, describing both the birthday festivities of the Lord and the answered prayer. For ten and one half years she continued buying up slices of land.
“We ask … He heareth … we have” (1 John 5:14-15). But it must always be “according to His will.” Amy put prayer matters in their right order. First, seek God’s will, many times plainly given in His Word, such as, He is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9). If Amy was not led to a verse of Scripture, the next step was to continue to pray and ask God to reveal His will. Once known, His will may be prayed for, confident of the answer. Not, “Bless my plans and bring them to pass,” nor, “Change Thy will and conform it to mine.”
World War I spelled shock to the Dohnavur Fellowship and confusion to the villagers, who predicted ruin and collapse for Dohnavur.
“Is it safe to trust only God?” they asked. “In a war the mails will be lost.” They watched, waited, tongues smacking over dire and awful predictions, but the day came when they said in awe, “Their God feeds them!”
The Dohnavur Fellowship grew until they owned rice fields, a farm, herds of cattle, gardens. One year after the seed beds were planted near the end of October, weather unexpectedly turned hot and dry. Thousands of caterpillars, hearing the sun’s call, woke up and hatched out of their cocoons, spied the seedlings, and began to feast. Amy and all the family right down to five-year-olds began to pray, since it seemed the whole crop would be lost. They prayed also for the village people and their crops.
Two days later, they all went out to look at the field. Hundreds of white egrets were busy devouring the caterpillars, and by next day no caterpillars were left, and the rice crop was saved.
This time God protected only the crops of the Dohnavur Fellowship, who openly called Him Lord, and the crops of the villagers who prayed to idols for help were destroyed.
During a trying time when Ponnammal lay dying of cancer, Amy asked God to send money in cash to tide them over. She prayed that prayer at 5:30 A.M. The 8:00 A.M. mail delivered a large registered envelope containing 3,000 rupees—all in small notes. “Before they call . . !”
In September 1917, all of Amy’s workers agreed with her about rescuing baby boys, the only hesitation caused by the lack of medical help. (Amy prayed for a doctor for fourteen years.) On the eighth of the month a medical student offered to come to Dohnavur and was welcomed with open arms. The first baby boy arrived January 14, 1918. Amy had discovered they, too, were in moral danger, being given to the temples and trained as musicians. Another nursery was needed. The Lord seemed to draw her and say, “Ask,” and she asked for 100 pounds to arrive the next day.
The mail was duly delivered by the postman who up-ended his sack and scattered letters to the four winds, in his usual way. Forty-two rupees, six annas, three more rupees. “Has the 100 pounds been given?” the family all asked, from the little ones on up. “No, but it will come,” said Amy. No letters remained to be opened.
Even as she spoke, a worker entered the room and put a check into her hands, a legacy she had just received. It was 100 pounds.
Only once, during 1919, they hit rock bottom financially with only 35 pounds to their name. Life seemed like a pair of forceps with rapidly closing points, and the space between them was not comfortable!
“Will money seen in a dream pay bills? Will rice eaten in a dream satisfy hunger?” the Tamil proverb taunted her, but prayer, the vital breath of the soul, buoyed her up. Is it not easier to breathe than to hold one’s breath? That breath gives life to the whole body. Without breath (prayer) the body is dead. Prayer was Amy’s very breath as she paced the courtyard one fear-filled night during the war and pictured the children starving to death and the Christian world blaming her.
The gifts were not always money. In England the Dohnavur Fellowship secretary was given a beautiful shawl by a blind woman who was dying. When sold it realized two pounds for Dohnavur. A poor girl gave a workbasket and two cups and saucers. An elderly man gave the gold piece he had saved for his old age.
In Ireland, an eight-year-old boy, reading of the Dohnavur children, saved his pennies and bought a few toys at a time until he could pack a box full. The box was sent on the ship Roumania, which was lost in the Bay of Biscay. Eight-year-old Robin thought of all the pretty toys now at the bottom of the sea, the children who might not have toys for Christmas, and he was unhappy. His mother offered to advance him money she meant to spend on his own Christmas present to replace the toys. He thought it over for a few hours, then ran to her, his face aglow. “Mother, I want to do it! Let’s hurry and go shopping again!”
An older boy in another part of the world sent his first week’s wages. And a crumpled wad of paper with a shilling inside arrived at Dohnavur, the note reading, “Fur Miss Karmikal from won wot carnt afford more.”
Some of the gifts, Amy firmly believed, were divinely chosen no matter what their reaction to them. For example, who in the world would send a sharp razor to a nursery? Yet a razor arrived in a package one day just when an older boy was complaining that a barber of his particular caste simply must be found—an impossibility—or he would not, could not, shave, could not work, attend classes or church, or appear in public. Behold—a razor—just in time for the long journey he must take. For caste rules even the razor in India.
A little American girl, ill most of her life, was given five cents to buy an Easter egg. “Mother, do I have to spend this on candy?”
“No, dear. What would you like to buy?”
“I would like to send it to Dohnavur so the Lord Jesus can have another baby!”
One envelope with a check inside was addressed only “Dohnavur, India,” arriving from China with thirteen different postmarks, four green seals, three purple registered stamps, plus messages and advice by kindly post office people scrawled around the edges. Since it was not addressed to any one person, or even to the Fellowship, it had to be returned. A long time later, it arrived properly addressed, very worn-looking, but the check inside was safe.
“Our ravens [crows] don’t bring food; they snatch it out of our hands for themselves,” objected a small girl hearing of Elijah for the first time.
“God’s ravens are obedient,” Amy assured her.
God never failed them, and by the end of the five-year war, all twelve nurseries were built and occupied, a wall a mile long was built, the forest property purchased and Forest House finished, not a child had gone hungry, and not a coolie had waited even a day for his pay.
The 1920s were years of marvelous growth. By 1923 there were twenty nurseries, and by 1924 twenty non-Indian workers belonged to the Fellowship. In 1927, a House of Prayer was built, and 1929 saw electricity installed and gifts earmarked “for X-ray equipment for the hospital,” which they began to build that year. Over the years, a Ford car and ambulance were given.
“As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee” (Matthew 8:13).
One more answer to prayer will have to represent the remainder of the years up to 1935. Amy never took the incoming funds for granted since she was living by faith, and faith grows stronger by testing. During World War I she had been offered a large garden just planted with orange, lime, and mango trees and had to refuse for lack of funds. In fact, the exchange of money almost threatened ruin to the work at the time. She kept praying. The land increased in value as the trees blossomed and bore fruit. In 1935 she was able to buy the garden plus adjoining fields for growing fodder for the animals. It was a long wait, but the field was much more valuable and she paid less.