Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Little Gems
Amy continued caring for the children and overseeing the Starry Cluster, but she felt frustrated. It was as if the work she felt called to do was just out of her grasp. Preena had told her many stories of the temple girls. Some of the girls came as newborn babies to be trained for life as temple servers and prostitutes. Usually they were given to the temple by their parents to gain favor with the Hindu gods. Sometimes, if a girl was poor and no husband could be found for her, she was given to the temple to get rid of her. In India, most girls were pledged to marry by the time they were six or seven years old, and most were married by age twelve.
The whole situation sickened Amy when she thought about it, but what could she do? How could she get access to these girls? They were prisoners, shut in behind locked gates and watched every minute of the day. All Amy could do was to let other Christians know of her willingness to help and to pray and wait for God to crack open the door for these girls as He had for Preena. Amy sent letters all over India to let pastors and missionaries know that if they rescued any temple girls, Amy had a place of refuge for them.
Then on March 1, 1904, Amy’s frustration began to lift. Her prayers were finally answered. A small, wizened bundle was thrust into her arms by a pastor from the north. He had heard of a newborn baby who had been given to the temple, and he had mounted a daring rescue. Then he had traveled through the night to bring her to safety at Dohnavur. Preena, who had been with the Starry Cluster for three years now, had the privilege of naming the new baby. She chose the name Amethyst, after the precious purple gemstone.
It was a hard fight to save Amethyst’s life. The baby was very weak, and it was difficult to find milk that was suitable for a newborn baby. But Amethyst was a fighter, and she began to gain strength and started to grow. She was soon followed by another temple baby, who was named Sapphire, after another gemstone. Sapphire had also been saved by an Indian pastor. She was a round, happy baby and didn’t require as much nursing as her “sister” Amethyst.
Amy’s family was growing rapidly, and she couldn’t have been more pleased. By June 1904, six months after the Walkers left for England, Amy had seventeen girls to look after. Six of the children had been rescued from Hindu temples. Of course, there was not nearly enough room for “the family” in the bungalow, but they all made do with what they had. A long, low mud brick hut next to the bungalow served as the nursery, kitchen, and dining room rolled into one.
Not only was space in short supply, but having so many children around meant an incredible amount of work. Piles and piles of laundry had to be washed by hand and hung out to dry. Buckets of rice had to be cooked, and mounds of vegetables needing to be chopped up. Then there were the thirty bedrolls that needed to be aired and rolled up each morning, not to mention schoolwork to be collected, floors to be swept, and maintenance of the buildings to be done. The list of chores went on and on.
The Starry Cluster worked alongside Amy, though at times it was difficult for them. Since birth, most of them had been raised with the idea that certain tasks were for certain castes. Even as Christians they found this idea not easy to overcome. It was very humbling for the women of the Starry Cluster to wash clothes for others, sweep floors, and burn trash. Most of them had been raised “above” such things. Amy had to keep reminding them, and herself, that Jesus had washed the dusty, dirty feet of His disciples.
Slowly, the Starry Cluster came to understand that real love means serving others, even little babies who scream through the night and fuss during the day.
One problem they faced was that some of the babies were too weak to feed on goat’s or cow’s milk and needed to be breast-fed. But finding someone willing to breast-feed another woman’s baby was a challenge. Once Amy found a woman in the village who was willing to breast-feed a newborn baby to save its life. The woman knew she was breaking caste in doing so, but she did it anyway. Sadly, it cost the woman her life. Her husband was so outraged when he found out what she had done that he poisoned her. After that, it became impossible to find any women willing to breast-feed someone else’s baby.
With so much going on, sometimes Amy felt the need for a break. She would pack a few clothes and take the older girls with her to Ooty, where she would go for long walks in the forest with the girls. It was on one of these walks that she began to think again about the need for a nursery. She’d thought about it before, but there was never any spare money for building. Even though Amy sent a regular newsletter called “Scraps” to her supporters in the British Isles, she never asked for money or even hinted that the family might have special needs. She remembered back to the time in Belfast when she had wanted to build the Tin Tabernacle and God had supplied the money and the land for it. Amy had decided then that she would never beg for money. Instead she would wait for God to move people’s hearts to give. In all her years since then, she had never budged from that position, and no matter how difficult things got, she promised herself she never would. The work at Dohnavur would never be expanded on borrowed money or on money unwillingly extracted from people. Even though she’d thought of building a nursery before, she had never felt it was the right time to do so. But strolling in the hills above Ooty, she felt that God was saying to her the time was now right to build.
When Amy got back to her friend Mrs. Hopwood’s home, where she stayed on her visits to Ooty, she wrote a note to the family at Dohnavur and asked them to begin making mud bricks right away. It was time to build! Within an hour, the mail arrived at Mrs. Hopwood’s, and with it was a letter for Amy that contained a money order for an amount large enough to cover the cost of the bricks. Amy was very excited and could hardly wait to get back to Dohnavur to tell the family the news and start drawing up plans for the new nursery.
When Amy arrived home, another money order was waiting. It was an anonymous gift from someone in Madras with “for the nursery” written on it, but Amy hadn’t even had time to tell anyone about the nursery project. The money was enough to buy a field next to the compound to build the nursery on and to pay for the rest of the building materials.
The nursery was well under way when Iyer Walker arrived back at Dohnavur after a year in England. His wife was still not well enough to accompany him back to India, but he did bring someone else with him: Amy’s mother.
Mrs. Carmichael had been planning for some time to come to India and see for herself the work her daughter was involved in, and Iyer Walker’s return provided the perfect opportunity for her to make the trip. It had been almost ten years since Amy had said a tearful good-bye to her mother in Manchester, England, and mother and daughter had a wonderful reunion. Amy was glad to see her mother after so long. Her mother brought news of her brothers and sisters, now spread out around the globe. She also had news of Robert Wilson, and it was not good. He was frail, and his health was failing quickly. Amy’s joy at seeing her mother was tinged with sadness for Robert Wilson.
Mrs. Carmichael fit right in to the extended family. The children called her “Atah,” Tamil for grandma, and they trailed her around wherever she went. When she arrived at lunch each day, little posies of flowers were at her place, and when she sat to read in the heat of the afternoon, little hands busily fanned her. Amy was glad to have her mother’s advice. Sometimes she was not sure how to care for the littlest babies, especially when they were sick. Because Dohnavur had no doctor, Amy had to do the best she could with very limited medical knowledge.
Mrs. Carmichael had already raised seven babies herself and had invaluable advice for her daughter. It was not long before Amy needed all the advice her mother could give. However, their best efforts weren’t enough. Two of the babies stopped drinking. Amethyst, the first temple baby to be brought to them, and one other baby, who had come soon after, got sicker and sicker. Nothing Amy and her mother tried would get the babies drinking again. Within a few days of each other, both babies died.
It was a sad day as a new area of land was set aside: the family’s cemetery, which Amy called God’s garden. It was a quiet area between the bungalow and the vegetable garden. The two babies were buried there. There were no headstones or plot markers, just the beauty of the garden and the shade of the majestic tamarind trees as silent witnesses to the children’s passing.
Sapphire, the round, happy baby had turned into an equally round and happy toddler. She was the older children’s favorite. They took turns playing with her and walking her around the compound. However, Sapphire was not well, either, and Mrs. Carmichael watched over her day and night. But again, all her motherly help was not enough, and on January 6, 1905, a few days after the other babies died, Sapphire died also.
Everyone was heartbroken. Three babies were gone. Amy didn’t know how to console her family. She took the older girls out into God’s garden. As she searched for words of comfort, her eyes rested on a beautiful lily, the first one ever to bloom in the garden. She walked the girls around the garden showing them the convolvulus and nasturtiums that were blooming, and then she stopped at the lily. “If Jesus came into this garden,” she asked, “which flower would you give Him?”
The girls pointed to the single lily. “We would give Him this one,” they all chimed.
Amy nodded. “God has asked us to give Him three of our most beautiful lilies, and I would not hold them back,” she said simply.
While life at Dohnavur went on, it was only a short time later that Amy herself needed to be comforted. News reached her that the Dear Old Man, Robert Wilson, had died on June 19, 1905. Fortunately, Mrs. Carmichael was still visiting and was able to give her daughter the comfort she needed. After grieving for Robert Wilson, Amy threw herself back into the work at Dohnavur. Three new babies soon joined the family, and the nursery was once again alive with the happy sounds of baby girls.
Finally, after nearly a year and half visiting and working alongside her daughter, Mrs. Carmichael returned to England in March 1906. Everyone was sad to see Atah leave. But they didn’t have much time to miss her, because the nursery was filled with babies who cried out for attention. Soon everyone was back focused on the growing work that God had given them to do.