9. DOHNAVUR
9.
DOHNAVUR
For five years, Amy had been receiving letters from Robert Wilson. They tore at her heart because he pleaded with her to return. But her return to England was more impossible now than ever before. Now she had in her trust not only the Starry Cluster but Arulai. Arulai’s going back into her Hindu family was unthinkable.
So Amy prayed again and again, “Oh, please, God, ease Robert Wilson’s heart.” And on July 4, 1900, she received a letter from the D.O.M.:
The Master’s Word was brought to me this morning early: “He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” No drawing back. Amen. May it be so in the strength He gives. It is well to have some gift of value to present to Him Who gave His all for our redemption. Praise Him.…1
Yes, praise Him for easing Robert Wilson’s anguish. And Amy’s. What she wanted most of all from England now were books, preferably about other missionaries. She had already read about the giants: Livingstone of Africa, Carey of India, and Hudson Taylor of China. She asked well-wishers to send her books about Coillard of Zambesi or Gilmore of Mongolia. They were a “dose of mental and spiritual quinine.”2
Thomas Walker was asked to help at a seminary for boys in Dohnavur, a village in the lowlands remote from the railroad and main roads. So the Walkers moved there. And so did Amy and her Starry Cluster, as well as Arulai. Dohnavur —“woe-raw-poor” went its rhyme—had grown up around a Christian church built there in 1824. It was a small enclave of Christian natives, mostly of the palm-climbing caste. From Dohnavur Amy and her Starry Cluster could evangelize thousands scattered in many tiny villages, most within a two-hour walk!
About this time—late 1900—Amy was visited again by Ella Crossley of Manchester. This time Mary Hatch was with her. The two visitors traveled on the evangelistic sojourns with Amy and the Starry Cluster. Ella put her hobby of photography to good use. During their stay the two visitors harangued Amy about her idle manuscript. No, she did not need to embellish it, they assured her, just update it. “We will take it back to England, and with Ella’s photographs we will find a publisher!”
Meanwhile, the entire world of missionaries was stunned by news from China. China had been seething with resentment against foreigners ever since the Japanese thrashed them in the Sino-Japanese war, which ended in 1895. The resentment spawned a secret society of Chinese known to Westerners as “Boxers.” They were little more than thugs. The dowager empress Tz’u-hsi officially denounced them but knew the Boxers might defuse a lot of bitterness against her own incompetence. In 1900, the empress let the Boxers loose. The rampage was called the Boxer Rebellion. The easiest targets were missionaries, both Protestants and Catholics. By the hundreds they were rounded up, then slaughtered. Hudson Taylor’s venerable China Inland Mission lost half its missionaries. In the province of Shansi alone, the CIM lost more than one hundred, including children. “Sha! Sha! Sha!” chanted the Boxers. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“What of Geraldine Guinness?” cried Amy, remembering her dear friend at the China Inland Mission quarters in London back in 1892.
“Do you mean Mrs. Howard Taylor?” corrected Mary Hatch. “None of the Taylors or the Guinnesses were murdered in the rebellion.”
Amy was saddened to learn that William Cooper, who had given her wise counsel in Shanghai in 1894, was murdered in the uprising. Naturally the missionaries in India speculated whether such a thing could happen there. Most concluded that although there was resentment against the British presence, it was not enough to confront British weapons.
ALTHOUGH THERE WAS RESENTMENT AGAINST THE BRITISH PRESENCE, IT WAS NOT ENOUGH TO CONFRONT BRITISH WEAPONS.
“But if our soldiers ever leave, it might be quite a different matter,” offered Thomas Walker.
“Leave India?” gasped Amy. Even she felt the British would never leave their crown jewel.
Thomas repeated a bitter joke he had heard. “One Indian asked another, ‘Which do you hate more: the British or one of our own moneylenders?’ The other Indian answered, ‘I hate the British more. The moneylender at least hopes I won’t die before I pay him back. The British don’t care whether I die or not.’”
But were the Indians such innocents?
Early in 1901 at Dohnavur, five boys from the Pannaivilai area were baptized. One was Supu, one of Arulai’s many cousins. Within one week all five boys became deathly sick. Two of the boys died, including Supu. The fact that the malady struck only the five converts seemed a case of poisoning. But in India, where cholera was so common and acted so rapidly, with death in a few hours, one could never be sure. And so Amy could only grieve for the boys.
Cholera was not the only widespread disease. The natives suffered also from malaria, leprosy, tuberculosis, and various parasitic worms. Hookworm was the most common parasite, producing severe fatigue. The most hideous manifestation of a parasite was elephantiasis, gross swellings of certain body parts. Good hygiene offered some protection against diseases, especially cholera. But in the back of Amy’s mind grew the need to offer Indians modern medical treatments. What a boon that would be. All the diseases could be treated to some degree. Even the dread leprosy was treatable with chaulmoogra oil. But how would a tiny insignificant mission like Dohnavur ever attract a doctor? In the meantime, the missionaries had to treat the human soul.
In March 1901, Amy and the Walkers visited Pannaivilai after nearly a year’s absence. One morning a village woman, a Christian convert, appeared with a small girl in tow. Amy was sitting down drinking tea. The girl gawked so rudely that Amy knew she knew nothing at all about white-faced foreigners with frizzy brown hair. But why was the girl there?
“Preena came to me last night—out of sheer desperation,” explained the convert. “She is only seven. She escaped the Hindu temple in Perungulam. Preena is to be a devadasis, a ‘woman of the temple.’ First they teach her to sing and dance for the temple gods. But eventually she will entertain Hindu men who patronize the temple.”
A temple prostitute. What an abomination!
“Come up here with me,” said Amy in Tamil and lifted the girl onto her lap. “Why, your tiny hands are scarred!”
“From burns,” said the convert. “She has been punished for an earlier escape.”
“What a brave little soul you have, Preena.” Amy hugged and kissed her. The girl melted.
“How desperately she wants that affection from her own mother,” said the convert. “But the first time Preena escaped from the temple and ran to her mother—her amma—she was pushed away, right into the arms of her pursuers.”
“Amma, I want to stay with you always,” sobbed Preena.
AMMA! AMY HAD BECOME THE GIRL’S AMMA, HER MOTHER, HER PROTECTOR.
Amma! Amy had become the girl’s amma, her mother, her protector. “Patience, dear,” soothed Amy.
Amy knew how cautious Thomas Walker was. He might want to do a hundred things to placate the Hindus. Besides, this girl was not of age. No district collector would support Amy’s sanctuary for her. But when the pursuers arrived—the older devadasis women of the temple—and a crowd gathered, it was Preena who suddenly stepped forward.
“I won’t go with them!”3 she screamed.
Miraculously the crowd dissipated. Amy had made an important discovery: The Hindus were so anxious to conceal their evil, they might not appeal to authorities. When Amy and the Walkers returned to Dohnavur, Preena—the “Temple Child”—went with them. Before they left Pannaivilai, however, Arulai was baptized with Arul Dasan, her cousin who had once been bound in the attic. He, too, went to Dohnavur.
Back in Dohnavur, Amy was startled at the affection she and Preena had for each other. Preena was too young to go out evangelizing with the Starry Cluster, and each time Amy returned to Dohnavur, the child glowed with happiness. Preena was a foreshadowing of a greater calling. Amy was to become “Mother” to forsaken children. “Amma, Amma!” seemed a cry of destiny.
March 7, 1901, marked a great event in Amy’s ministry. Preena told Amy and the Walkers about evils they had never suspected. Was there any abomination in India worse than using young girls as temple prostitutes? Once, widows had been burned with their deceased husbands, a vile custom called sati. But thanks to protests by missionaries like William Carey, the British had stopped that evil. Once, girl babies were sacrificed to the gods, in reality abandoned to be eaten by wolves or crocodiles. But that horrendous evil had also been stopped by the British, thanks to proof offered by Carey. So in her heart Amy knew using girls for temple prostitutes was about the most evil custom remaining in India. It must be exposed and abolished. Until then she would save as many girls as possible. She would offer sanctuary to “temple girls” and to those likely to become temple girls.
Shortly after Amy’s two friends returned to England, they had placed her manuscript with a publisher. The book’s pointed title was Things As They Are. One passage vividly portrayed one of the more blatant Hindu priests:
Talk of beasts in human shape! It is slandering good animals to compare bad men to beasts…he is a temple saint—earthly, sensual, devilish. Now put beside him a little girl—your own little girl—and leave her there—yes, leave her there in his hand.…4
So there! Publication would be in 1903.
This traffic in temple girls—though true—was well hidden. It was so secretive that many missionaries believed temple prostitution was not true. “Oh, it’s just an old scare story!” Even Walker felt that way. But he was alarmed enough by Preena to seek information from the seamier elements of Hindu life. Slowly over the next several years he convinced himself of the truth. Girls were indeed sold to the temples, and it was worse than that. Infant boys were bought by temples, too, to be used to satisfy temple patrons or to be resold later to itinerant acting troupes. Was there no form of perversion not offered by temple priests?
“But how well they hide these vile practices from the authorities,” worried Amy. “Even Walker had not known.”
Once Amy and her Starry Cluster were far south of Dohnavur, sleeping in a stable. Through the walls they overheard a transaction. A priest was negotiating with a father for his daughter. Amy sought help from a missionary doctor in Neyyoor, Howard Somervell. Somervell had the courage of a lion. They rescued the girl. But rescuing children already being defiled in temples seemed virtually impossible. They were so well guarded. Yet orphan girls began to come to Amy. By June 1901, Preena—nicknamed Elf—had been joined by four scamps nicknamed Imp, Pickles, Brownie, and Tangles. They all called Amy “Amma.”
The rest of Amy’s retinue was growing, too. She had five convert girls. The Starry Cluster had grown by two more. Marial was a small sturdy woman, very independent. Another was “Blessing,” who had a habit that drove Amy wild. As Blessing talked, she would shake her hair down, then twist it up on her head again. She was very slow and deliberate.
“Are you an elephant to walk so slowly?” Amy would blurt at Blessing sometimes in exasperation.
Amy was ever Musal, the rabbit. She never idled. She never even walked. She scurried! As more and more children were brought to Amy, she traveled less and less. She would have to decide if Dohnavur was a good place for an orphanage for it now seemed her calling. She had at last remembered the incident in a Belfast tea shop so many years before. She had sampled dainties with her mother, while outside a small girl, barefoot and hardly clad, shivered in the cold rain! How could Amy have forgotten her promise?
When I grow up and money have,
I know what I will do,
I’ll build a great big lovely place
For little girls like you.5
At age thirty-three, Amy certainly was grown-up. It was time to build a lovely place, to deliver little girls from a life of shame. The children were such a joy with their innocence, too. “A rock is a baby mountain, isn’t it?” chattered one. “Do fish love Jesus, too?” chittered another.
In August 1902, Amy admitted in a letter, “Oh, I am getting so hungry for another child!”6 Yes, her work with children now seemed paramount. Her itinerant tent life was drawing to a close. “The children will tie you down,” some protested. Well, why not? Why could she not be tied down for the sake of her Lord whose feet were once nailed?
WHY COULD SHE NOT BE TIED DOWN FOR THE SAKE OF HER LORD WHOSE FEET WERE ONCE NAILED?
Near the old whitewashed Christian church, the Walkers and Amy had found a run-down mud-brick bungalow, approached through an avenue of delicate acacia-like tamarinds. The trees seemed giant ferns with their delicate leaves. Goats nibbled scruffy grass that grew on the rust-colored grounds. A gang of beady-eyed macaque monkeys studied these gentle newcomers. Four tiny cottages were also part of the compound. A few miles southwest was an alpine-spiked peak of the Western Ghats called the Holy Washerwoman.
“This truly seems the opening scene of something wonderful,” said Amy.
Ella Crossley and Mary Hatch, her friends from Manchester, visited again in 1903. They traveled with Amy on one of her last such ventures. Once near the temple village of Kalakadu, they stopped to look over a wall at a pond full of beautiful white lotus blossoms. “Let us gather some,” suggested someone. “They belong to the temple!” someone in the Starry Cluster shot back. Suddenly Amy had a vision. The smallest—the lotus buds—were lifting their innocent faces to the light. Words from Ezekiel boomed into her mind: “Behold, all souls are mine”! Yes, how could she accept the contention that the lotus buds—the innocents—belonged to the temple? They belonged to the Lord. After that, Amy often thought of the temple children as “lotus buds.”
In late 1903, Thomas Walker’s wife was so ill he had to take her back to England. Amy’s friends also returned to England. With the Walkers and her friends gone, she began to brood. On December 16 she turned thirty-six. In her heart she had consecrated herself to saving temple children. But where were they? Was her new calling mere folly? She prayed fervently for lotus buds. On March 1, 1904, a pastor from the northern part of the Tinnevelly district arrived at Dohnavur. He carried a baby girl, a wispy thirteen days old. Another orphan? thought Amy. And so tiny.
“I saw a group of temple women in the night,” said the pastor. “They were ushering several of their small victims to the temple. I prayed, and God commanded me to barge in among them. The Lord delivered this baby to me.”
“Then this is a temple baby!” gasped Amy.
“Let me name her! Let me name her!” It was Preena, the first temple child.
“Then do,” said Amy.
“Amethyst!”
“From Revelation?”
“Yes. Amethyst is one of the twelve foundations of the Celestial City.”
“What an imagination you have!”
The Starry Cluster now numbered seven. Ponnammal was Amy’s greatest help with the children. Pearl was nearly her equal. But a new member, Devai, was without equal at ferreting out children in peril. She was an older woman, shuffling but driven. It seemed she was always on the trail of some child. Did she ever sleep? More often than not she failed. But how she persevered. It was Devai who brought most of the new children in. By June 1904 Amy had seventeen children at Dohnavur.
“Six of whom were saved from temple prostitution!” Amy said.
In November 1904, Thomas Walker returned, without his wife, who needed more time in England, but with Amy’s mother! Mrs. Carmichael was just in time. Amy not only needed her motherly comfort but her motherly advice. Caring for the children—especially the babies—was overwhelming. And Amy had neither nurse nor doctor to help her. Indian women—even Christians—refused to wet-nurse. What was she to do with the babies she had? They tried goat milk. They mixed in other ingredients to make their own “formula.” Amy worked ceaselessly. Often she was awake half the night hovering over a sick child in the nursery. But several of the babies worsened, including Amethyst, who soon died. So did a second baby! A third baby, Sapphire, or “Indraneela” in Tamil, also became sick. She was older, and her baby antics had endeared her to everyone. Indraneela was often in Mrs. Carmichael’s lap. She called her “Ahta” for grandmother. When Indraneela died January 6, 1905, Amy had to console herself with words written long ago by Samuel Rutherford:
You have lost a child? Nay, she is not lost to you who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star which going out of sight doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere; you see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that she hath gotten of eternity; and you have to rejoice that you have now some treasure laid up in heaven.…There is less of you out of heaven that the child is there.…7
After Amy had consoled herself with the fact that Indraneela was with the Lord, she wrote a poem:
Dear little feet, so eager to be walking
But never walked in any grieving way,
Dear little mouth, so eager to be talking
But never hurt with words it learned to say,
Dear little hands, outstretched in eager welcome,
Dear little head that close against me lay—
Father to Thee I give my Indraneela,
Thou wilt take care of her until That Day.8
Amy resolved to keep the sixth day of the month as a day of prayer for imperiled children, for not only had Indraneela gone over to God on that day, but Preena had escaped the temple on the sixth day of March. In unguarded moments Amy was stung by the accusation that the deaths of the babies were the fault of well-intentioned but bungling do-gooders! Surely that was Satan attacking. Amy armored herself with the words of her Lord: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And in her heart she knew God wanted her to continue.
On June 19, 1905, Robert Wilson also went to join the Lord. The abandonment of her D.O.M. weighed heavily on Amy. It was another of those burdens missionaries carry. Few earnest missionaries escaped being accused of neglecting their loved ones. David Livingstone and William Carey were but two that the “world,” with its secular sentiments, could not understand—would never understand. At least during her grief over Robert Wilson and the three babies, Amy had the comfort of her mother. Mrs. Carmichael stayed until March 1906, making it a very full fifteen-month stay in India.
By 1906, Amy knew that the tragic deaths of the babies had been caused by a mysterious epidemic. No babies had died since. Still, the family needed medical help, and they had outgrown their facilities at Dohnavur. Children were being rescued at the rate of one a month. The family totaled more than fifty now. Sometimes Amy laughed as she remembered her naive expectations. Never had she envisioned that instead of evangelizing, her mission would be to trim thousands of tiny toenails and fingernails!
CHILDREN WERE BEING RESCUED AT THE RATE OF ONE A MONTH. THE FAMILY TOTALED MORE THAN FIFTY NOW.
The youngest wore simple pullover dresses—blue, of course. Her older girls all wore saris, usually white. Unlike poor Tamil women who wore nothing underneath the sari, they wore petticoats and a blouse—usually yellow—with sleeves past the elbow. Amy also wore a sari, hers creamy yellow, white, or lavender, with a blouse of coordinating color. And no clothing of Dohnavur was other than opaque.
Their overcrowded nurseries were simple enough, little more than mud-brick walls with thatched roofs and dirt floors. Furnishings were grass-mat beds and plain cupboards for the few belongings. She began earnest prayer for more land and buildings that would house a new nursery or two, a schoolroom, and quarters for the workers. Fired-brick walls, too, Lord. And red-tiled floors that busy little hands could chalk. None of that had materialized yet; the purchase of a typewriter had been a major item. So they set about remedying not only overcrowding but lack of professional medical care.
A bungalow became available at Neyyoor to the south, near Somervell’s London Missionary Society hospital. So Amy had her most trusted helper, Ponnammal, go there with the most vulnerable children. The family continued to grow. Between Dohnavur and Neyyoor it now numbered seventy.
By Easter of 1907, after six of the children had been baptized, Thomas Walker insisted that Amy depart for Ooty before the hot weather set in.
As she prepared to leave, Thomas Walker gasped, “Why are all these children carrying bundles?”
“They’re going with me.”
“But you are supposed to rest in Ooty.”
“I’m only taking twelve of them!”
At Ooty, Amy bolstered herself with words from The Spiritual Letters of Pere Didon: “This sacred work demands not lukewarm, selfish, slack souls, but hearts more finely tempered than steel, wills purer and harder than diamond.”9 So there!
INDIAN HELPERS WERE GROWING IN NUMBER. SEVERAL WERE OFFSPRING OF THOSE ALREADY SUPPORTING DOHNAVUR.
Of course, Amy did not agree with Catholicism in its obedience to a pope and its plethora of sacraments, but she never hesitated to gain inspiration from Catholics who lived in Christ. Why should she not be inspired by Thomas à Kempis and Brother Lawrence and the great Augustine? To accept less was to deny what some worthies had done for Christ.
Meanwhile, she finished writing another manuscript about her own work for the Lord and sent it off to England. It would be titled Overweights of Joy. Without being dishonest, she tried to make it more joyous than her first book. Reception to Things As They Are had been mixed. Negative criticism claimed she had painted much too dismal a picture; Indian paganism couldn’t be that bad. But the book sold well, and in the second printing the publishers added testimonies by experienced missionaries from India affirming that Amy had in fact painted a very real picture.
The year 1907 was a blessed year. Amy learned that a woman—in the same vein as Kate Mitchell of Belfast—wanted to make a large donation, which would enable them to build…more nurseries! Soon bricks were being laid. Ponnammal and all her charges could be brought back from Neyyoor because now Amy also had her first real medical practitioner, Mabel Wade, a nurse from Yorkshire. Amy was thrilled when Mabel exclaimed, “Have I been here only a few hours? I feel like I am really at home.”
Occasionally, Dohnavur had a real teacher volunteer for a short stint, but as yet they had no regular teaching staff. But the Indian helpers were growing in number. Several were offspring of those already supporting Dohnavur. Ponnammal’s daughter, Purripu, appeared to be as industrious as her mother. Another was Pappammal, granddaughter of Krishna Pallai, the Christian poet in the Pannaivilai area. Volunteering must not have been Pappammal’s idea, however, because she slouched in, expecting to be overwhelmed by the gloom.
“Instead,” she gasped, “Dohnavur overwhelms me with love and joy!”
In the meantime, they fought for the souls of the children. On March 10, 1909, a woman bedecked in gold jewelry that obviously established her wealth breathlessly entered the compound with Muttammal, her very undersized twelve-year-old daughter. The mother was living in sin, so she could not keep her. The girl’s father had died, making her heir to a substantial amount of land. Muttammal’s uncle wanted control of her. Her life was in great danger. People in India died so easily; treachery might be suspected but could seldom be proved.
“I’ve heard of Dohnavur since I was only eight,” Muttammal said boldly to Amy. “I want to grow up good. Won’t you protect me?”
“I may not be able to,” answered Amy honestly. “This may be a legal matter.”
“But I’ve always heard your God answers prayers!”
“Stay here, then,” said Amy. “We will pray.”