Under the shadow of his wings (part 2 of 2)

Precious jewels for God

In meditating about Job 28:3, ‘He setteth an end to darkness’, Amy describes the very reason why she is in Dohnavur. As the miner goes deep in dark places and lights them, ‘and so ends the darkness’, for in the searchlight of the lamp he finds the jewels hidden in the dark:

We are here to do that very thing. We have for light the presence and the promises of God. There may be someone whom we are trying to help; we are trying to help out of the dark mine of that personality precious jewels for our Lord.1096 The Dohnavur children were for her the ‘precious jewels of the Lord’. The little children, often given up by their parents, without wealth or status, were the precious riches of the community. The Christian names given to the first children reflect this: names like ‘Jewel of Victory’ or ‘Jewel of Life’. The final section of Wings is entitled ‘The Preciousness of Souls’, indicating the centrality of this Fellowship thought. Amy chose with unerring insight Tamil names for everybody, not only for the children. Murray Webb-Peploe was called Deva Mitthiran, meaning God’s friend; his brother Godfrey was called Deva Samathanam, God’s peace, and Murray’s wife Oda was Deva Vara, God’s gift.

The saving and the care of the children was top priority in Dohnavur:

Our chief business is to save little girls from dedication to temple service, and little boys from adoption by the dramatic Societies of the South. Other work flows from this.1097

1095. For matters matrimonial in the DF in the last century, see Robbins, Not Forgetting to Sing, chapter 19. 1096. Whispers of His Power, January 17, 20–21.

1097. Windows, 3.

Long journeys had to be made to save one baby. In Dohnavur it was said, that to save one baby, in terms of time, the journey lasted as long as the journey from London to Moscow and back.1098 Amy saw the work, to teach and to bring the little children (Figure 18) up to be mature Christian men and women, as a battle, ‘a battle for a child – a battle in the heavenlies, to be fought out on our knees; or something needing for its handling the very wisdom of God’.1099 ‘We had been appointed to save such children, girls and boys.’1100 In appointing new workers, she agreed with Thomas Walker, who looked after those workers, ‘as to whose spiritual qualifications we have no sort of bona fide guarantee’.1101 Amy looked after persons who could give clear evidence of true conversion to God and a real acquaintance with Christ, to keep out of the work every unspiritual applicant. The risks involved were too great for her to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. The conversion and the training of children, as she saw, was as vitally important as that of adults.1102

From 14 January 1918 the work in Dohnavur became co-educational, with the arrival of the first baby boy. In the margin of Daily Light Amy recorded the arrival of Arul as: ‘First fruits of seven years’ travail’. Just as it was with the girls, Amy had done some research into the way boys were used in dramas during festivals. One day Amy was with the staff and children in the forest and near the pool, she knelt with the others seeking God’s will and the way the new venture, taking in boys, would go. There in the forest God’s word came which settled all for her and her comrades:

I was standing by a waterfall, which we call by a Tamil name meaning Great Joy, when the question broke forth again, ‘Lord, what of the little boys?’

Oh, there are heavenly heights to reach
In many a fearful place,
Where the poor timid child of God
Lies blindly on his face,
Lies languishing for light divine
Which he shall never see,
Till he goes forward at Thy sign,
And trusts himself to Thee.

But, Lord Jesus, where are the men? There was no answer that I heard. I was looking at the answer, the wonder of the ceaseless flow of water. Then the sense of it came. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, Can I who do this, not do that? Spiritually, in that hour, the work for the boys began.1103 However, the first boy arriving in Dohnavur in January 1918 came quite unexpectedly. A bandy arrived that day and a women gave a bundle to Amy. Wrapped in a towel was a little baby. Amy gave it to Mabel (a CEZMS missionary) to take to the nursery. In five minutes, Mabel came back and shouted ‘it’s a boy’. Amy used to take Arul, which was his name, on her knee and say, ‘You are my very first son’. So began the Fellowship’s work with boys.

1098. Lotus Buds, 219. NB: note the travel circumstances in India at the beginning of the 20th century. 1099. Ponnamal, 72.

1100. Ploughed Under, 144.

1101. This One Thing, 136.

1102. Cf. Thomas Walker’s view on this issue: ‘God keep us from lowering His standard and from trailing it in the dust. Let us turn anew to Calvary, and learn afresh the tremendous cost of Christ’s redemption. Let us realize, in view of His precious blood, the infinite value of immortal souls. Let us think of the needs of India, and the enormous issues involved in the welfare of its Church. Can we, dare we commit these congregations to the care of hireling-shepherds, or to the leading of blind guides? Are we not hindering God’s gracious purposes in giving room to unconverted workers’? In This One Thing, 138. 1103. Gold Cord, 221. Cf. too Nor Scrip, 69.

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Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 18: Nesamitthirie with five of the children.

In India, boys were used in the temples to perform dramas during festivals and other puja times1104: Why take them at all? Briefly, because no one else in these parts does. We waited for years, hoping someone would start work on the same lines as the Lotus Bud work; but the boys went on perishing just as the girls had for countless generations. And no one came. So could we refuse to launch out again, trusting for the means and the workers. Little boys who for any reason are without safe guardianship are in request by three different sets of people. Some are taken by the Dramatic companies of South India and trained for the drama which, as India is, cannot be clean. […] Others (worst of all) become searchers […] and gather up into their net any unprotected innocent they can. Others are adopted by Mohammedans.1105 Already in 1911 she had discussed with Walker the possibility of taking boys as well. At that time, Walker did not think that Amy had to do this work. He fully sympathised with the idea, but ‘You haven’t strength enough for both’ was what he said. Many other things came in between, but Amy had never abandoned the idea. In later years her judgement was that it had been good to wait, but when suddenly the first boy came, she immediately opened her heart for him, and so the work in Dohnavur continued, now with girls and boys. They lived in a separate compound next to the girls’ one, for in India at that time both sexes lived separately. Then Amy herself received a legacy and she donated it for the first boys’ nursery. To start this new work in the last year of World War I was really a work of faith and trust that the Lord would provide. Godfrey Webb-Peploe gives his story about the beginning of the boys work (Figure 19). He, too, saw that the brothers of the Lotus Buds were in danger:

It was a life of undiluted evil for them; and much prayer went up that someone would start a nursery for baby boys such as there was already for Girls in Dohnavur.

Is not God always working in an amazing way? In his dealings with his people, are not many times for us his footprints unseen?1106 After World War I, someone 200 miles away from Dohnavur, a Christian man, had already ‘talked’ with the Lord:

Twelve years ago, God caused a dream to come to a Christian man two hundred miles away, and in this dream He directed him to take a boy to Dohnavur. ‘But, Lord, they only take little girls there’. ‘What is that to thee?’, was the answer. ‘Do thou obey’. And, wondering much, went about his daily work knowing nothing of how the vision would be fulfilled to him and when. Within a week he knew, and obeyed. Alone with the boy, given to him as evidently as if an angel had appeared to give it, he set forth, and arrived at Dohnavur, to find that the bars were down which had kept boys out so long. That was at the beginning.1107 All over south India the practice of using small boys as actors in drama or as musicians in the temples had been known for a long time. For them it was a life of undiluted evil. For a long time it had been the desire to start a nursery for baby boys, such as there already was for girls at Dohnavur. For the boys:

Their future? It is too soon to say. But shall we not be led? […] So we need not fear. Has our God ever failed us? Is it possible to trust Him too must, to adventure too much for Him.

Whatever profession the boys would enter, in or outside Dohnavur, Amy had just one goal: ‘We want every boy to be a warrior of the king of kings’1108:

1104. A Hindu religious practice. Puja is the act of showing reverence to a god, a spirit or another aspect of the divine through invocations, prayers, songs and rituals.

1105. Tables in the Wilderness, 95–96.
1106. Cf. Psalm 77:19–20.
1107. G. Webb-Peploe, Brothers of the Lotus Buds (London: SPCK, 1950), 18.
1108. Tables in the Wilderness, 97.

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Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 19: Boys in Dohnavur. Through the moongate the ‘House of Prayer’ is visible.

But the path to the accomplishment of our purpose is no easy one, and Apollyon straddles quite over the whole breadth of the way. So we expect battles, and we get them.1109 There were 30 nurseries in 1923 for girls and boys and in the following years, there was never a time when new buildings were not under construction. The rapid growth in the number of children since 1918 required more staff and in 1926 God gave in Godfrey Webb-Peploe the man he had chosen for supervising the boys work in Dohnavur. He and his brother Murray, the medical doctor, who came to Dohnavur in 1928, were grandsons of the famous H.W. Webb-Peploe (1837–1923), whom Amy had known as a speaker at Keswick. She saw in both of them future Fellowship leaders.

Godfrey, who was a missionary in China, visited India in 1924 to assist in the work of the Children’s Special Service Mission (CSSM). Three months he spent in the district of Tinnevelly. While in India, Godfrey had twice been to Dohnavur. Amy liked him very much; he was a man who seemed to have a ‘freshness of the presence of God’ about him. His brother, Murray, a medical doctor, was also to go to China and he planned to go together with his mother, Evelyn. He and his mother planned to make a stopover in Dohnavur, because Amy had asked them to pay her a visit. In a letter to them, dated 16 January 1925, Amy wrote:

My dear Mrs Webb-Peploe,

1109. Webb-Peploe, Brothers of the Lotus Buds, 18–19.

Your Godfrey is just about to leave us. I need not tell you what he is. You know far better than I the quiet depths of that beautiful nature; I can only say that constantly he reminds me of his Lord. Dear friend, you are a rich mother. You have much to give. When you go to China, as I hear you may, would it be possible to go via south India? It would be a joy to see you and Godfrey’s brother, and it would bind us all the closer to China – land of my first desires. Lovingly and gratefully yours, Amy Carmichael.

Godfrey left Dohnavur on 31 March. Many years later Amy wrote a short letter to Godfrey in which she wrote:

This day in 1925 we said goodbye to you, as it seemed for ever (in this world). […] A broken day. ‘Let me not live in vain, let me not fall. Until I yield it to the appointed soul’. And now? Oh what a God. But may He strengthen you, beloved Godfrey.1110 Murray got the chance to visiting his friend Howard Somervell at Neyyoor in Travancore, just across the mountains. Howard Somervell took part in the 1922 attempt to reach the top of the Mount Everest, but at nearly 27 000 feet, he and the others were compelled to retreat. Somervell was also in the party of climbers on the 1924 expedition up Everest.1111 Murray and his mother stayed in Dohnavur for three months. Due to the Communist revolt, Murray had to leave hospital work in Hangchow (China) and after a short stay in Shanghai where it became clear that he could not return to Hangchow, he went back to Dohnavur. Godfrey also had to leave China, where he had worked in Nanking and, together with his mother Evelyn, he went back to Dohnavur. Amy was very glad and wrote on an undated scrap of paper to Evelyn1112:

Oh, these two, what gifts to the world they are, worth all your life of loving sacrifice, worth anything – never have I seen two like them, it is rest and strength and comfort just to have them in the house. By 1925, at least seven new reinforcements had come from various parts: Ireland, Scotland, England and India. The work of the Indians was especially promising. Some of the elder girls, grown up in Dohnavur, wanted to stay and proved the real persons Amy needed for the continuation of the work. In the first years, it was difficult to find enough staff and, as Houghton noticed, ‘the difficulty was increased because Amma aimed high’1113:

We are trying to form a new mould so that the type of character evolved may be different from that which for so long has been a grief of every man and woman missionary who thinks deep thoughts. We are trying to see to it that the training is of the kind which may be expected to produce new results.

Amy did not ask people to come to Dohnavur and join her in the work for the children. But one time she wrote:

Will men who are drawn to what the D.F. stands for write to Mr Godfrey Buxton, London and will women write to Mrs Streeter, Oxford or if in Ireland to Miss Waller, Dublin. But let no one write who is not prepared to be on the missionary scrap-heap.1114 Did Amy see in her own father the character in which she tried to mould the boys? In 1925, when her youngest brother Alfred died in South Africa, a friend of his wrote about him in a way in which Amy saw the pattern at which she aimed:

1110. Amy in a letter to Godfrey, 31 March 1940. Letter in the Dohnavur library.

1111. He declined to go in 1928, citing that the climate of south India had made him unfit for climbing Mount Everest. Jacky Woolcock of the Dohnavur Fellowship Corporation told me this information in July 2015. The book of the 1928 expedition led by Hugh Ruttledge is in Dohnavur.

1112. In Makower, Follow My Leader, 83.
1113. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 212.
1114. In ‘Dohnavur Letter, no. 9, July 1926’ (PRONI D/4061/30/1), 16.

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Of his personal character, so sincere and so transparently honest, and of his simple and reverent faith […] his wonderful courage and indomitable will. […] He was patient and courteous even in provoking circumstances. […] There was something very generous in his attitude to others. I never heard him say an unkind word of anyone. Of one who had wronged him he spoke without a trace of bitterness. […] Always full of dignity he loved a joke as much as anyone. […] He had an almost childlike faith in prayer and a passionate belief in immortality. […] I have never met a purer minded man. I have never met a man with a higher ideal of love and service.1115 Eight years later, there were nearly 100 boys, making entirely new demands on the Fellowship, not least in respect of male leadership. The Keswick Missionary Council reported in 1928 the receipt of an interesting letter from Amy, in which she wrote:

There are now about one hundred on the boys’ side, counting a number of boy babies; and knowing our need, our God has given us an earnest Indian Christian man, who has been a blessing to the men, and Mr. Godfrey Webb-Peploe, who, even before he has had time to get the language, has been a strength to us all. We have lately bought a beautiful stretch of land on the northern side of the girls’ compound and hope to put up buildings there for the boys and men, Indian and English. So the work grows quietly, and step by step as we go we find our Lord before us.1116 An important event at that time was the coming of Mimosa, the sister of Arulai. She did not come not alone, but brought with her two sons and a baby boy. All three were lovingly welcomed and one can admire the work of God, for in the boys – Mimosa had gone back home to collect a son left behind – he gave the Fellowship some of his finest instruments for the future leadership of the DF in the years to come.1117 After 1960 the boys coming to Dohnavur gradually diminished and for various reasons no more were taken in after 1969. The last boys left Dohnavur in 1984. Those who grew up in the intervening years are scattered all over India. Some are pastors and evangelists, others combine secular work with a preaching ministry. Some of the boys and girls who grew up in Dohnavur were not satisfied with what has been done for them by the Fellowship but to this day the majority have a happy relationship with those who brought them up, gratefully thinking of Dohnavur as their home. In her own copy of Gold Cord, by a photo of some of the boys (Figure 20), Amy has written: ‘They have all had a chance’.1118 The Fellowship has a place called Muppanthal, which means ‘Three Pavilions’. It is located about 16 miles south of Dohnavur and is a home for children with physical or mental handicaps or disabilities. In former days, many of them worked in the fibre-work cottage industry. The 60 acres of land on a rocky hillside was bought in 1925. The place overlooks the Pilgrim Way, the Grand Trunk Road, which runs from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas. Here in the past the kings of Tinnevelly, Travancore and Tanjore used to meet, hence the name Three Pavilions.1119 The priests of the roadside shrine, who stop all the travellers by car to collect some rupees and sprinkle the cars with Siva’s ashes, saw the coming of Christians so nearby as a danger for their lucrative business. They tried to stop the purchase of Three Pavilions, even talking with the Rani of Travancore to forbid the purchase, but they did not succeed in preventing the purchase.1120 A house was built, and first used on 17 December 1926:

1115. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 213. It is not difficult to see in these words a portrait of Amy herself! 1116. In Sloan, These Sixty Years, 95.

1117. ‘Four of her sons are with us now, trusted and loved fellow-workers’, in Mimosa, 146.
1118. See A Century of Answered Prayers, 33.
1119. See Gold Cord, 249–252.
1120. Meal in a Barrel, 57–58.

Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 20: A boat trip with the boys on Red Lake.

We built a house for workers and a delightful nursery-school, and sent our delicate little ones there in charge of faithful Accals, and the children throve. […] Illness is practically unknown on that high land, and the battle with the wind seems to put new life into the children. […] Tired girls for whom we planned quiet rooms, and who found among the rocks the blessed solitude of a cave, came back refreshed, and talked of the wonderful feeling of spaciousness after our crowded Dohnavur, they found Pavilions enchanting. Some convalescing after operations were sent, and all came back well.1121 The hope Amy had for this place is a working fact. Three Pavilions is the home of a small group of children who need special care and training. Weaving, gardening and making baskets of all kinds and measures were the things done at Three Pavilions.

The DF maintained no caste distinction. Most Indians have in their last name an indication of the caste to which they belong. In Dohnavur all had their last name as Carunia, a Tamil word which means ‘loving kindness’.1122

A suitable leader for ‘the boys work’ was Godfrey Webb-Peploe. To Amy and to the children he brought ‘times of great spiritual uplift and refreshment’.1123 Godfrey was respected within the Fellowship.

1121. Gold Cord, 250.

1122. In ‘Amy Carmichael and the Origin of the Dohnavur Fellowship’, Mission Frontiers (01 January 1999). 1123. K. Makower, Follow My Leader, 74.

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In a CSSM publication, Godfrey once had written, ‘We cannot be of much use to God unless we are fresh through living in the presence of God’, and for Amy ‘Godfrey seems always to have had this “freshness of the presence of God” about him’.1124 He often led the church service and during the weekdays he educated the boys. He had a special interest in nature; flowers and animals had his special attention.1125 Godfrey Webb-Peploe and Barbara Trehane have given us, in Brothers of the Lotus Buds and The Timothys, vivid descriptions of the education the boys and girls received in Dohnavur. They were in Dohnavur, because God called them to sow the seed of the Gospel. We go, not to preach, not to condemn, but to present the positive message of the Lord Christ who gives real forgiveness and who can set men free from the power of sin. The moon arch divided the two compounds where the boys and girls lived. On Saturdays everything had to be cleaned up and the compound swept in readiness for Sunday.

Most of the boys and girls had no home but the Dohnavur family, so they were there all the time, with none of the hindrances of a long holiday in an atmosphere where truth and purity are of little account. This would be their lot if they were merely boarders for a term. The prayer was that the children would grow up ‘straight, honest, and true’. The girls and the boys, when they reached 13 or 14, were able to see how they were likely to develop. Some went for further studies and others had a special cleverness with their fingers:

There will be plenty to do for those who are utterly straight and prepared for hard work, and the only way for them to grow up to such a life is by introducing them personally to the Lord Jesus; and that is the underlying aim off all our training here at Dohnavur.

The training was focused, for boys and girls, from their earliest days, on finding joy in all manner of work. The children scrubbed their own floors, helped to cook their own food, weeded in the garden or laid gravel on the roads in the compounds and the girls helped the sick in the hospital. Using your hands is not a disgrace. Although scrubbing floors at that time in India was recognised as women’s work, it was good discipline, and everybody spent half an hour, morning and evening, sweeping and scrubbing the red tiles of the floors, until they shone. Regular discipline was sometimes difficult to learn:

One of the hardest things for the boys to understand is that instant obedience to a command or to a signal is the only true obedience. Speed is not in the Indian make-up, and it takes long to learn this lesson. Amy’s aim was that the children learn obedience, even in small things, ‘small in the eyes of some, but great in God’s sight that builds character’. It should be obedience in love. Philippians 4:13: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me’ – not like the Israelites who said, ‘We will do all things which are commanded’. Education in Dohnavur could not be an end in itself; it had to lead to something else. ‘And so we train the boys, keeping always as our aim that, in the end, they may be equipped to help their own people to know Christ.’ There was no desire to educate them merely for a B.A. or academic title. Knowing the Tamil language, having arithmetic knowledge for all ordinary purposes, and enough English to enable the students to gain help, spiritually as well as practically, from English books. The compound was full of flowers. Abundant water was the secret. For what purpose were all those flowers? The children sang this Dohnavur Song as they watered the plants:

We grow beside the shining sea
Set round with hills in Galilee.
We often saw our Lord, and knew
He saw us – and he loved us, too.

1124. In Makower, Follow My Leader, 74.

1125. Cf. his ‘Field Notes on the Mammals of South Tinnevelly, South India’, in Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (April 1947).

For he loved all the little flowers
That smiled at Him through sunny hours;
And when the sky was dark and grey,
Still smiled and did not go away.
We tried to make the world more sweet
For Him who walked with holy feet
Along its way – and by its sea
Set round with hills in Galilee.1126

And we often pray that when He is weary with the sin and sorrow of the world, He may walk in our garden as the day draws to its close, and find rest and joy, not only in the flowers, but in the family which He has gathered to Himself from the dark places of the earth and planted here.

From a very young age the love and the leading of Christ was in all the education; the aim was that the children would grow up in their simple way to love and to be unafraid in the company of Christ. The prayer was always to make them willing in the service of the Highest. Barbara Trehane sums up the missionaries’ part in the education of the children: ‘Our goal is service; our task is to make disciples; our desire is to send out witnesses; our vision is India for Christ’.1127

The coming day is a very great event. It was impossible to know the real birthdays of most of the children, so they kept a day on which the child joined the family, a special day each year. On his or her coming day the child was specially treated:

On such days God often draws near; […] it was plain that beneath all the merry light-heartedness of the child there was a deep longing to know the Lord Jesus more intimately.

Sixteen December was always very special, for it was Amma’s birthday.

Sundays were a joyful day for all. In the services, sometimes as many as 40–50 Hindu or Muslim men and women entered the House of Prayer. It was a great evangelistic opportunity. The initial barrier was broken down. However, it was a long and difficult path to baptism. Some said they were secret believers, but did not really admit his claim to be the one Lord, of the one faith, by baptism into His death. Were they willing to take up his cross and follow him? If not, ‘they are not worthy of Me’. These words are words that scorch:

And when He said those words long ago, He knew what it would be like in India today. And still He calls out men and women, boys and girls, to follow Him.

Sunday evening after the singing hour, when the last verse of the vesper died away, from the tower came the notes of ‘Abide With Me’, played on the tabular bells. Sunday was a different day, not dull, or full of services, but different. Not only the older ones looked forward to it; all are brought up to love it as a day of delight.

Babies and older children sometimes died in Dohnavur. They left for what the Dohnavur children call ‘Jesus’ upstairs nursery’1128:

And we thought of them too, as lambs folded by Death, who, like the Good Shepherd Himself, gathers the lambs in His arm and carries them in His bosom to Love’s own Country. In the days to come we were often to stand together in the still, green place we call God’s Garden and sing with a sure hope:

1126. Mountain Breezes, 432.

1127. Trehane, The Timothys, 101.

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Out of the heat and out of the rain,
Never to know or sin or pain,
Never to fall and never to fear,
Could we wish better for one so dear?
For the pure powers of Calvary
Bathe little souls in innocency;
Tender, tender Thy love-words be,
‘Dear little child, come home to Me’.1129

Ministry to prisoners was one of Amy’s desires, and when she met them, she used every opportunity. In Raj, the Brigand, the way she evangelised is told of and so are prisoners who gave their life to Jesus. She also talked for a long time with a man who was in prison for killing his wife. Amy went as far as going into his cell and telling him of Jesus. The man confessed his sins and believed in Christ.1130 In Dohnavur all was done for the children and a special prayer for them came to God every day. She wrote to a member of the Fellowship in 1939 that she asked in two sentences of all the seniors who were looking after the children, what she expected from them: ‘Love them dearly. Hold them to the Highest.’1131 Often on sleepless nights Amy walked up and down the veranda, and many a prayer for the children went up to him, who is at his father’s right hand and is always there for his (little) children. He who neither sleeps nor slumbers.

Through life’s bitter battle cheer them
Through life’s bitter battle cheer them,
Father, Father, be Thou near them.
Read the language of our longing,
Read the wordless pleadings thronging,
Holy Father, for our children.
And wherever they may bide,
Lead them Home at eventide.1132

Joppa and the Forest House

Several times Amy was offered a house or a plot by the sea, but ‘there was an inner prohibition and absence of liberty to go forward’.1133 Twenty days after Three Pavilions was bought, she was offered the opportunity to buy land at Cape Comorin and build a house there. Unexpectedly, money was donated ‘for a house by the sea’, a ‘quiet place for healing’. The land was bought, so the Fellowship could offer a haven for the Accals who needed to rest or for the sick to have a quiet place to recover. The house by the sea was built in August 1926 and was called Joppa (Figure 21),1134 ‘because we want it to be a place of vision and enlargement to those who stay there’. In the Joppa logbook is the reason for building this house1135:

1129. Ploughed Under, 52.
1130. See Souls Set Free, 18.
1131. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, XV.
1132. Gold Cord, 142.
1133. Meal in a Barrel, 62–63.
1134. Referring to the house at the sea in Acts 9 and 10, where Peter got a vision.
1135. The logbook is in ‘Joppa’, Kanyakumari, India.

The distance between Three Pavilions – Muppanthal and India’s southernmost point, Cape Comorin is fifteen miles. In 1925, through the help of a Syrian Christian, an official of the Travancore Forest Department (whose cousin Koruth became a full member of the Dohnavur Fellowship in 1928), Amma bought a small plot of ground by the sea. Amma believed that God would make it a place of Vision for tired workers from the Dohnavur fellowship. More than that, she saw it as a place of witness to pilgrims. There is a temple at India’s ‘Land’s End’. In the years that followed Amma and many a group of her fellow-workers found refreshment by the sea, but she never forgot the challenge of the temple, representing unseen powers that hold a (sway) away.

There is no footprint on the sand
Where India meets her shining sea;
But, Lord of all this ancient land,
Dost Thou not walk the shore with me?
And yet the goddess holds her state
Along the frontiers of the sea,
And keeps the road, she bars the gate
Against Thy tender Majesty.
O Purer than the flying spray,

O Brighter than the sapphire sea- When will she turn and flee away,

Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown.

FIGURE 21: The old ‘Joppa’ house in Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin).

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And India walk her shore with Thee?1136 The poem was composed by Amy on 10 October 1924.1137 Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin) is one of India’s well-known places where yearly, from all over India, pilgrims come to visit the temple at the most southern tip of India’s south coast. Amy refers to that temple in the second verse of ‘No Footprint’. In 1913 she wrote another poem in which she refers to that temple. The first part of the second verse goes:

For at the end of India
A temple stands on a rock,
As if to block
The way of the God of the sea
From entering in at His gate
The last verse is:

So, at the end of India
Where the rocks run into the sea,
The wonderful, blue-green, boundless sea,
Mystery touches mystery;
And every shud on the waves on the shore
As they break in might,
And leap in white
Of majestic, prevailing purity,
Is a solemn stroke on Eternity’s drum,
Saying, ‘Lo, I come;
In the roll of the book is written of Me’.1138

Joppa became Dohnavur’s holiday location for the children as well as for staff members. They saw it as a place from which evangelistic work could be done among the many pilgrims coming to the temple at India’s ‘Land’s End’:

Down on the shore below the striped temple wall I stood one day, desperate because of things seen in the court above, broken by the sense of my own impotence. […] And my heart cried out to my Lord, ‘O Lord, how long?1139 After the accident1140 in 1931 Amy was not able to go to Cape Comorin. She used to write letters to the children who were there for their holidays and often received letters from the children from this house. On 27 December 1936, Amma wrote to the children in Joppa:

1136. ‘No Footprint’, in Meal in Barrel, 62; Toward Jerusalem, 110.

1137. Towards Jerusalem, 110; Mountain Breezes, 136–137. There is a very slight difference between the written and the printed version. In the written version where the first verse has ‘shining sea’, the printed has ‘sapphire sea’; in the last verse is written ‘When will she turn and flee away’; the printed has ‘When will the goddess flee away’. For the handwritten copy of this ‘Prayer Song’, see the Joppa 1925/1925 songbook (p. 2), which is in the bookcase at Joppa, Kanyakumari. Kanyakumari is one of the most beautiful places in south India. Kanyakumari is a district located at the southernmost tip of south India. It was also called Cape Comorin, during British rule. Cape Comorin is also called as ‘Kumari Munai’ in Tamil.  The name Kanyakumari comes from Goddess Kumari Amman, who is popularly known as ‘Kumari Bagavathi Amman’; her temple is situated on the seashore. Amman has a shining diamond nose ring which is visible even from the sea. In Kanyakumari you can find people from different religions.

1138. In Made in the Pans, with Amy’s own annotations, 26. Amy wrote in the margin, ‘At Cape Comorin, January 1913. With the children on the shore.’

1139. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 252.

1140. See Chapter 12.

My beloved Joppa children, I was delighted to have your letter and I thank you all for it and for your love writing it just after you arrived. This is the first Sunday of the new ways of services, this first Sunday Service in this Suha Se’lthi; which he held today. I like to think of your worshipping the Lord of the Sea along His all beautiful Sea. Don’t forget to use the house bell. That is a custom. I hope none of our houses will forget. Goodbye my …..

Your own Ammai.1141 On 29 December 1939, the children received this letter from her:

My darling children, big and little, I have just read your dear letter. I longed all for them. As I read and […], Purripu, Prasie, Radania, Fullarripu, Preenapu, Piriapu. I read each of you separately. I had the shells and the flowers, and I kept one shell and send the rest to those of the home keeping. […] Dear Purripu, to […] and I will pay it to the account when you return. Pick up as many as you can and clean them. You need a pin to get out the sand. Choose only perfect ones if possible. Know I should like to be with you as you search along the edge of the sea and go to the […] beaches and search with the shell fishing people. They would be good natured and help I think. Now God bless you all and give you a happy new year. There are many whose new year will be full of sorrow. On Christmas Day a submarine torpedoed a ship without warning (this is against sea-law). One of the passengers ran to save his wife. She is safe now but he was drowned. Pray for her on this sorrowful New Year’s day and pray for those who do such cruel things, that they may turn from such great sin.

Your own mother.1142 Every day there was a lot to do for the children in Joppa. We get some impression of what happened daily as from the first Joppa logbook (Figure 22):

In 1927: March 18th. Windy Day. In the morning, we saw the moon setting down and the clouds near it were pinkish red: it was a glorious sight. The sea was very rough and we saw big waves. We saw many beautiful sea anemones, they were of many different colours, some were purple, some green or brown. In the morning we went out for a walk to the Residency garden and in that garden we saw many kinds of Crotons, a Pink pagoda tree, and other trees which we had never seen before. There was a big windmill in the centre of the garden, which draws up water for the garden. We saw a sailing boat.

April 16th: Hot all day, cool wind in the evening. Amma, Alec Annachie, Beatrice acca, Preena acca, Kanmanie acca, Shanti, Neela, Ruchipu, Nundana and Marahalha went home. Went for a long walk.

April 17th: Easter Day. Windy day, but hot in the afternoon. Cloudy evening. We sang ‘Lo in the grace He lay’ in the early morning. The sea seemed to praise God with us. All went and sang on the sand in the bright moonlight.

In 1928: January 1. Sunday. Fine all day. New Year’s Day. Worship at 10.30 A.M. Roman Catholic girls came at 11.30 A.M. and we sang to them Rukma a. told them Bible stories and they listened well. In the evening, we went for a walk as usual and we sang hymns after dinner.

January 2nd: Cloudy in the morning and very hot at midday. Sea rough. We found a dead, white feathered and webbed-footed bird on the beach when we went for a walk in the evening.

January 3rd: Cloudy, but fine. Very hot at midday. The tide was very high in the morning. Manorama Sittie [May Parker] and Mariammai went to Caruniapuram a 3 P.M. by public car. We met three friends, who had been in Dohnavur the day before, on the sea shore as we were out for a walk.

Friday 14th: A.N., Purripu, Yeshoda, Ingeetha, Leredamuttu and Samathana came with Amma and Murray Annachie – also a mongoose – Amma, Murray Annachie soon returned home.

1141. This letter the author discovered in one of the books in the Dohnavur library.

1142. This letter is in the Joppa logbook for the year 1939.

Chapter 11

Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer J. (Hans) Kommers.. FIGURE 22: A page in the Joppa Logbook from 1932.

December, 31st: Friday Holiday. Sea calm and motionless. Amma, Murray, Nesa Sittie, Preena and Swami arrived about 3.45 in the car.

May 1931: When we arrived it was evening. […] In the morning, two HUGE ELEPHANTS, belonging to the temple, were feeding just about the house. Tremendous excitement.

In 1932: July 17th. Sunday. Sunny and calm. We saw a small steamer, we bathed, and had a Tamil service at 10.30. Had a quiet day and sang sea songs and Tamil psalms at night.

Sunday 23st (no month here), Nice and cool morning. Breezy all day. Worship at about 10.30 A.M. The chief points were; True Christian life, Christian love, Christian holiness, Christian truthfulness. Matthew 5. Amy was happy when others found happiness and she could ‘see’ and write about the love two young people felt for each other. She tells about Alec Arnot and Gwen Jones, two of the Fellowship, who:

[O]n November 19, 1926, after a long day’s scrubbing and colour-washing, went down to the shore together as the full moon rose. And Jesus our Lord Himself drew near and walked with them, and He gave each to the other, down there by the sea. They were married on Nov. 17, 1927.1143

1143. In Meal in a Barrel, 70.

After nearly 80 years the state of the old Joppa house was too bad to be used for holiday purposes. A new house was built on the same spot and from 08 to 22 March 2013, the first group of Accals and Thungachies occupied the newly built Joppa house. In the ‘New Joppa’ logbook we read:

‘The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea than the mighty waves of the sea’. Psalm 94:4. May 8th of 2013 is an eventful and historical day for the Dohnavur Fellowship. The old irreparable Joppa house with tiled roof was demolished and a new modern building with beautiful wooden doors and wooden rails round the front and back veranda was welcoming. I large dining hall with 4 tables and the bed rooms were all very inviting. The motto for the party was PEACE, PRAISE, PRAYER. […] This new Joppa house certainly beats the ‘Five Star Hotels’!!1144 To escape the heat in the hottest season, Amy sometimes went to Ooty or to a house in the mountains nearby, which belonged to the Forest Department. On the evening of 11 June 1917, she found a letter had unexpectedly arrived, and in it was a £100, given by a friend from Cork in Ireland. Then she saw that it was earmarked ‘For a Forest House’.1145 After a long search and waiting for God’s guidance, they found a convenient place to build:

Four miles from the Dohnavur Nurseries, the Western Ghauts rise almost straight from the plains. Hidden behind the foot-hills is a narrow valley that leads into a deep ravine carved by the river in the heart of the mountains, rising to these parts to a height of 5,449 feet. Half-way up, the mountains form a horse-shoe curve, and on the only suitable level place our forest house is built.1146 Naraikadu (Grey Forest) about nine miles west of Dohnavur, once was a coffee estate. Amy visited the place for the first time on 11 July 1916, and nearly one year later on 11 June 1917 she bought it for the family. Mr Devapiriam, once a member of the DF evoked many happy memories of the joys of Naraikadu holidays. One of the first rules the children learned was that the children should not hurt ‘the forest inhabitants, whether they are thought to be poisonous or dangerous, unless they come in our living quarters, for the forest is their home also’.1147 Naraikadu was a perfect holiday place with its river, pools, waterfalls, mountains, trees, birds, and all kind of animals. ‘In this Cathedral not made with hands we feel His presence more intimately and so we are led to worship and adore Him more’.1148 Often overworked workers of the Fellowship went into retreat for a short period of rest and for Bible study and meditation. Amy herself also went to Naraikadu, where in full rest she could meditate. For the quiet time she often could be found in the ‘Cave of Coolness’. Even nowadays, there is a huge boulder, called ‘Ammai’s Rock’, from where one can enjoy the beautiful scenery. Naraikadu was also the place where Amy wrote some of her books and many poems about this place – about 60 – all bursting into song:

Dim, green forest
Of a thousand secrets,
When you were planted
Did the angels sing?

1144. In the new Joppa logbook, 08 May 2013, in the new Joppa house, Kanyakumari, India.
1145. Gold Cord, 190.
1146. From the Forest, 30. About the forest house, in From the Forest, Chapter V, 29–26.

1147. D.A. Devapiriam, Naraikadu. Story of God’s Provision of Dohnavur Fellowship’s Holiday Resort (Bangalore: Pauline Printing Press, 1984), 3.

1148. Devapiriam, Naraikadu, 5. An old member of the DF remembered the time he went with other boys to Naraikadu for two weeks: ‘The two weeks in Naraikadu was like living in a paradise, far away from all undue stress. Those were the happiest days in my life’ (Devapiriam, Vanacharbu, 55).

Chapter 11

Many things I wonder
Are they all your secrets?
Won’t you ever tell me anything?
Great, white waterfall
Breaking through the forest,
Where do you come from?
Where do you go?
Had you a beginning?
Will you go on forever?
Great, black, glistering wall
Veiled in shining glory,
Piled among the waters
Rock upon rock,
O, to have stood and seen
Hands at work upon you

Shivering you and shattering, shock on shock! Deep, dark, silent pool

Hollowed at the fall’s foot,
What do you think of
All the long day?
Do you hear the thunder
Of tremendous waters?

Do you hear the laughter of the spray?1149

1149. In From the Forest, 29. In Mountain Breezes, 409; this poem has the title ‘I Wonder’.

The leading song of the

Sisters of the Common Life.

Across the will of nature

Leads on the path of God Not where the flesh delighteth

The feet of Jesus trod.

O bliss to leave behind us

The fetters of the slave

To leave ourselves behind us, The grave-clothes and the grave!

We follow in His footsteps

What if our feet be torn?

Where He hath marked the pathway All hail the briar and thorn! Scarce seen, scarce heard, unreckoned, Despised, defamed, unknown, Or heard but by our singing,

On, children! Ever on! Gerhard Tersteegen.

This song is in the Green Book

of the Dohnavur Fellowship.