Most of the people who now lived in the village had all but forgotten their Christian heritage. But the village was still a safe, wonderful place to raise children. It was well off the main traffic routes that passed through the district. Despite Dohnavur’s being out of the way, within about a five-mile radius were about fifty other villages. Amy and the Starry Cluster had a huge mission field to tend within just a couple of hours’ bandy ride from Dohnavur.
As soon as Arulai was well enough, the women and girls made the move. The Starry Cluster’s few possessions were loaded onto a bullock cart for the trip west to Dohnavur. The women all knew the place well. After all, the whole Starry Cluster had spent the previous year there with Iyer Walker, although Amy hadn’t had as many children then.
Finally, the Bible school came into view. A low mud brick wall circled the entire compound. A bungalow was on the property, as well as a row of small rooms, each with a single window. There was also a whitewashed church where Iyer Walker would hold his teaching sessions. As the group approached the school, Amy was grateful that earlier inhabitants of the property had planted a row of tamarind trees. The trees had now grown into a line of majestic shade trees. Apart from the tamarind trees, nothing else useful was growing. The soil was as dry as sawdust. It would take a lot of work to get the school compound to match the plans Amy had for it!
Amy and the Starry Cluster moved into the bungalow, which was to be their new home. They had scarcely unpacked when Amy had to leave for six weeks. She had promised to join Iyer Walker in leading a series of Christian meetings in Trivandrum on the southwest coast of India. Amy loved being by the sea again. It reminded her of the many days she had roamed the seashore as a child back in Ireland.
Iyer Walker and Amy were the two guest speakers, though many times they were more like guest “yellers.” With more than two thousand people present, they had no other way to amplify their voices than to yell as loud as they could while they spoke. It was an interesting experience for Amy. It was the first time she had been out of the Tamil region of India in seven years, and she often had to use an interpreter to speak to people attending the meetings. She hadn’t realized how used to speaking the Tamil language she’d become. She also hadn’t realized how a mother felt being away from her children for six weeks. She had left Ponnammal in charge of the children and the Starry Cluster, so she wasn’t worried about their well-being, but she missed them all very much.
Amy couldn’t wait to get back to her new home, and when she arrived, many little arms were outstretched to welcome her. Finally, she knew this was the work God had given her to do in India. He had tied her feet, and she was glad. Although many other groups asked her to be their guest speaker, Amy never left Dohnavur without the children again.
There was so much to do at Dohnavur, and the first year sped quickly by. The Starry Cluster continued to preach in the nearby countryside, but Amy’s days were taken up with teaching the older children and tending to the babies. Iyer Walker helped out whenever he could, and he was always there to give Amy advice when she asked for it. Amy felt as though she had her own big brother to lean on. But Iyer Walker had his own personal problems to deal with. His wife was very sick, and he had been advised to take her back to England for a year of rest. Reluctantly, in November 1903, he left Dohnavur for England.
For the first time since becoming a missionary, Amy, a single woman, had to carry the entire weight of the ministry alone.
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.
