The outside of the slimy, moss-covered brick building was not much better than the inside. Unemployed men hung around the doorway. Sometimes, when they were drunk, they would yell things at Amy or try to grab her. Once a mob of men had followed her. Things were getting ugly before a kindhearted woman who saw what was happening grabbed Amy and pulled her inside, locking the door quickly behind to keep the men out.
Despite all the roaches, rats, and rough men, Amy wanted to live there. She was continually telling the shawlies they could find peace and joy in their lives, and she needed to know for herself that it was possible to live a happy Christian life in the midst of hardship and squalor.
Despite the difficult living conditions, things went well for Amy. After a year living and working in the slum, she was a familiar figure around the factories and mills of Ancoats. Many shawlies and other women from the factories attended her Bible studies and prayer meetings.
All the meetings she was involved in kept Amy very busy, too busy to cook good meals for herself. Perhaps not eating well was part of the reason she got sick, very sick. No one knew the exact name of her illness. In 1890, doctors had no way to diagnose many of the illnesses we know by name today. Often people were said to have “internal weakness” or “acute neuralgia,” which could mean anything from stomach cancer to migraine headaches. For many sicknesses there were no cures, apart from a change of climate, good food, and rest. The doctor decided Amy needed all three.
The question for Amy was where to go for rest, good food, and a change of climate. The answer came by way of a family friend, Robert Wilson, who was a wealthy coal mine owner. He had first met the Carmichael family three years before when he had come to Belfast with Hudson Taylor to run a Keswick meeting. In fact, Robert Wilson, together with Canon Hartford-Battersby, the vicar of St. John’s Keswick, had founded the Keswick meetings. While Robert Wilson was visiting Belfast, Amy’s aunt had invited him to the Carmichael house. During his visit he had become very interested in what everyone in the household was doing. He was especially interested in Amy’s work with the shawlies, and every time he returned to Belfast, he made it a point to visit the Carmichaels. Everyone at the Carmichael house looked forward to his coming, and after several visits, the Carmichael children took to calling him “the D.O.M.,” which stood for Dear Old Man.
Robert Wilson lived in a large manor house called Broughton Grange, located in the Lake District of England. When he heard that Amy was sick, he invited her to stay at Broughton Grange (the Grange, as it was called by most people). At the Grange, Robert Wilson’s cook would make her delicious soups, his housekeeper would nurse her back to health, and the wonderful country air would be just what she needed after the grime of the city. It was a perfect solution, except that Amy wanted so badly to stay with her new shawlie group. But this was not possible; she could barely get out of bed in the morning, and she was eating less and less each day. So she took Robert Wilson up on his kind offer and moved into the Grange.
What a contrast life at the Grange was. Each day a fire was crackling in her bedroom fireplace when she awoke. She had thick, home-churned butter on fluffy scones for morning tea and took long walks in the fields among the sheep or gathered duck eggs from the edge of the pond. Each night the feather eiderdown on her bed was turned down for her. In no time at all, the color began to return to Amy’s cheeks.
Of course, Amy being Amy, as soon as she felt a little better, was looking for something to do. And she found plenty. Robert Wilson needed a lot of organizing. As chairman of the Keswick Convention, he had numerous responsibilities arranging Keswick meetings all over the British Isles. He also had many letters to write. Amy took over much of the letter writing for him. Also, Robert Wilson often needed to entertain important people, and Amy made a wonderful hostess. She especially liked it when Hudson Taylor or George Mueller came to visit. These men had so many amazing stories to tell of how God had changed people’s lives. And of course, wherever Amy went, she found children. Broughton Grange was no exception. Within a few weeks she had a group of local girls from Broughton Village coming to the Grange for a Bible study on Saturday afternoons. She held the Bible study in the library, and when it was over, the girls had milk and gingerbread on the lawn terrace. Then they fanned out through the garden, skipping and giggling as they explored. They teased the kittens, admired the peacocks, raced the dogs, and rode the ponies.
Seeing the young girls enjoying themselves in the garden made Amy very happy, but not Robert Wilson’s two sons, George and William, who also lived at the Grange. Their mother had died the same year as Amy’s father, and their only sister, Rachel, had died before that. Both of them were now middle-aged men, and neither had married. And that was the way they liked things. To them, the Grange was a man’s place. It was a place for hunting and fishing and discussing politics. Until Amy had arrived, it was a quiet, dignified place, and the brothers were unhappy to see it overrun with females. They referred to it as an “invasion,” and they had no intention of letting Amy feel completely at home at the Grange. Despite their best efforts to make Amy feel unwelcome, their father grew to rely on her. In fact, he began to treat Amy as though she were his own daughter. He spent many hours discussing Christian things with her and encouraging her in her dedication to God.
One day, after Amy had been at the Grange for about three months, Robert Wilson asked her to stay on once she was completely well and continue to be the hostess for his home and ministry. At first Amy struggled with the idea. Her heart was in the slums with the shawlies, but as she prayed about it, a strange peace came over her. She knew that for some reason she could not yet understand, God wanted her to live at Broughton Grange.
Amy kept busy around the Grange. Robert Wilson’s two sons dutifully invited her to go along with them to a Scripture Union Bible study they attended each Tuesday night in the village. Amy made such an impact on the group that she was asked to lead all their meetings, which did not sit well with George and William. Amy also visited the surrounding villages, holding meetings and sharing the gospel message with all who cared to listen. She took to writing and had her first short story published. The story, Fightin’ Sall, was about how God had changed the life of one of the shawlies in Belfast. Amy also helped Robert Wilson arrange all the Keswick meetings held in the British Isles. On top of that, she regularly visited her mother at the rescue mission and helped her there.
A full and happy year at the Grange quickly passed for Amy. Then one day, out of the blue, something she had heard several years before strangely came to mind. Hudson Taylor from the China Inland Mission had been the speaker at the first Keswick meeting in Belfast, and Amy had gone to hear him speak. During the meeting, Taylor told the audience about the four thousand Chinese who died every hour without ever having heard the gospel message. Amy had taken it all in, but it had remained buried in her mind until one afternoon five years later at the Grange, when she found herself thinking about Hudson Taylor’s message. In fact, she couldn’t seem to get the thought out of her mind, and she didn’t quite know what to do with it. In early January 1892, she decided to spend some time praying about it. She had been praying for only a few minutes when the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She opened her eyes and looked around. Just as she’d heard at the fountain back in Belfast, she heard a voice say, “Go ye.” Amy knew these were the first words to a verse in the Bible. She knew the verse by heart: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.”
Amy spent a restless night thinking about what the verse could mean to her. She had expected to be Robert Wilson’s assistant until he died, whenever that might be. Did God now want her to leave Robert Wilson after he’d become so dependent on her? And what about all the work she had been doing for the Keswick meetings? Was she supposed to leave all of that as well? And then there was her mother, who depended on Amy to help her make family decisions. What would happen to her mother if she left? Amy tossed and turned, but by the morning she had come to a conclusion. God had said to her, “Go,” and whatever the cost, that was what she would do.
That morning, she sat at her desk overlooking the picturesque English countryside and began writing a letter to her mother. But somehow she couldn’t finish it. It was too painful imagining her mother reading the letter, so Amy put it aside. The next day she picked the letter up again and struggled through it. With a heavy heart, she mailed it.
Next, she turned her attention to telling Robert Wilson she would be leaving.
Amy trembled as she told him about her new direction. Robert Wilson had been like a father to her, and it was hard to think she might be disappointing him. But sad as he was to lose her, he understood her determination to obey God. Surprisingly, though, his two sons were not as understanding. Without admitting it, they had become very used to having Amy around the house. She had made the house come alive with music and laughter, and they liked that. They also liked the stream of unconventional visitors Amy brought to the Grange. Now they wondered how she could possibly think of leaving. Not only were the Wilson brothers against Amy’s leaving, so were the leaders of the Keswick Convention. Things had run so smoothly at the Grange with Amy there, and they wondered how Robert Wilson would function without her.
It all made Amy’s head swirl. She wondered why following God wasn’t easier and why other Christians found it so hard to understand what she wanted to do. But other Christians’ not understanding wasn’t going stop her. God had told her to go, but where? It took several months before Amy settled that question. She would follow Hudson Taylor to China.
In early August 1892, Robert Wilson and Amy set off for London, where Amy could apply to join the China Inland Mission. It was just a formality. Hudson Taylor already knew Amy quite well and knew she would be a useful addition to any mission. Amy met with Miss Soltau, who screened the women who applied to join the China Inland Mission. Miss Soltau gave Amy some forms to fill out. At the top of the first form was a space for Amy’s name. “You had better write Amy Wilson Carmichael there so that everyone will know you have meant as much to me as any daughter could,” Robert Wilson instructed her. Amy wrote in the name just the way he had said, and from then on, that was the name she went by.
Amy made a positive impression on Miss Soltau, and before she knew it, she’d been accepted as a missionary. Miss Soltau whisked her around London outfitting her for China. She had obviously done it many times before and knew which stores to go to and exactly how much would fit into a tin sea chest. Amy was soon outfitted and ready to go.
Amy stayed at the China Inland Mission house in London while she waited for several other women to arrive so they could all travel as a group to China. While there, she began learning some Chinese. She couldn’t have been more ready to go, nor could the China Inland Mission have been more ready to send her. Or so it seemed. There was just the matter of her medical history. Amy looked strong and healthy at a glance, but her illness in the slums of Ancoats had left her body weakened. The doctor who gave her a physical before she was to depart for China did not like what he saw. In his opinion, there was no way Amy could stand up to the illnesses she would be exposed to in China. Any of the diseases that flourished in the tropics, such as dengue fever, typhoid, and yellow fever, would kill her. The doctor would not permit Amy to go to China as a missionary with the China Inland Mission, and his word was final.
