Amy Carmichael (1867_1951) |The Christian Missionaries history in tamil
Channel: RPA Ministry _ Nellai
Date: 14/05/2021

Amy Beatrice Carmichael (16 December 1867 – 18 January 1951) was an Irish Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for 55 years without furlough and wrote many books about the missionary work there.

Amy Beatrice Carmichael
Born_16 December 1867
Millisle, County Down, Ireland
Died
18 January 1951 (aged 83)
Dohnavur, Tamil Nadu, India
Venerated in
Anglican Communion
Feast
January 18
Contents
Early life
Amy Beatrice Carmichael was born in the small village of Millisle, County Down, Ireland, in 1867, the oldest of seven siblings. Her parents were David Carmichael, a miller, and his wife Catherine, both devout Christians.[1] Amy attended Harrogate Ladies College for four years in her youth.

Amy's father moved the family to Belfast when she was 16, but he died two years later. In Belfast, the Carmichaels founded the Welcome Evangelical Church.[2] In the mid-1880s, Carmichael started a Sunday-morning class for the ‘Shawlies’ (mill girls who wore shawls instead of hats) in the church hall of Rosemary Street Presbyterian. This mission grew quickly to include several hundred attendees. At this time Amy saw an advertisement in The Christian, for an iron hall that could be erected for £500 and would seat 500 people. Two donations, £500 from Miss Kate Mitchell and one plot of land from a mill owner, led to the erection of the first "Welcome Hall", on the corner of Cambrai Street and Heather Street in 1887.

Amy continued at the Welcome until she received a call to work among the mill girls of Manchester in 1889, from which she moved on to overseas missionary work, despite suffering from neuralgia, a disease that made her whole body weak and achy and often put her in bed for weeks on end. At the Keswick Convention of 1887, she heard Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, speak about missionary life; soon afterwards, she became convinced of her calling to missionary work. She applied to the China Inland Mission and lived in London at the training house for women, where she met author and missionary to China Mary Geraldine Guinness, who encouraged her to pursue missionary work. Carmichael was ready to sail for Asia at one point, when it was determined that her health made her unfit for the work. She postponed her missionary career with the CIM and decided later to join the Church Missionary Society.


The bronze statue of Amy Carmichael as a young girl that stands in Hamilton Street in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, on the grounds of the Presbyterian church.
Work in India Edit
Initially Carmichael traveled to Japan, staying for fifteen months, but fell ill and returned home.[3] After a brief period of service in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), she went to Bangalore, India, for her health and found her lifelong vocation. She was commissioned by the Church of England Zenana Mission. Carmichael's most notable work was with girls and young women, some of whom were saved from customs that amounted to forced prostitution. Hindu temple children were primarily young girls dedicated to the gods, then usually forced into prostitution to earn money for the priests (i.e., Devadasi)[4][5] Families often sold their children to the temples if they did not want them, or if they needed extra money and fewer children to feed.[citation needed]

Carmichael founded the Dohnavur Fellowship[6] in 1901 to continue her work,as she later wrote in The Gold Cord (1932). Dohnavur is situated in Tamil Nadu, thirty miles from India's southern tip. The name derives from Count Dohna, who initially funded German missionaries at the site in the early 19th century, on which the Rev. Thomas Walker then established a school. Carmichael's fellowship transformed Dohnavur into a sanctuary for over one thousand children who would otherwise have faced a bleak future.[8] Carmichael often said that her ministry of rescuing temple children started with a girl named Preena. Having become a temple servant against her wishes, Preena managed to escape. Amy Carmichael provided her shelter and withstood the threats of those who insisted that the girl be returned either to the temple directly to continue her sexual assignments, or to her family for more indirect return to the temple. The number of such incidents soon grew, thus beginning Amy Carmichael's new ministry.[9] When the children were asked what drew them to Amy, they most often replied, "It was love. Amma (Tamil for 'mother', referring to Amy) loved us.

Respecting Indian culture, members of the organization wore Indian dress and gave the rescued children Indian names. Carmichael herself dressed in Indian clothes, dyed her skin with dark coffee, and often travelled long distances on India's hot, dusty roads to save just one child from suffering. 

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Carmichael