A Chance to Die Elisabeth Elliot (electronic reader .txt) 📖

and warm. Not much over five feet, I suspect, with gray hair, wearing a blue sari. She had a twinkle, a gentle sense of humor.”

In the first few minutes of greeting another new one Amma nailed her with the question, “Do you know your Bible well?” No, was the answer, “and I thought to myself, ‘That’s it. Next ship back.’ But I was allowed to stay.”

Amma was an actress. She loved to imitate a Tamil bus conductor. One young missionary remembers her coming into a room bent over a stick, the end of her sari over her head like a shawl, mimicking in a conversation with one of the children the dialect of uneducated villagers.

It was a stimulating atmosphere Amy Carmichael created. “She had tremendous oomph. An English accent, yes, but not one of those plummy public school accents. She could talk on any subject to anyone. You could throw in any question at the supper table. Amma read like lightning,” read widely, and was able to “take the wheat and leave the chaff” of a book. She read George Herbert, George MacDonald, John Donne, William Cowper, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson. Her bookshelves held Trevelyan, Ruskin, a Kempis, Keble, Savonarola, Kingsley, Florence Nightingale, and Saint Augustine. She would bring things to the table to read. “Listen to this!” she would say.

When a newcomer needed help with a Tamil letter or short word, she would spill a little salt on the plain teak table and write with her finger. “Eating came last in her thinking at such times, and there would be a quiet word from someone, ‘Amma dear, do eat a little chicken!’” She encouraged them with tales of her own struggles in Tamil study when the Lord reminded her that He had once made an ass speak.

In the early days all workers, Indian and foreign, ate together. Then they separated. Accals and anandas ate according to Indian custom, from brass vessels and banana leaves, using their fingers, as they sat on the tiles in the bungalows with their children. The food was carried to them from central kitchens. The missionaries had tables and chairs, flowers and candles, crockery and flatware, and were served by people hired from the village. Of course the dichotomy was puzzling to outsiders, and among the insiders there were many wrestlings over this decision. One reason for it was obvious—the family grew. There was no room large enough for everybody. That was a minor reason. Amy explained the major one, the health of the foreigners, in her paper, Roots:

“It seemed wiser to do what would keep us well than to do as we wanted to do. After all, we are not here to please ourselves but to serve India in whatever way our Lord directs.” Foreigners did not seem able (though most were certainly willing) to subsist on curry and rice. They needed their tea and bread and butter. On feast days all ate outdoors together, and often the foreigners were invited to the cottages for a meal.

Nobody in Dohnavur ate beef. The reason was simple: “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”1 If anyone had objected that this passage refers not to such as Hindus and Muslims but to weak Christians, Amy would have replied with Romans 14:15, “Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.” That covered everyone. The force of the Brahman taboo against beef eating can scarcely be overstated. At Dohnavur they felt they could eat lamb, goat, and chicken without offending, so the curries were not strictly vegetarian.

Why the hired servants? When Indian members of the family served the missionary table, they sometimes found that guests treated them as servants, which Amma would not tolerate. She tried to treat all members of the Family as equals. “She made us work very hard,” an Old Girl said, “We were all servants. Amma was a servant too, but we treated her as children treat their mother.”

“Never eat anything you’ve seen a fly on” was supposed to be one of Amma’s rules for new recruits, but they soon saw the impossibility of obeying that one and were exonerated when they found that “Amma didn’t go by that in the least herself!”

Amy Carmichael had no compunction about throwing a new arrival in at the deep end. May Powell told of going to evangelize a village with Amma, expecting to stay quietly in the background and watch the others in action. Amma sat her down on a verandah with a group of women, handed her the Wordless Book, and told her to give a testimony. May had never given a lesson in English, let alone Tamil.

Many so-called “faith” missions require members to raise their individual support. Amy wrote to a candidate for the DF: “For those who have no means we make provision as He enables us. But there never can be any promise even of that. Each one must lay hold on the promises, on God, rather, the Faithful One. . . . I like those who have a private income to keep it and use it (if it is over and above their own needs) as led, from time to time, rather than to join the capital to a common fund. I do this myself (the D.O.M. had provided Amy’s full support) and I think it is the better way. No one draws anything from any society.” That particular candidate had an inheritance which she was willing to turn over to the Fellowship. Amy advised her to keep the principal “to use for Him year by year.” Unhappily, Amy’s policy was not to the liking of all, and more than once foreign DFs probed the private financial status of certain Indian members, pressing them to donate to the Family. When they acceded, a glossy report was carried to Amma of the “willing offering” made. She rejoiced that one more disciple had learned the lesson of giving