Up until three weeks ago, I hadn't. Then I started doing some research on courageous Christians. It was on a website I came across Amy's story and resonated with her tale.
Amy was born in 1860's Ireland. She caught the evangelism bug in her teens and chose to devote her life to mission work when she understood how much of the world had never heard the name of Jesus.
However, women weren't readily accepted into mission work. She prayed fervently, giving up a life of marriage and children and found herself accepted as a missionary in Asia. She quickly learned how to dress and speak in order to "meet people where they were at" (sound familiar?) in order to earn the right to share the gospel message. Amy lived a simple life for the Lord, in fact, on the walls in her room in Japan were only written two words, "Yes, LORD."
Eventually she was commissioned by the Church of England and began her missionary work in India. Amy, having given up hope of ever having children met a young girl one day escaping the local Hindu temple. Amy discovered many young children were being forced into temple prostitution and she soon became a place of refuge for many children. Amy went about rescuing children in any way she could, disguising herself to fit into the crowd, even dying her skin with coffee so as not to be noticed, risking imprisonment, in order to accomplish her mission.
Over time, Amy founded the Dohnavur Foundation, a place for rescued temple prostitutes, that eventually saw thousands of children call the safe haven "home."
In 1931 Amy suffered a terrible fall that left her bed-ridden. Amy spent the last 20 years of her life loving the children in the Dohnavur Fellowship home and writing and publishing 35 books. She died after 56 years of service as a missionary in India.
A young lady once wrote to her asking about the reality of missionary life, Amy's response was simple: "Missionary life is a chance to die."
One more interesting thing about Amy. She was born with brown eyes, unlike most of the rest of her family, who had blue eyes.
As a child she spent time praying and asking Jesus to turn her brown eyes blue. However, the work she did later in life, disguising herself in order to rescue children wouldn't have been as successful had God given her blue eyes, it wouldn't have been as easy for her to fit into the Indian culture and consequently spread the gospel message. Later in life Amy thanked God for her brown eyes; she was grateful that God didn't listen to a young girl, unaware of God's plans for her.
Amy's story resonates so clearly with courage, commitment, sacrifice and generosity. And while God isn't calling me to this type of work at this point in my life, He is calling me to do something...He is calling me to live courageously in my work for Him.
He has good work set out for me to do...am I willing to take a courageous step?
Are you?
Thanks for reading,
H =)
