Amy Carmichael December 16, 1867- January 18, 1951

Amy Beatrice (a.k.a. Wilson) Carmichael (December 16, 1867–January 18, 1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for fifty-six years without furlough and authored many books about the missionary work.

She was born in the small village of Millisle in Northern Ireland to devout Presbyterians, David and Catherine Carmichael and was the oldest of seven children. After her father's death, she was adopted and tutored by Robert Wilson, cofounder of the Keswick Convention. In many ways she was an unlikely candidate for missionary work. She suffered neuralgia, a disease of the nerves that made her whole body weak and achy and often put her in bed for weeks on end. It was at the Keswick Convention of 1887 that she heard Hudson Taylor speak about missionary life. Soon afterward, she became convinced of her calling to the same labour.

Initially Amy travelled to Japan for fifteen months, but she later found her lifelong vocation in India. She was commissioned by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. Much of her work was with young ladies, some of whom were saved from forced prostitution. The organization she founded was known as the Dohnavur Fellowship. Dohnavur is situated in Tamil Nadu, just thirty miles from the southern tip of India. Under her loving guidance, the fellowship would become a place of sanctuary for more than one thousand children who would otherwise have faced a bleak future. In an effort to respect Indian culture, members of the organization wore Indian dress and the children were given Indian names. She herself dressed in Indian clothes, dyed her skin with coffee, and often travelled long distances on India's hot, dusty roads to save just one child from suffering.

In 1931, Carmichael was badly injured in a fall, which left her bedridden much of the time until her death. Amy Carmichael died in India in 1951 at the age of 83. She asked that no stone be put over her grave; instead, the children she had cared for put a bird bath over it with the single inscription "Amma", which means mother in the Tamil.

Amy Carmichael's work also extended to the printed page. She was a prolific writer, producing thirty-five published books including His Thoughts Said . . . His Father Said (1951), If (1953), and Edges of His Ways (1955). Best known, perhaps, is an early historical account, Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India (1903).



Quotes by — Amy Carmichael

"Bare heights of loneliness...a wilderness whose burning winds sweep over glowing sands, what are they to HIM? Even there He can refresh us, even there He can renew us."

"Can we follow the Savior far, who have no wound or scar? "

"Thou art the Lord who slept upon the pillow, Thou art the Lord who soothed the furious sea, What matters beating wind and tossing billow If only we are in the boat with Thee? Hold us quiet through the age-long minute While Thou art silent and the wind is shrill : Can the boat sink while Thou, dear Lord, are in it; Can the heart faint that waiteth on Thy will?"

"I wish thy way. And when in me myself should rise, and long for something otherwise, Then Lord, take sword and spear And slay."

"Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is."

"You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving."

"It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates"

"We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home and meant to stay as long as we could. I don't wonder apostolic miracles have died. Apostolic living certainly has."

"Give me the Love that leads the way The Faith that nothing can dismay The Hope no disappointments tire The Passion that'll burn like fire Let me not sink to be a clod Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God"



BY AMY CARMICHAEL (many reprinted by Christian Literature Crusade, Fort Washington, PA):

1895 From Sunrise Land
1901 From the Fight
1901 Raisins
1903 Things As They Are
1906 Overweights of Joy
1908 Beginning of a Story
1909 Lotus Buds
1914 Continuation of a Story
1916 Walker of Tinnevelly
1917 Made in the Pans
1918 Ponnammal: Her Story
1920 From the Forest
1921 Dohnavur Songs
1922 Nor Scrip
1922 Ragland, Spiritual Pioneer
1923 Tables in the Wilderness
1924 The Valley of Vision
1924 Mimosa
1926 Raj
1928 The Widow of the Jewels
1929 Meal in a Barrel
1932 Gold Cord
1933 Rose from Brier
1934 Ploughed Under
1935 Gold by Moonlight
1936 Toward Jerusalem
1937 Windows1938
1938 Figures of the True
1938 Pools and the Valley of Vision
1939 Kohila
1941 His Thoughts Said...His Father Said
1943 Though the Mountains Shake
1948 Before the Door Shuts
1950 This One Thing
1955 Edges of his Ways


Various compilations:

1982 Candles in the Dark
1982 Thou Givest…They Gather
1986 Learning From God
1991 You Are My Hiding Place
1992 Mountain Breezes
1993 Whispers of His Power
1996 A Very Present Help
1997 God's Missionary (revised edition)


ABOUT THE LIFE AND TIMES OF AMY CARMICHAEL:

Elliot, Elizabeth, A Chance to Die: the Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell

Sabina Wurmbrand July 10, 1913- August 11, 2000

While many in today’s world speak of peace, for thousands in the church today, their world screams of a different word…persecution. These Christians suffer for no other reason than for following Jesus Christ. For the greater part of the 20th century, one woman devoted her life to speaking out for the underground church in Eastern Europe.

Sabin Oster Wurmbrand was born on July 10, 1913 in Czernowitz, a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which became a part of Romania after WWI and part of the Ukraine after WWII. She was born into a Jewish family and the town where she grew up was an important educational and cultural hub for the Jewish faith.

She graduated from high school in Czernowitz and then studied languages at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1936, at the age of 23, Sabina met and married Richard Wurmbrand. While the couple was vacationing that year in the mountains of Romania, both Sabina and Richard were converted to the Christian faith.

Upon returning to their home in Bucharest, they joined the Anglican Mission Church. During occupation Romania during World War II, Sabina’s parents, two sisters, and one brother were killed in Nazi concentration camps and in the ensuing years the couple spent their time rescuing Jewish children from ghettos that they were forced to live in by the Nazi regime.

They also taught in bomb shelters and were arrested several times for underground Christian activities. After the war a million Russian troops poured into Romania, enabling the Communists to seize power. As the communists attempted to control the churches for their own purposes, Richard & Sabina Wurmbrand immediately began an effective “underground” ministry to their enslaved people and the invading Russian soldiers.

The Wurmbrands also traveled to Budapest, smuggling in goods and food that were needed by refugees living there. During her travels, Sabina actively spoke to the Russian occupation troops about the Christian faith. In 1946-47 she organized Christian camps for Romania’s religious leaders of all denominations and conducted street meetings with gatherings of up to 5,000 people. This was the beginnings of what would become “Voice of the Martyrs”, a missionary organization that she founded with her husband to help the persecuted church around the world.

So effective was the work of the Wurmbrands that Richard was eventually arrested in 1948 after which he spent a total of 14 years in Communist prisons, three of those years in solitary confinement, suffering much at the hands of his captors.

Not many women have had their faith tested like Sabina Wurmbrand. Though she suffered much sorrow and loss during the war and post-war years, she never gave up her faith. During Richard’s imprisonment, Sabina selflessly helped the persecuted church while struggling herself for survival for her and her young son. Sabina was eventually arrested and spent three years in Romanian slave labor camps and prisons, leaving her young son to live on the streets. After being released, she spent several years under house arrest.

The Communist leaders offered her freedom if she would divorce her husband and renounce her faith. She refused. They then told her that her husband died in prison. She would not believe the report and kept a hope alive that she would see her husband again someday.In 1964 Richard was released from prison returned home. He soon resumed his work. In 1965, the Wurmbrand family was ransomed from Romania for $10,000 and Richard was warned again not to preach.

The family traveled to Scandinavia and England before arriving in the United States, where Richard testified before the Senate in Washington, D.C. regarding his inhumane treatment in Communist prisons. His story and the stories of many thousands of persecuted Christians from behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains were carried across the world in newspapers in USA, Europe, and Asia.For the rest of their lives, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand worked with “The Voice of the Martyrs” to serve the persecuted church around the world. Christians are persecuted and imprisoned in Vietnam, China, North Korea, Cuba, Laoas, and even still in the former Soviet Union. In the Middle East and in parts of Africa, Christians are threatened on a daily basis by radical Muslims.

Many Christians are killed each day….yes, even today. The Voice of the Martyrs strives to bring practical and spiritual assistance to them while making their voice heard.Sabina actively spoke to churches, groups, and conferences for 32 years after the founding of the ministry and accompanied her husband to testify at Congressional hearings on religious persecution.

She wrote her prison memoirs in a book “The Pastor’s Wife” which detailed her testimony and has been published in six languages. Sabin Oster Wurmbrand lived to be 87 years old. She died in California on August 11, 2000.

Richard Wurmbrand

Born March 24, 1909 Richard was the youngest of four boys, he was born in Bucharest into a Jewish family. He lived with his family in Istanbul for a short while; his father died when he was 9, and the Wurmbrands returned to Romania when he was 15.
As an adolescent, he was sent to study Marxism in Moscow, but returned clandestinely the following year. Pursued by Siguranta Statului (the secret police), he was arrested and held in Doftana prison. Wurmbrand subsequently renounced his political ideals.

He married Sabina Oster on October 26, 1936. Wurmbrand and his wife became believers of Christ in 1938 through the witness of Christian Wolfkes, a Romanian Christian carpenter. Wurmbrand was ordained twice - first as an Anglican, then, after World War II, as a Lutheran pastor.

In 1944, when the Soviet Union occupied Romania as the first step to establishing a communist regime, Wurmbrand began a ministry to his Romanian countrymen and to Red Army soldiers. When the government attempted to control churches, he immediately began an "underground" ministry to his people. He was arrested on February 29, 1948, while on his way to church services.

Wurmbrand, who passed through the penal facilities of Craiova, Gherla, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Văcăreşti, Malmaison, Cluj, and ultimately Jilava, spent three years in solitary confinement. His wife, Sabina, was arrested in 1950 and spent three years at penal labour on the Canal.

Pastor Wurmbrand was released in 1956, after eight and a half years, and, although warned not to preach, resumed his work in the underground church. He was arrested again in 1959, and sentenced to 25 years. During his imprisonment, he was beaten and tortured.

Eventually, he was a recipient of an amnesty in 1964. Concerned with the possibility that Wurmbrand would be forced to undergo further imprisonment, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance negotiated with Communist authorities for his release from Romania for $10,000. He was convinced by underground church leaders to leave and become a voice for the persecuted church.

Wurmbrand traveled to Norway, England, and then the United States. In May 1966, he testified in Washington, D.C. before the US Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee. That testimony, in which he took off his shirt in front of TV cameras to show the scars of his torture, brought him to public attention. He became known as the "The Voice of the Underground Church", doing much to publicize the persecution of Christians in Communist countries. He compiled circumstantial evidence that Marx was a satanist.

From Richard's son Mihai Wurmbrand- The next day over 80 percent of the major newspapers in America had my father’s picture without his shirt, on their front page, with articles on what made this Lutheran minister take off his shirt and break the pro-leftist demonstration. Invitations poured in and Rev. Wurmbrand had to extend his stay in the United States by two months and return again twice for extended periods. Eventually we immigrated permanently to the United States.

In April 1967, the Wurmbrands formed Jesus To The Communist World (later renamed The Voice of the Martyrs), an interdenominational organization working initially with and for persecuted Christians in Communist countries, but later expanding its activities to help persecuted believers in other places, especially in the Muslim world. However, when in Namibia, and confronted with the case of Colin Winter, the Anglican Bishop of Namibia, who had supported African strikers and was eventually deported from Namibia by South Africa, Wurmbrand criticized the latter's anti-apartheid activism, and claimed resistance to communism was more important.

In 1990 Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand returned to Romania for the first time in 25 years. The Voice of the Martyrs opened a printing facility and bookstore in Bucharest. He engaged in preaching with local ministers of nearly all denominations. The Wurmbrands had one son, Mihai, now 70. Wurmbrand wrote 18 books in English and others in Romanian. His best-known book is entitled Tortured for Christ, released in 1967.

Pastor Wurmbrand died on February 17, 2001 in a hospital in Torrance, California. His last address was in Palos Verdes, California. In 2006, he was voted fifth among the greatest Romanians according to the Mari Români poll. His wife, Sabina, died August 11, 2000.

Books by Richard Wurmbrand
100 Prison Meditations
Alone With God: New Sermons from Solitary Confinement
Answer to Half a Million Letters
Christ On The Jewish Roads
From Suffering To Triumph!
From The Lips Of Children
If Prison Walls Could Speak
If That Were Christ, Would You Give Him Your Blanket?
In God's Underground
Jesus (Friend to Terrorists)
Marx & Satan
My Answer To The Moscow Atheists
My Correspondence With Jesus
Reaching Toward The Heights
The Oracles of God
The Overcomers
The Sweetest Song
The Total Blessing
Tortured for Christ-His worldwide bestseller, translated into more than 85 languages.
Victorious Faith
With God In Solitary Confinement

Roaming to Romania

So... again a lot has happened sence being on here last time.

But the biggest news is that I am working on going to Romania this coming Summer for my field work.

I will be working with an organization called Veritas. Veritas is located in Sighisoara, Transylvania a region of Romania. The mother language spoken there is Romanian.

By going on this trip it will open up a lot of "firsts" for me: my first time on an airplane, my first time out of the country, the first time Grand Valley's TR department will have ever sent anyone overseas for field work and the first time for Veritas to have a TR major enrolled in their program.

Why Romania? In 2005 I worked my first summer at Lake Ann Camp, that summer we sponsored a sister camp in Romania. We were shown a video of the camp and there was something inside of me that said "I need to go there". I had a burden on my heart for the people of Romania and I needed to find out why.

I knew the only way to find out was to visit, and it was during that video that I knew one day I would go to Romania. I began to do research to try and find out more about the country. This is when I found out about the turmoil the country had been through after being under communist rule until 1989. The majority of my research was on the high number of orphans. It broke my heart when I heard how so many children over there were not able to develop properly because there was no one there to hold and love them. To think that just being held by another human being makes a difference, it made me want to devote my life to loving these poor children
(sounds good right?!?).

Romania continued to be a burden on my heart which is why I think the thought of doing my field work over there came to mind. Doors kept opening and I just knew that it was suppose to happen. After speaking to another student about her trip to Romania I decided to apply through the same agency that she went through. And I was accepted!

I will be leaving May 1st and returning sometime in August. Not sure on the date because I want to travel other parts of Europe and maybe visit friends in Spain :)

The way I look at life is I have this one life to live (not the Soap Opera :oP), and I do not want to be sitting around when people need help. If I have the chance to go I want to go and see if I could potentially see myself living in Romania for a portion of my life/the rest of it.

After talking with the director of Veritas I found out the organization has never had someone from my major, which is exciting to me! This is another good reason why I need to go.

I want my life to count for something and at this stage in my life I feel lead to go to Romania and learn from the people and their culture.

The process is coming together, thanks to many caring people because of their donations of pop cans I have been able to buy my passport which was such a blessing. The pop cans continue to come in and I continue to thank God for everyone of them. I am also appling for a couple scholarships to try and cover the costs of the trip.
May can not come soon enough!!!

The process has been long/fun/tiresome/rewarding and through it all my support verse has been: Philippians 1:16 ~ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

So continue to pray, for Romania, Veritas, the people I will meet there, funding and safety. Thanks for reading and I will be using this more to communicate when I am over there. I made a pleade with a close friend that I will not be on facebook :) which I think will be great!

The process has been long/fun/tiresome/rewarding/exciting and through it all my support verse has been:

Philippians 1:16 ~ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

God Bless!