Few would have expected David and Catherine Carmichael’s eldest daughter, Amy, to grow up to become one of the world’s most famous missionaries.
Born in 1867 in the small village of Millisle, Northern Ireland, there was nothing particularly unusual about this girl, who was known for her wilfulness, tomboyish attitude and a propensity to get into mischievous pranks.
Little did the Carmichael parents realize that their daughter would be God’s tool for rescuing hundreds of children from a life worse than death in the darkness of the Indian jungles.
Though Amy’s father died when she was five, the gap had been amply filled by the widower Robert Wilson. Cofounder of the Keswick Convention, Wilson was a catalyst for the holiness movement in England and a support for many missionaries around the globe. When she was in her young twenties, Wilson asked to be allowed to adopt Amy, for whom he felt a special fondness after the loss of his only daughter. Thus it was that Amy moved in with Mr. Wilson and his sons to work as his secretary. The job put Amy in direct contact with many of the missionaries around the world, including Hudson Taylor, Theodore Monod and F.B. Meyer. This was no doubt instrumental in pressing upon Amy the call to mission work.
Thank you so much for your ‘Heroes of Faith’ series, it is an inspiration and a provocation. Myself and ‘Mission Britain’ founder Peter Farmer have wanted to have a website which portrayed the lives of British men and women who have pioneered revival and restoration, to celebrate our legacy in this nation and stir people to action in these days. Your articles are just the right length, are Holy Spirit anointed and very moving. Do you have an archive of other profiles? Would you be willing for us to have a link to your website so that more people have access to these? Otherwise we can just let people know where to look. Thank you for doing this, very sincerely, Patti
We appreciate the encouraging feedback Patti! We are working right now on creating an archive with more profiles, which should be up and running in the next day or so. When it is, do feel free to put a link to our website so more people can be inspired by these men and women of faith. Britain does indeed have an important heritage, and our prayer is that these testimonies will create a template for the work of revival and restoration in our own time.