Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867–1951)

Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867–1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, a society devoted to saving neglected and ill-treated children, was born on 16th December 1867 in the small village of Millisle, County Down, Northern Ireland to David and Catherine Carmichael. Her parents were devout Presbyterians and she was the eldest of seven siblings. At the age of twelve, she was sent to a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Yorkshire, England. There at the age of fifteen, during a children's service, she heard the song "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". In the quiet moments following the song, Amy Carmichael realized that in spite of her mother's teaching that Jesus loved her, she had never invited him into her life. 'In His great mercy the Good Shepherd answered the prayers of my mother and my father and many other loving ones, and drew me, even me, into his fold'… In 1884, Amy Carmichael’s father died when she was eighteen years old. After her father's death, she was adopted and tutored by Robert Wilson, cofounder of the Keswick Convention.