A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot (best book recommendations .TXT) 📕

now lay in the hands of the thirty-nine-year-old queen. She became Empress of India, her representative, the viceroy.

1. Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 281.

Chapter 16

Straight Against the Dead Wall

Amy spent her twenty-ninth birthday and Christmas with the Walkers in the town of Palamcottah (another English corruption of a Tamil name: Palaiyam-kottai), which had been the center of Christian work in Tinnevelly District for many years. The Anglican church in Palamcottah, like the one at Ooty, Amy thought “painfully English—built in the days when England did India’s work, but life inside is native, and I do enjoy it. Today before the service began the singers of the place marched down in fine style, and stood before the porch making a joyful noise with voice and cymbal, violin and tambourine.”

Walker, known as the Iyer (an Indian term of respect and affection), had been the chairman of the council of the Church Missionary Society, a position requiring much office work and, in 1895 and 1896, the painful task of purging the church rolls. It was a touchy matter, the weeding out of those whose names were on the registers but who were living as Hindus. Nominal Christianity was one of the most disturbing aspects of the missionary scene in Tinnevelly, and Walker was the object of calumny and scorn from those who could not see why the differences between Christian and Hindu needed to be so obvious. Other difficulties arose, and at last he felt he “could not go on turning the wheel in the direction it was turning,” and dropped it. His resignation was accepted just at the time Amy arrived in Palamcottah.

The Iyer, a master of Tamil by this time, understood very well Amy’s temptation to despair. During his own early struggles he had written to his sister, “It takes such a long time to get into the ins and outs of these Indian languages, and then, though you may know how to speak and what word to use, there is the enormous difficulty of proper pronunciation. However, on we go, trying and struggling. . . . I am only a stammerer in it yet.” He read aloud to Amy from his own journals, which showed the plodding and the groaning, so that she might take comfort in seeing that she was not the first to be discouraged.

“But you were discouraged because you had set such a high standard for yourself! “she countered.

Walker quenched that nonsense by a crushing, “You know nothing whatever about it!”

An exigent coach, he insisted that Amy go through drill like any soldier before professing to fight. This included the study of Tamil classics, poetry, and proverbs, essential if one was ever to learn to “think Tamil.” Remembering Misaki San’s interpreting for her in Japan, she chafed at what seemed a wicked waste of time when she might be giving out the Gospel through interpretation, “but Walker says it’s worthwhile and I am believing him straight in the face of my feelings.” A few months later she wrote, Never had a pupil such a teacher! But it is rather like a great Beethoven wasting his time over a stupid little scale-strummer.” She wondered how she had ever had the courage to tackle the job. “It was the courage of ignorance—pure ignorance!”

Her second exam was to take place in early February. She dreaded it. She marked the year, 1897, next to the portion of Daily Light for January 23, in which she found strong encouragement: “Hope maketh not ashamed. I am the Lord . . . they shall not be ashamed that wait for me. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.” Particularly comforting was the thought that God had once given words to a donkey.1 Perhaps it was not too much to hope that the God who opened an ass’s mouth would open hers and enable her to spout forth Tamil.

Walker, free now from administrative responsibilities, wanted to begin itinerant work in the villages. He saw in the new young missionary not only diverse and unusual gifts, but a deep and uncompromising spirit of discipleship. He asked her to pray about the possibility of joining them in village work and perhaps beginning a work for women. The invitation came as God’s seal on what she had longed to be doing. She prayed. The answer was yes, and in February they traveled by bullock bandy, a springless two-wheeled cart, the Walkers in one, Amy and Saral in another, to Pannaivilai, a day’s journey from Palamcottah. Of this method of travel Amy wrote, “It is, except for the Chinese wheelbarrow, the most tiring way of going about I ever came across. The Japanese kuruma is bliss in comparison.” Crash, bang, smash went the wheels on the rutted roads, jerking, pitching, lunging, and jolting the hapless passengers.

It was a clear moonlight night (we travel at night to escape the heat and to save time) and at first I couldn’t think of going to sleep, and walked ahead of the bandies, disturbing various flocks of parrots who passed uncomplimentary remarks in consequence. When at last I settled down to slumber sweet, Saral rolled over on top of me, bumping me black and blue. The bandy threw her at me, she said. Then we stuck in the mud and Mr. Walker had to help to push us out. I wish you could have seen us.

She was delighted with the big airy bungalow at Pannaivilai.

No superfluous furniture, curtains, or antimacassars2—just three big rooms, like three big barns with a hayloft overhead! In the bedroom barns, bed, chair, and table. In the center barn, table, chairs, plate press. A real barracks, truly! It is very cool to add to its charms, being so big and empty, and a wide shady verandah runs all round the house. We brought my baby organ, dear old Jappy texts, and what they irreverently call “my remarks” (Faith is the Victory, Christ is Conqueror) and we put them up