A Precious Person in My Life

On my marriage day with "Amma"

I knew this "Amma" from my childhood days. I don’t have memories of those times, when she first came to our house. I think she came when I was five year old. In the years of growing only, I came to know that she was from a very small village near my small town, Mettur where we lived. She came to help us in our household chores. She has told me many times, how in her village she never knew what a bathing soap was. She did not have access to education of any sort. She came to our small town, after marrying a man who was working as a watch-man in the one and only boy’s school in our town. I used to laugh loud whenever she would narrate her first experience of going to a cinema theater in our town. She thought that the hero and heroine were really doing private scenes in front of every one. She never could grasp the fact that it was a pre-recorded act which was displayed on a screen. She screamed and yelled at the people who were watching the film. She walked out of the theater and did not know how to walk back to her house. She had lost her way.

When she came to our house to help us, she had altogether a different problem. She had white patches all over her body. She was a Leucoderma patient. As a young wife, she was ridiculed by her husband. He hated her and started having relationships with other women. She then went from pillar to post, to temples and mosques. When she came to our house, she saw us worshipping another God, whom she  considered as one among the thirty crores of Gods and Godesses in India. She observed our life styles and started to make this simple prayer: “Jesus...if you are a true God, please heal me from this disease. I want my husband to love me…” My mom had told me later, how every day this amma would come and show her the size of the white patches getting smaller and smaller. In a few days her whole body regained her original beauty. Joyfully she joined the same church where, we were worshipping and later she also got baptized. From then on she had a steady growth in her spiritual life. Praise God, this ignorant woman found her way to heaven.

This one thing, which I am going to share with you, stays in my mind as fresh as ever. I was a bigger girl then. My parents had gone away from house for a short visit outside of town and had left me and my brother in her care. She stayed with us for the night. That night I could see her private prayer life. In the midnight, I could hear her naming some nations of the world like Greenland, Iceland and so on. I was thunderstruck. She was praying with tears for those countries. I could not wait for the morning to come. With great excitement, I asked her, “Amma, how do you know the names of these countries, which I am learning in my Geography classes at school?" I was struck back with awe, because she could not reproduce those names in the morning. It did not take me too long to realize that the Holy Spirit had put the burden in this simple, illiterate woman to pray for the nations of the world. Years later, after my marriage, I watched a video named, “Transformation” which was hghlighting how gospel penetrated to the difficult cold countires in the Arctic area. I got goose bumps all over my body and thanked the Lord for this simple woman and her prayer life.

Whenever I teach on the subject of “Missions” and being a “World Christian,” I never forget to tell about  this amma who impacted me in my childhood years.  I have told about her in India and the countries, wherever I have visited so far. Her name is Rukmani. We never called her by her name. For us she was our “Amma.” Isn't true that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong? (1 Corinthians 1:27)