Letters Home

It has been nearly a year here in Matsuye, Japan. Learning Japanese is so very difficult. It seems I may never learn. I answer all Misake San’s expostulations by assuring her that it is much more important for me to warn you to send out no more missionaries to a land with such a language, than to go on longer trying to learn it. The length of the words alone are daunting. There have been several opportunities for me to speak in meetings, usually meant for children, but men and women attend as well. It is one thing to have to speak in meetings, but to have to approach a family as they sat in front of their own house filled me with fear. I heard the Master say, “Go and tell them about Me.” I said I don’t know enough, I may make a mistake and do harm rather than good. I still heard the voice I am learning so slowly to recognize speak again, “Go and tell them about Me.” So I went and in the simplest way I repeated ‘God so loved the world’ and told them the very little I could. My words were so few and so broken as yet, but I pray that somehow He may use it to bring glory to His dear name.


My great longing is to have the “single eye” for the glory of God. I try to eliminate anything that might blur my vision, distract, deceive, or tempt others to seek anything but the Lord Jesus Himself. Why waste precious time, painful effort, on lesser things? We have no time to toy with souls. It is not by ceremonial tea making and flower arranging, not by wool chrysanthemum-making and foreign sewing learning, but it is ‘by My Spirit says the Lord’.


I feel of my helplessness, awkwardness, and ignorance and I beg of you at home to pray for me. All other powers but prayer are useless by comparison. I often think of the giants of faith like Elijah or Hudson Taylor and I know that I am nothing but a baby and I pray that which I know not teach Thou me. Lord, teach us all to pray. This work I am called to is God’s work and cannot possibly be done without the help of God’s people-you prayer warriors. I can testify of God’s faithfulness and answered prayer in my life thus far. He had to teach me to be still and know that He is God and when His time came then His will was clear. 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. This verse from 2 Corinthians 12:9, “We glory in our weakness that the power of Christ may rest upon us.” I am thankful that it is His power that is working through me.

I am reminded of the calling the Lord has given me when he said to “Go Ye”. He used this verse to get my attention, 1 Corinthians 3:12-14 – “Now anyone who builds on that foundation may use gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But there is going to come a time of testing at the judgment day to see what kind of work each builder has done. Everyone's work will be put through the fire to see whether or not it keeps its value. If the work survives the fire, that builder will receive a reward.” I want the work that I have done here to be pleasing to our Lord I don’t want it to amount to wood, hay or straw. 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. It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates.

Thank you for your prayers in the work God is doing,

Amy Carmichael