Tag: India

She stared down the devil when she was weak. Overcame dysentery, major spinal surgery and crushing loneliness. She founded a hostel for children of mission doctors, helped thousands of people through her nursing service, and returned to work after retirement to give pastoral care to patients. Ann Bothamley has been an ambassador for Christ in India since 1968. We’re inspired by all that she’s done in the past, and all that she continues to do. We know you will be too. This is Ann’s story.

I gave my heart to the Lord when I was nine years old. After Sunday School one day I went to the superintendent and said, “I’ve decided I want to follow Jesus.”

I then went in for a Bible quiz and won a Bible. It had, ‘Presented to Ann Bothamley’, and at the bottom was the verse from Matthew 28: 19, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel”. I remember saying to my mother, “I think that means me. I think I have to go.”

So even then, I knew in my heart that God wanted me to go out as a medical missionary somewhere.

I was quite sure that God wanted me to be a doctor, but I didn’t do terribly well at school. I went to work in the microbiology department of St Thomas’ Hospital, and one day the professor said to me, “why don’t you go in for nursing?”

Within six weeks, I was in. I really enjoyed it and knew I was in the right place. I wanted to have more qualifications, so I did a ward sister course, but twice during my training I slipped a disc in my back. After the second time, the matron said, “I think you might have to give up nursing”, and I thought, ‘no way’.

I ended up having a laminectomy [the removal of part of a vertebrae] after my fourth year. There was a lot of waiting and I wondered what God was saying to me. But I got through all that and got better very quickly. I did midwifery in Glasgow, and then did a year as a night sister in a large hospital in Croydon. I decided then that it was the time to go to BMS.

I think God planted it in my heart that I was going to India. I knew, too, that it was going to be for life. I was asked at the candidate board, “is this going to be short-term, or for life?” That was how it was put in those days. I said, “no, for life”. And so I was accepted by BMS.

The journey to India was a very long one. We travelled across Europe to Venice, where we boarded a boat to Brindisi, and then went on to the Canary Islands, and down to Cape Town where we boarded the boat to Mombasa.

From Mombasa we went to Karachi and on to Bombay, as it was then. I got on the train about 2 pm and arrived the next afternoon, about an hour from Vellore. I was met by someone called Miss Thompson. We were sitting squeezed up on the front seat of the car and she said to me, “well, I hope the Lord has brought you here. Because if not, you might as well go back now.”

There was no question of going back. I was where God had put me. I had quite a few problems to begin with. I had dysentery and it was a very horrible thing.

I also remember being sent up into the hills after suffering sunstroke. I was sitting in a garden and it was as though the devil was saying, “I’m going to get you home.” I can remember telling him, “no, God is with me and I am not going home, and don’t think you can send me because God is greater than you.”

One of the amazing things in those first six months was that every so often Miss Thompson would hand me a little note with a verse of Scripture on it. It was quite amazing, and always seemed to me that God was saying, “I am with you.”

There have been times when I have known great loneliness. Sometimes one can be in a huge institution and still be very lonely.

But every so often God would send somebody I could pray with. I’d be tremendously encouraged and God would say to me, “I want you to rely on me more. Just keep relying on me.”

God has blessed me through some of the experiences I’ve been through. Three years ago, when I had major surgery on my spine, two families I didn’t even know were amazing to me, absolutely amazing.

God has been so faithful to me over the years, and blessed me so much in enabling me and giving me the privilege to meet such a diversity of people and patients.

I could not be here, but for the support and prayers of people at home. I have two friends who phone me about every two weeks and jot down all the things I would like them to pray about. And there’s a church too that does the same thing.

Prayer makes a difference, a huge difference. I’m sure there have been difficult times when I’ve been carried by the prayers of people at home.