GLADYS AYLWARD

The Small Woman

Born in London to a working-class family in 1902, Gladys Aylward had a burning desire: to go to China as a missionary. The China Inland Mission, however, did not think she was qualified. But the conviction that God had called her to China would not die. When Gladys heard that an elderly missionary in China wanted an assistant, she saved her money working as a parlormaid and bought a one-way train ticket. She arrived in Yangcheng, China, in November 1932.

The missionary, Jennie Lawson, managed an inn for muleteers driving mule trains across the mountains. The inn not only offered food and a place to sleep, but Bible stories told by the two "foreign devils."

Jennie Lawson, however, died a few months after Gladys’ arrival, and she had to continue the work alone. In 1938, the Japanese bombed Yangcheng. Already Gladys had adopted several orphans; now there were many more orphans who came to live at the Inn of Eight Happinesses. But the Japanese suspected that she was a spy and it was no longer safe in Yangcheng. So in March, 1940, Gladys fled over the mountains to the next province with a hundred children. A month later, she arrived safely without losing one child!

But Gladys was weak and ill. In 1942 an American friend helped her go back to England to see her family. While she was there the Communists closed China to all foreigners.

In 1957, Gladys once again sailed for China, this time to Formosa. She started the Gladys Aylward Orphanage and soon had a hundred children. Here Gladys Aylward, the small woman who was unqualified to be a missionary, served until her death in 1970.

© 1996 Dave and Neta Jackson, Hero Tales, Vol. I