A Parlour Maid With a Calling
Gladys Aylward was a parlour maid in London, barely five feet tall, with no formal education beyond primary school. In 1930, she applied to the China Inland Mission and was rejected. They said she was too old at twenty-eight, not academic enough, and unlikely to learn Mandarin.
She went anyway. She saved her wages, bought a one-way train ticket across Siberia, and made her way to Yangcheng in the mountains of Shanxi Province, China. There, she helped an elderly missionary named Jeannie Lawson run an inn for mule drivers, telling Bible stories to the travellers who stopped each night.
The Mountain Road
When Japan invaded China in 1937, Gladys was running an orphanage. As the Japanese army advanced toward Yangcheng, she made a decision that would define her life: she gathered nearly a hundred orphaned children and led them on foot over the mountains to safety.
The journey took twelve days across some of the roughest terrain in northern China. They crossed mountain passes, forded rivers, and slept in the open. Gladys had no map, little food, and was suffering from typhus. Several times, she fell behind the children, delirious with fever, and had to be helped back to her feet.
On the twelfth day, they reached the Yellow River. There was no boat. Gladys prayed. The children prayed with her. A Chinese soldier appeared with a boat. They crossed. Every child survived.
The Wilderness as a Place of Faith
Gladys later said that the mountain crossing was the most intense spiritual experience of her life. The landscape was threatening — freezing nights, steep trails, no shelter. But it was in those mountains that she felt God's presence most powerfully, step by step, pass by pass, child by child.
She never returned to England permanently. She spent the rest of her life in Taiwan, continuing to work with children. She died in 1970 at the age of sixty-seven.
What This Means for You
Gladys Aylward was not an athlete or an adventurer. She was a maid who could not get accepted by a mission board. But when the moment came, she walked into the mountains with a hundred children and found God was already there, clearing the path. If you feel unqualified for what is in front of you, consider that God might be less interested in your qualifications than in your willingness to take the next step.