Gladys Aylward: Her True Story for Kids, The Maid Who Moved Mountains

The mission board in London looked at the parlormaid across the table and said no. Gladys Aylward was too old to learn Chinese, they explained, and her exam results were too poor. She was twenty-eight, a housemaid with little schooling and a small voice, and the experts who decided who got to be a missionary had decided she was not one.

That evening, the story is told, Gladys laid out everything she had on her bed: her Bible, and the few coins in her purse, ninepence in the common telling. She put her hand on them and prayed something like a declaration. Here is my Bible. Here is my money. Here is me. Use me, God.

It is one of the great scenes in missionary history, and children should hear it exactly this way: the experts said no, and Gladys appealed to a higher committee.

The train to the war

A proper mission agency would have paid for a ship. Gladys had no agency, so she worked as a maid until she could afford the cheapest possible route to China: an overland train across Europe and Siberia, alone, in 1932, with two suitcases, a bedroll, and a kettle. The route ran straight into an undeclared war between Russia and China. At one point the train simply stopped in the snow near the fighting and went no further, and Gladys walked back along the frozen tracks through the dark, hauling her cases, to the last station. She talked, prayed, and stubborned her way onward by way of Vladivostok, a ship to Japan, another to Tientsin, and finally a mule track into the mountains of Shanxi province.

There, in the town of Yangcheng, she joined an elderly missionary named Jeannie Lawson, and together they opened an inn for the mule caravans: hot food, clean rooms, and Bible stories told by firelight to muleteers who carried the stories on down the trail. They called it the Inn of Eight Happinesses.

Ai-weh-deh

The woman the experts rejected became, within a few years, one of the most trusted people in the region. The local mandarin hired her as the official foot inspector, traveling village to village to enforce the new law against binding the feet of little girls, painful bindings that crippled them for life. The job came with authority, an escort, and a salary, and Gladys used every mile of it to tell Bible stories in villages no missionary had ever visited. When a riot broke out at the men’s prison and the guards were afraid to go in, they sent for the small Englishwoman, on the logic that her God would protect her. She walked into the yard, talked the men down, and then badgered the governor until prisoners were given work and decent treatment.

The people gave her a Chinese name: Ai-weh-deh, the virtuous one. She became a Chinese citizen. The rejected parlormaid had not just reached China. China had adopted her.

The hundred children over the mountains

Then came the war with Japan. Yangcheng was bombed, and by 1940 Gladys was responsible for roughly a hundred orphaned children, with soldiers advancing and a price on her head for helping the resistance. So she did the only thing left. She walked them out: a hundred children, ages four to sixteen, over the Shanxi mountains toward safety in Sian, weeks on foot, sleeping in temples and open fields, food running out, the littlest ones riding in baskets and on the bigger children’s backs.

At the Yellow River the children stood on the bank with no boat and Japanese patrols behind them, and one of the older girls asked Gladys why God did not just open the water the way he had for Moses. Gladys answered honestly that she was not Moses, and the girl answered better than any preacher: but God is still God. A boat came. The children crossed. Gladys delivered every one of them, then collapsed with typhus and fever, having spent herself to the last drop.

She had ninepence and a Bible when the experts turned her away. By the end she had a hundred children, a Chinese name, and a story the church will never stop telling. Paul wrote that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. Gladys Aylward is what that verse looks like in walking shoes.

Read it aloud: the five-minute version

Once there was a housemaid in London named Gladys who wanted to be a missionary to China, and the experts told her no, she was not clever enough. So Gladys put her Bible and her last few coins on her bed and told God: here is everything I have, and here is me. She saved her wages and bought a train ticket, because trains were cheaper than ships, and rode alone across the whole frozen middle of the world, through snow and even a war, until she reached the mountains of China. There she helped run an inn for mule drivers, where travelers got soup, a warm bed, and a Bible story. The people grew to love her so much they gave her a Chinese name, Ai-weh-deh, the virtuous one. When war came, a hundred children had no one else, so small Gladys led all one hundred over the mountains on foot, weeks and weeks, to safety. At a great river with no bridge, one girl asked why God did not split the water like he did for Moses. I am not Moses, Gladys said. But God is still God, said the girl. And a boat came. Every child made it. Remember Gladys when someone tells you that you are not enough. The experts said no. God had already said yes.

Talk about it

• The mission board measured Gladys by her exams. What did God measure?
• At the Yellow River the girl said, but God is still God. What did she mean?
• Gladys gave God ninepence and a Bible. What do you have to put on the bed?

Pray together

Father, thank you that your callings do not require the experts’ permission. Thank you for Gladys, who gave you ninepence and got back a hundred children. Take what little we have, take us, and if you ever ask one of us to do something everyone says we cannot do, remind us that you are still God. Amen.

Gladys met China one muleteer, one village, one child at a time. Your children can meet the peoples still waiting the same way, one a month, through a Wonder Letter in the mailbox.

The experts still say no to the wrong people. God still does not.