by Elisabeth Elliot - Gateway to Joy

Have you ever known someone who had such powerful convictions and lifestyle that they are forever coaching you in your mind? Elisabeth Elliot had a few of those people in her life, and one of them is a woman by the name of Gladys Aylward. She was a small woman with a big mission to carry out.

This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, and I want to tell you a story. I love stories, as you know, and I receive lots of them in the wonderful piles of radio mail.

In 1960, I was at Prairie Bible Institute at their spring conference. I attended Prairie Bible Institute back in 1948 and 1949, and so I had gone back for their spring conference. And the speaker for that conference was that incredible little lady named Gladys Aylward. I sat in the audience, which numbered several thousand, and studied the tiny figure on the platform. She wore a Chinese dress, a slim straight gown of some nondescript color with a Mandarin collar. She was about 4'10", I believe, and thin as a toothpick. Her hair was also thin and screwed into a tight little topknot. A box had to be placed at the podium for her to stand on, for otherwise she wouldn't have been visible to us.

The sound system in those days was not the best, and I wondered how on earth this diminutive creature would manage to make herself heard. I need not have worried. Her voice was stentorian. She stood up, raised a bony forefinger and bellowed, "I should like to read just one verse. 'And Jehovah God spoke to Abraham and He said, "Get out."'" She proceeded to describe the faith of Abraham, demonstrated by his unconditional obedience in leaving his own country, and setting out he knew not where.

"And one day in a little flat in London, Jehovah God spoke to a Cockney parlormaid and He said, 'Get out.' 'Where do You want me to go, Lord?' And He said, 'To China.'"

For two hours, she poured out the story of her going by train across Europe and Russia and Siberia and China, with a single suitcase and a frying pan strapped to the outside. She had no education, no money, no mission board, no friends in China, or so I remember the story.

We sat riveted. The hours seemed only a few minutes, and we were humbled to the very dust. One man commented later, "They needn't open the doors to let us out. We can crawl underneath."

 Some of you may have read the biography called THE SMALL WOMAN written by Alan Burgess. And some perhaps years ago saw the film called THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS. Of course, you have to remember that films are films, and there's all sorts of stuff in almost any supposedly true story that has been added or subtracted. So don't put too much stock in that. I never did see the movie, but I have read the biography.

Gladys Aylward was born in Edmonton, north of London. The family moved to Chettington Road when she was very small into a row of red brick houses with lace curtains.  Gray pavements. Green grocers. Milkmen. Bakers. Horse-drawn carts. Her father was a postman, clumping up the road in heavy boots. Mum put the teakettle on when father came home. When the Zeppelins came over to bomb London in the First World War, Gladys remembered how she'd first discovered the antidote to being frightened. She would bring all the children in the street into the front parlor and sit them down against the inside wall. Then she would sit at the tiny old foot-operated organ, pedal furiously and scream out a hymn at a decibel scale calculated to reach almost as high as those ominous silver cocoons droning through the sky.

When I was growing up, my heroes and heroines were missionaries. I longed to be like them, to remember them, to consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He can make not only a Polycarp and a John the Baptist, but He can make a saint even in the 20^th century. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. His standards have not changed.

On a Train to China

At the age of 26, Gladys went to the Mission Center in London, hoping to go someday to China. She was 26 years old, very small and slender with a neat figure, dark brown eyes, an oval face, and dark hair parted in the middle and gathered at the back into an uncompromising bun. Perhaps the principal of the Mission Center in London discerned some of the inherent stubbornness and inner strength in the tightening of her lips, but he would also see the tension in her face—tension that would soon be replaced by disappointment.

She hardly heard the voice which reiterated her list of failures. She knew she could never make him understand. She knew she lacked the persuasiveness to argue with him or the education to pass his examinations. She knew she hadn't the background. She knew she had no chance, but she knew also with a single-minded, agonizing clearness that she must go to China.

Well, she got a job as a parlormaid, and she arrived with two pennies and one hapenny (one half-penny). Her mistress paid her bus fare from home, three shillings. In spirit, Gladys was halfway to China. She went to a booking agent and she asked how much it would cost to book a passage to China. "Ninety pounds by sea, then forty-seven pounds, ten shillings by rail. The Trans Siberian Railway through Europe, Russia, Tianjin. Impossible," they said. "Russia and China are at war. I'll give you a week."

What would she do when she got there? No money. No language. She said to herself, "I must learn to teach. I must learn to talk to the people." She read missionary books. Then she heard of a Mrs. Lawson, who was 73 years old and had come back to England from China to retire. But then she went back to China. Gladys needed a passport at once.

On October 18, 1930, she stood on the platform of the Liverpool Street Station. She had exactly ninepence in coins and two traveler's checks sewn into an old blouse, with a Bible, a fountain pen, tickets and passport. She kissed her mother and father and sister good-bye and settled herself into the corner seat of her third-class compartment. The whistle blew.

Ten days after she had left England, the train crossed into Siberia.

 On a Boat to Japan

Gladys went to China, having no background except that of a London parlormaid. She didn't know how to do anything but dust, and she had no mission board, no promises, no money, no nothing. She found herself trudging down the railroad track when the train had come to the end and it turned out that there was a war on. The soldiers told her that she must walk back to the previous station 10 miles back and catch a boat to Japan and then onto China.

 Working With Jeannie

She finally reaches Tianjin in China.  I remember—I will never forget, in fact—when I heard Gladys Aylward speak in person in 1960 at Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada. Among the stories that she told in those riveting two hours was this one—that when she was a child she had two great sorrows. "One, that when all of her friends had beautiful golden curls, mine was black. When all my friends were still growing, I stopped."

But she said, "As I stood on the wharf that day in Tianjin, when I had just arrived in China, I looked around on all the people to whom Jehovah God had sent me and I saw that every single one of them had black hair and every single one of them had stopped growing when I did. And I said, ‘Lord God, You know what You’re doing.’"

Gladys went to work with a little lady named Jeannie Lawson, 74 years old, a very no-nonsense, matter-of-fact widow."

Gladys and Jeanie arrived at a brilliant idea one day as they were walking back up the slope to the west gate. They passed through the narrow main street and skirted the Yamin, or town hall, where the Mandarin lived and all the official business of the city was carried out." They wanted to secure the trust of the Mandarin, who was the top official. So they decided to open an inn for muleteers. They opened one which was called The Inn of Eight Happinesses.

It was Gladys’ job to go out into the streets and drag the muleteers in. There were times when they had as many as fifty men, plus animals. Of course, Jeannie settled right down immediately when these people began to come and told them Bible stories.

Gladys then became the official foot inspector and then insisted that prisoners must have work to do. These were things that she persuaded the Mandarin to consider. Of course, young girls, baby girls, had their feet bound, so adult Chinese women, unless they were very poor, had very deformed, tiny feet. Gladys saw this as a very cruel system and so began to persuade the Mandarin that this had to go. Then she also persuaded him that prisoners ought to have work to do so that they wouldn’t despair. So they introduced looms, millers’ wheels and they stopped riots, which had been taken for granted. The convicts were even taken to hear the preaching of the Gospel at the Inn of Eight Happinesses.

 Gladys developed a close friendship with the Mandarin, who had absolutely no idea how to treat her, because there was no protocol for foreigners. A Mandarin knew exactly how to treat his subjects, but he was not sure how to treat this very strong-minded little lady from England.

"One day he asked her to pull down the pagoda of the scorpion, and a huge feast followed. When the Mandarin's feast was held, Gladys, to her surprise, found that although as usual she was the only woman present (that had been her privilege for many years), on this occasion she was sitting beside the Mandarin in the seat of honor at his right hand. This had never happened before. All the important personages of Yong Cheng were present: the governor of the prison, two wealthy merchants, several officials, about a dozen in all. The meal was simple, unlike the sumptuous feasts she had enjoyed in early years and which had lasted for hours.

Toward the close, the Mandarin stood up and made his speech. He recalled how Ai Wei Dei, which was Gladys' name in Chinese, had first come to Yong Cheng, how she had worked for them, what she had done for the poor and the sick and the imprisoned, of the new faith called Christianity which she had brought with her and which he had discussed with her many times. Gladys was puzzled by his references. He sounded so much like the chairman of a local committee back in England that she wondered if he were going to present her with an illuminated address or a silver teapot.

But after speaking for some minutes, he turned very gravely toward her and said seriously, 'I would like to become a Christian.' Around the table arose a murmur of astonishment. Gladys was so astounded that she could hardly speak. The guests nodded and smiled, and she knew that she was expected to reply.

She got up and stuttered her surprise, her appreciation and her thanks. The Mandarin saw her confusion and helped her out. 'We'll talk of all details later, Ai Wei Dei,' he said. She sat down, realizing that she had made her most important convert since coming to China.

 The Village is Bombed

What do you think of when you envision someone doing missionary work? Do you imagine them dodging artillery at every turn or singing spiritual songs around a campfire? Maybe if you know someone who is a jungle missionary, you picture them fighting off snakes and bugs. Or on the other hand, maybe they’re reclining in a hammock listening to the radio, like on Gilligan’s Island.

The point is that missionary work is rarely what anyone might dream up in their head. Nearly everything is unexpected, and that is something that Gladys Aylward had to learn in a hurry.

 "One spring morning in 1938, the Japanese began to bomb the area. Nine people were killed all at once in the street outside the inn that Gladys and her coworker, Jeannie Lawson, had established. Gladys was praying in an upstairs room, and suddenly the floor tipped and she ended up in the rubble below. A heavy beam pinned her for hours. She was not the only one that was injured. When she was finally released, she felt bruised and sick, but she dusted off her clothes and helped to pull out the cook and the others. All of them were suffering from cuts and bruises, but none seriously injured.

The Japanese aircraft had gone, but now there was panic and confusion everywhere. Dead and dying, wounded and bomb-shocked lay everywhere, for the streets had been crowded. The main street was littered with masonry; bodies were half-buried beneath it. People still trapped were screaming for help. For a second or two, she paused at the gate, quailing momentarily in the face of the task ahead. What could she do with her few silly bandages?

But the sense of futility passed in a second. To the chattering group of onlookers at the gate, she snapped, ‘I need all of you,’. The surprised townspeople stared at her, then obediently followed her instructions. ‘Now let’s get to work. You must all help. You two clear that rubble over there. Someone is buried there. You three, go and get buckets of water. Hot water. You, one, two, three, four, five, you’ll clear the main street so that there’s a free passage. All the dead you’ll carry outside the gates. Understand? Now let’s start working at once.’"

 Well, that gives you a little taste of the courage of Gladys Aylward and her absolute conviction that God had sent her there to do the work that He had for her to do. I do love missionary stories. How fortifying it is to our spiritual life when we study the lives of the saints of God through the ages. Just imagine, a little London parlormaid becoming an authority in a Chinese village and getting the top official on her side. There was no question whatsoever that "Jehovah God had called me to China."

A little, uneducated woman who put her absolute trust in the God of the universe, the Creator of everything, from the atom to the unfathomably immense solar systems. He who calls us to put our trust wholeheartedly in Him is calling you and me today. He sent His Son, Jesus, to show us exactly how to do that.

Luke 6:40 says, "A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher." That’s a verse that I like to give to prospective missionaries or to young people that are planning to go on a missions trip for the summer, perhaps. Sometimes they will ask me for advice. I say, "Just remember: A student is not above his teacher. Things are going to happen to you that you did not expect."

Many things happened to Gladys Aylward which were far beyond her wildest imaginings when she determined to go to China. There will always be things which are bigger, more difficult, but ultimately more glorious. But our position is to be that of Christ. We are told to have His attitude. He, who was God by nature, made Himself nothing. He became a slave by nature.

Are there storms in your life today? For many of you, there are. Is it going to be an opportunity for stability and trusting God or collapse and despair? Gladys Aylward was tested over and over again, but her spiritual house was built on a rock. She trusted God for the supply of her physical needs, for money. As you remember, as a London parlormaid, she didn’t have any money. But with two pounds and a few cents, she managed to get from England to China in the most miraculous way. She had to trust God daily for food, for shelter, for transportation, for dangers, for uncertainties and fears.

But the Lord says, "Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God." If you’d like to look up one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, look at Isaiah 41:10. "Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."

Someone is listening who needs that assurance: "I am with you. I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you." You need not collapse, in other words. God save us from self-pity. There is in Gladys Aylward, it seems, no self-pity at all. There is nothing that more certainly will weaken our spiritual life than self-pity. It eats away at the foundations.

 A Chinese Suitor

One day Gladys got word that there was a price on her head. She said, "What am I worth to anybody?" She laughed. "The idea is preposterous!"

"Without a word, the orderly fumbled in his tunic pocket, produced a piece of paper and handed it to her. 'Those leaflets are being pasted up in the villages outside Tse Cho. They will appear on the gates of this city tomorrow.' She took it over to the lamp to read. The shadows danced across the small handbill. 'One hundred dollars reward,' it continued. 'One hundred dollars will be paid by the Japanese Army for information leading to the capture, alive, of any of the three people listed below.' Gladys' eyes scanned the names. First was the Mandarin of Tse Cho. Second was the name of a well-known businessman noted for his Nationalist sympathies. The third line simply read, 'The small woman known as Ai Wei Dei.'

Her immediate reaction was that the whole affair was unbelievable. 'A hundred dollars? A small fortune. They must be mad,' she exclaimed. 'Offering a hundred dollars for me?' But the dark figure in the doorway didn't move. 'You must leave by the morning, Ai Wei Dei. I go now. You must leave as soon as the sun rises.'

There was a Chinese prayer that she knew well. 'If I must die, let me not be afraid of death, but let there be a meaning, O God, to my dying.' Would there be a meaning if she waited meekly for the Japanese to come and take her? She did not know what to do, but on impulse reached out for her Bible. It lay on the table next to the leaflet. She flipped it open at random, then bent forward to read in growing awe the line of Chinese characters: 'Flee ye. Flee ye into the mountains. Dwell deeply in the hidden places, because the king of Babylon has conceived a purpose against you.'  If she wanted a sign, was this not it? Flee. Flee. Yes, she knew now that she must leave at first light.

 Madam Chiang Kai Shek had an orphanage for war orphans. She had two hundred who now needed refuge. She managed to find someone to take one hundred of the children to safety, but she sent a message to Gladys Aylward that she needed her to take another one hundred children.

So the great expedition with one hundred refugee children began. They were able to sleep their first night in a temple. They found that all the priests were away. They had with them millet to eat

 There were two older boys who went ahead and marked the trail with whitewash and put Bible texts, such as 'This is the way, walk ye in it' or 'Fear not, little flock.'

They were terribly thirsty as they traveled. There were wells only in the villages, and some of the villages were many miles apart. They had used up all their millet and they were in the mountains among very steep slopes, so steep that they had to create a human chain to pass the young children down, hand to hand. They were singing a song, 'I will not be afraid.'"

I remember being taught that song when I was a student in a high school boarding school. This is how it went: "I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid, I will look upward and travel onward and not be afraid. He says He will be with me, He says He will be with me, He goes before me and is beside me, so I'm not afraid."

Picture this tiny little woman from London, one hundred Chinese children trailing along over the mountains, and singing that little song. Does it bring tears to your eyes?

"There were several older children, and they, along with Gladys, had to carry nearly all the bedding. The other children were too small. There were seven nights. They all wore shoes made of cloth." You can imagine the state that those shoes were in after seven days of walking. "Their feet were bleeding and the children were crying.

Suddenly, there was a shout. Soldiers! Of course, they didn't know whether it was Japanese or Nationalists. To their great relief, they discovered that the soldiers were Nationalists. Then the roar of two Japanese fighter planes went overhead. They tore through a cleft in the mountains and thundered overhead, but the children were not harmed.

The Rest of the Story

Ellisabeth Elliot interjects this biography with a conversation she had with Miss Aylward…as she says, “because it is just so charming.”  In her words…

 I had a personal conversation Gladys Aylward after her talk at Praire Bible College.  Later in a friend's home, Miss Aylward (no one could have imagined calling her Gladys) and I sat on the sofa and talked of missions, missionaries and particularly of single missionaries. I had been widowed four years earlier, and she of course had never married.

Not that she had never thought of marrying, however. She told me how she had worked happily for six or seven years in China alone, when a missionary couple came to work nearby. She then began to ponder the privilege that was theirs and to wonder if it might not be a lovely thing to be married. She talked to the Lord about it. She was a no-nonsense woman and very direct and straightforward and she asked God to call a man from England, send him straight out to China, straight to where she was, and have him propose. I can't forget the next line. With a look of even deeper intensity, she shook her little bony finger in my face and said, "Elisabeth, I believe God answers prayer. He called him," and here there was a very brief pause and an intense whisper, which carried more power than her loudest voice. "He called him, but he never came."

 Is there a man listening to me today whom God might be calling to get married? There just might be. You know, the apostle Paul said, "When I became a man, I put away childish things." It bothers me to see that too many men today are spending lots of money and huge amounts of time on adult toys. All kinds of vehicles, all kinds of amusements, all kinds of fitness machinery, etc., etc. It just might be if you were to stop and listen for the still, small voice that God is calling you to take adult responsibility and to become a husband. Well, that's just one of my little parentheses that I can't resist putting in every now and then.

 We left Gladys Aylward with her one hundred children at the edge of a river. They didn't know how they were going to get across, but a nice man came along, inserted his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly three times in a peculiar, piercing way. From across the river came three answering whistles. Two little figures far off on the other bank pushed a boat into the water and began to scull it across.

"'I cannot thank you enough,' she said. 'I thought it was the end of us when we couldn't cross the river.' The young officer saw her sway a little as one of the children pushed against her.

He looked at her curiously. 'You are ill,' he said. 'You should find a doctor. The Nationalist troops on the other side of the river will have a doctor.'

'I'm all right,' she said. 'When we get to Xian I shall be all right.'

Well, she got the children to safety. By that time, she really was very ill

As the days passed, she gradually gained more strength, until presently the senior physician was able to arrange for her to be taken out of the house to a friend of his in the country outside Xian. There, and later in the homes of other friends, they succeeded in nursing her back to some state of health and she could return to Xian, although she was still not really well.

 After WWII and the Communist Revolution, Gladys started orphanages among the refugees in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

 Gladys Aylward is shy and very modest. She carries these things in her heart. She rarely speaks of them. A little parlormaid from London traveled alone across Siberia because of a single letter from a woman whom she had never met. That woman, of course, was Jeannie Lawson, the 74-year-old woman who died not very long after Gladys arrived.

A young girl, Gladys lived alone for years in a remote mountain city, speaking a strange language, wearing native clothes, becoming friend and counselor to a people so foreign in thought and culture that at first their every custom seemed alien. A single-minded and determined girl conversed for hours with the learned Mandarin, as he propounded the intricate subtleties of his philosophy. Yet armed only with her own forthright experience and inspired intuitions, she converted him finally to Christianity.

A woman, tireless and fearless, traveled alone month after month through the dangerous mountain regions of Shanxi on errands of mercy and errands of war. This woman was Gladys Aylward, Ai Wei Dei, the Virtuous One, the small woman.

They will not forget her in Shanxi, and those who have known her since will not forget her, either. For Gladys Aylward is one of the remarkable women of our generation, possessing an inner exultation and an abiding tenacity of purpose that can make anything possible, even a trip across the wild and pitiless mountains of China without money, without food, and with one hundred children."

That's the end of Alan Burgess' book. I just want to say that that woman made an indelible impression in my life. I met her probably a few years--just a few years before she died. I think she died in the 1960's.

The Bible tells us that we are to imitate the faith of our leaders. I encourage you to read Christian biographies so that you can see the hand of God in all the ups and downs, the sorrows, the joys, the perplexities, the dangers, the disasters of one individual life.

It'll help you to trust Him.

Lisa Barry: In a society that is reluctant to commit to anything, I hear phrases like this all the time. "I couldn't possibly commit to that. Oh, I'm much too busy to fit that in. I just don't feel like doing that." I hope Gladys' determination and single-mindedness will erase phrases like that from our vocabulary. Let's listen for that call rather than for an easy out.

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