Gladys Aylward compiled by Debra Maffett

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THE CHALLENGE
by Gladys Aylward
(1902 - 1970)
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CONTENTS
THE SMALL WOMAN 5
GLADYS AYLWARD 6
THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS 15
Actress Ingrid Bergman found Jesus 16
THE CHALLENGE 18
Gladys Aylward Quotes 53
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THE SMALL WOMAN
When parlor maid Gladys Aylward left London in 1930 she had
ninepence in coppers, a bible and a train ticket to China. Within twenty
years the true story of this courageous and much-loved missionary had
become an international legend.
In Yangcheng province she was foot-binding inspector for the
Mandarin. At the outbreak of war she faced the Japanese alone,
enduring a terrible ordeal of danger and torture. Yet the diminutive
woman known as Ai-weh-deh, "the virtuous one", survived to lead a
hundred homeless children on a desperate escape across the Yellow
River to safety.
The Small Woman is an extraordinary account of a remarkable life. This
moving story of a truly inspiring woman is one of the most uplifting
chronicles of the twentieth century. It has been published in many
languages around the world and became the classic film The Inn Of The
Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman.
'A TREMENDOUS STORY ... A RECORD WHICH CAN SELDOM
HAVE BEEN EQUALLED IN ALL THE LONG HISTORY OF
HUMAN ENDEAVOR' ~CHURCH TIMES
The Small Woman by Alan Burgess A Biography of Gladys Aylward,
A Missionary to China. (eBook Link)
https://bit.ly/2Nw9SkA
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GLADYS AYLWARD
GOD’S CALL TO CHRISTIAN SERVICE
In late April 1940, an oxcart stopped outside the Scandinavian-
American Mission in Hsing-P'ing (Xingping), northwest China, to
deliver the fragile body of a 38-year-old Western woman who was
delirious and on the verge of death. Across her back, she bore the scar
of a recent bullet wound. Sent to the hospital in Sian (Xi'an), she was
diagnosed with typhoid fever and internal injuries, but a month passed
before she was identified. She was Gladys Aylward, also called Ai-wehdeh
(the Virtuous One), a Christian evangelist who had brought many
children to safety from behind the Japanese lines. Remarkably, Aylward
survived, believing that God had more work for her to do.
Gladys Aylward (1902-1970) grew up in London, England. She was
raised in a Christian home and attended church and Sunday school as a
girl. But as she entered young adulthood she became impatient with
religious matters. Her one great ambition was to become an actress.
While working as a housemaid in London, she took drama classes in the
evening.
One evening, instead, she attended a church service, although she
hardly knew why. There she heard again the Gospel truths she had been
taught as a child, realized that God had a claim on her life, and placed
her trust in Christ Jesus as her Savior from sin.
Sometime later Gladys read a magazine article that spoke of millions of
Chinese who had never even heard of Jesus, a thought that staggered
her. She spoke with friends and relatives about that alarming situation
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ut none of them seemed too concerned. Before long Gladys came to
sense that God was directing her to go as a missionary to China.
She learned of the China Inland Mission training school for prospective
missionaries in London. She went through three months of its training
program but was rejected as a suitable missionary candidate due to her
lower academic performance.
For a time she served with a ministry in Swansea that sought to rescue
young women from prostitution and drunkenness. While she thought
that ministry worthwhile, she could never escape the thought that God
desired her to be serving in China.
As Gladys endeavored to read and study through the Bible, she was
arrested by the story in Genesis 12 of God calling Abraham to leave his
relatives and country, to go to a distant land, and to be used there as a
blessing to others. Her attention was also drawn to the example of
Moses in the early chapters of Exodus. In order to carry out the
challenging mission God called him to, he had to leave the comfort and
security of the work and family he enjoyed in Midian. Gladys couldn’t
help but draw parallels to her own situation and sense of God’s call on
her life.
Eventually she returned to London and resumed working as a parlor
maid. The third day on her new job she began reading the narrative
concerning Nehemiah. She could relate to his being burdened over a
distressing, distant situation that he could do nothing about. But after
reading Nehemiah 2, she was filled with elation and exclaimed, “But he
did go. He went in spite of everything!” From that Scripture passage
Gladys was convinced that God was giving her marching orders – to go,
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as Nehemiah had in his own time and place, to play a part in addressing
the concerning situation in China that had been so long on her heart.
She laid her Bible on her bed as well as her copy of a Daily Light
devotional guide and all the money she possessed – only two and a half
pence (cents). “O God,” she prayed simply, “here’s the Bible about which
I long to tell others, here’s my Daily Light that every day will give me a
new promise, and here is two and a half pence. If You want me, I am
going to China with these.”
Just then her new mistress rang the service bell to summon her. “I
always pay the fares of my maids when I engage them,” the mistress
informed Gladys. “How much did you pay getting here?” When Gladys
told her, the mistress promptly gave her three shillings, slightly more
than she had paid for her travel fare. “So in a few moments my two and
a half pence had increased by three shillings,” Gladys afterward related.
(A shilling was worth twelve pence.) - written by Vance Christie
Those three shillings became a sign from God, the beginning of her
fund toward a ticket to China.
Aylward worked evenings and weekends to earn money. The people at
the railway ticket office tried to explain to her that the cheapest way to
China was by water and would cost £90. Yes, they agreed, there was an
even cheaper way—overland through Holland, Germany, Poland, and
Russia, then through Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, until she
made a junction connection with the Manchurian railway, which would
take her to a steamer that would take her to Tientsin—but that route
was impossible because there was an undeclared war on between
Russia and China. Realizing that their unlikely traveler was not to be
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deterred from making the long, dangerous journey, they allowed her to
pay little by little on her ticket toward the full amount.
As yet, Aylward had no specific destination in China. She learned of a
73-year-old missionary named Jeannie Lawson, who, upon returning to
England, was immediately miserable and went back to China. Lawson
was seeking a young person to help her continue her work. Aylward
wrote to her, and the two agreed to meet at Tientsin (Tianjin).
Alan Burgess The Small Woman
October of 1930 she set out from London with her passport, her Bible,
her tickets, and two pounds ninepence, to travel to China by the Trans-
Siberian Railway, despite the fact that China and the Soviet Union were
engaged in an undeclared war. She arrived in Vladivostok and sailed
from there to Japan and from Japan to Tientsin, and thence by train,
then bus, then mule, to the inland city of Yangchen, in the mountainous
province of Shansi, a little south of Peking (Beijing). Most of the
residents had seen no Europeans other than Mrs. Lawson and now Miss
Aylward. They distrusted them as foreigners, and were not disposed to
listen to them.
Yangchen was an overnight stop for mule caravans that carried coal,
raw cotton, pots, and iron goods on six-week or three-month journeys.
It occurred to the two women that their most effective way of preaching
would be to set up an inn. The building in which they lived had once
been an inn, and with a bit of repair work could be used as one again.
They laid in a supply of food for mules and men, and when next a
caravan came past, Gladys dashed out, grabbed the rein of the lead
mule, and turned it into their courtyard. It went willingly, knowing by
experience that turning into a courtyard meant food and water and rest
for the night. The other mules followed, and the muleteers had no
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choice. They were given good food and warm beds at the standard price,
and their mules were well cared for, and there was free entertainment
in the evening--the in-keepers told stories about a man named Jesus.
After the first few weeks, Gladys did not need to kidnap customers --
they turned in at the inn by preference. Some became Christians, and
many of them (both Christians and non-Christians) remembered the
stories, and retold them more or less accurately to other muleteers at
other stops along the caravan trails. Gladys practiced her Chinese for
hours each day, and was becoming fluent and comfortable with it. Then
Mrs. Lawson suffered a severe fall, and died a few days later. Gladys
Aylward was left to run the mission alone, with the aid of one Chinese
Christian, Yang, the cook.
A few weeks after the death of Mrs. Lawson, Miss Aylward met the
Mandarin of Yangchen. He arrived in a sedan chair, with an impressive
escort, and told her that the government had decreed an end to the
practice of foot-binding.
(Note: Among the upper and middle classes, it had for centuries been
the custom that a woman's foot should be wrapped tightly in bandages
from infancy, to prevent it from growing. Thus grown women had
extremely tiny feet, on which they could walk only with slow, tottering
steps, which were thought to be extremely graceful.) The government
needed a foot-inspector, a woman (so that she could invade the women's
quarters without scandal), with her own feet unbound (so that she could
travel), who would patrol the district enforcing the decree.
It was soon clear to them both that Gladys was the only possible
candidate for the job, and she accepted, realizing that it would give her
undreamed-of opportunities to spread the Gospel.
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During her second year in Yangchen, Gladys was summoned by the
Mandarin. A riot had broken out in the men's prison. She arrived and
found that the convicts were rampaging in the prison courtyard, and
several of them had been killed. The soldiers were afraid to intervene.
The warden of the prison said to Gladys, "Go into the yard and stop the
rioting." She said, "How can I do that?" The warden said, "You have been
preaching that those who trust in Christ have nothing to fear." She
walked into the courtyard and shouted: "Quiet! I cannot hear when
everyone is shouting at once. Choose one or two spokesmen, and let me
talk with them." The men quieted down and chose a spokesman. Gladys
talked with him, and then came out and told the warden: "You have
these men cooped up in crowded conditions with absolutely nothing to
do. No wonder they are so edgy that a small dispute sets off a riot. You
must give them work. Also, I am told that you do not supply food for
them, so that they have only what their relatives send them. No wonder
they fight over food. We will set up looms so that they can weave cloth
and earn enough money to buy their own food." This was done. There
was no money for sweeping reforms, but a few friends of the warden
donated old looms, and a grindstone so that the men could work
grinding grain. The people began to call Gladys Aylward "Ai-weh-deh,"
which means "Virtuous One." It was her name from then on.
Soon after, she saw a woman begging by the road, accompanied by a
child covered with sores and obviously suffering severe malnutrition.
She satisfied herself that the woman was not the child's mother, but
had kidnapped the child and was using it as an aid to her begging. She
bought the child for ninepence--a girl about five years old. A year later,
"Ninepence" came in with an abandoned boy in tow, saying, "I will eat
less, so that he can have something." Thus Ai-weh-deh acquired a
second orphan, "Less." And so her family began to grow.... She was a
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egular and welcome visitor at the palace of the Mandarin, who found
her religion ridiculous, but her conversation stimulating. In 1936, she
officially became a Chinese citizen. She lived frugally and dressed like
the people around her, and this was a major factor in making her
preaching effective.
Then the war came. In the spring of 1938, Japanese planes bombed the
city of Yangcheng, killing many and causing the survivors to flee into
the mountains. Five days later, the Japanese Army occupied Yangcheng,
then left, then came again, then left. The Mandarin gathered the
survivors and told them to retreat into the mountains for the duration.
He also announced that he was impressed by the life of Ai-weh-deh and
wished to make her faith his own. There remained the question of the
convicts at the jail. The traditional policy favored beheading them all
lest they escape. The Mandarin asked Ai-weh-deh for advice, and a plan
was made for relatives and friends of the convicts to post a bond
guaranteeing their good behavior. Every man was eventually released
on bond. As the war continued Gladys often found herself behind
Japanese lines, and often passed on information, when she had it, to the
armies of China, her adopted country. She met and became friends with
"General Ley," from Europe who had taken up arms when the Japanese
invaded, and now headed a guerrilla force. Finally he sent her a
message. The Japanese are coming in full force. We are retreating. Come
with us." Angry, she scrawled a Chinese note, Chi Tao Tu Pu
Twai, "Christians never retreat!" He sent back a copy of a Japanese
handbill offering $100 each for the capture, dead or alive, of (1) the
Mandarin, (2) a prominent merchant, and (3) Ai-weh-deh. She
determined to flee to the government orphanage at Sian, bringing with
her the children she had accumulated, about 100 in number. (An
additional 100 had gone ahead earlier with a colleague.) With the
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children in tow, she walked for twelve days. Some nights they found
shelter with friendly hosts. Some nights they spent unprotected on the
mountainsides. On the twelfth day, they arrived at the Yellow River,
with no way to cross it. All boat traffic had stopped, and all civilian
boats had been seized to keep them out of the hands of the Japanese.
The children wanted to know, "Why don't we cross?" She said, "There
are no boats." They said, "God can do anything. Ask Him to get us
across." They all knelt and prayed. Then they sang. A Chinese officer
with a patrol heard the singing and rode up. He heard their story and
said, "I think I can get you a boat." They crossed, and after a few more
difficulties Ai-weh-deh delivered her charges into competent hands at
Sian, and then promptly collapsed with typhus fever and sank into
delirium for several days.
As her health gradually improved, she started a Christian church in
Sian, and worked elsewhere, including a settlement for lepers in
Szechuan, near the borders of Tibet. Her health was permanently
impaired by injuries received during the war, and in 1947 she returned
to England for a badly needed operation. She remained in England,
preaching there.
In 1957, Alan Burgess wrote a book about her, The Small Woman. It was
condensed in The Reader's Digest, and made into a movie called The Inn
of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman. When Newsweek
magazine reviewed the movie, and summarized the plot, a reader,
supposing the story to be fiction, wrote in to say, "In order for a movie to
be good, the story should be believable!" Miss Gladys Aylward, the
Small Woman, Ai-weh-deh, died 3 January 1970. ~ James E. Kiefer
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THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS
A film based on her life, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, was released in
1958. It drew from the book The Small Woman, by Alan Burgess. Although
Gladys Alyward found herself a figure of international interest, thanks to
the popularity of the film and television and media interviews, Aylward was
mortified by her depiction in the film and the many liberties it took. The tall,
Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman was inconsistent with Aylward's small
stature, dark hair and cockney accent. The struggles of Aylward and her
family to affect her initial trip to China were disregarded in favor of a movie
plot device of an employer "condescending to write to 'his old friend' Jeannie
Lawson." Also, Aylward's dangerous, complicated travels across Russia and
China were reduced to, "a few rude soldiers," after which, "Hollywood's train
delivered her neatly to Tsientsin." Many characters and place names were
changed, even when these names had significant meaning, such as those of
her adopted children and the name of the inn, named instead for the
Chinese belief in the number 8 as being auspicious. Colonel Linnan was
portrayed as half-European, a change which she found insulting to his real
Chinese lineage, and she felt her reputation was damaged by the Hollywoodembellished
love scenes in the film. Not only had she never kissed a man, but
the film's ending portrayed her character leaving the orphans to re-join the
colonel elsewhere, even though in reality she did not retire from working
with orphans until she was 60 years old. ~ Chad Dou
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Actress Ingrid Bergman found Jesus
Ingrid Bergman, the Academy Award-winning actress famous for her
role in the film Casablanca, got saved after playing the role of a
missionary to China, and the
irony is the missionary
didn’t want Bergman in the
part because of the star’s
well-publicized adulterous
relationship with an Italian
director.
When Bergman was named
to play the part of
missionary Gladys Aylward
in the 1958 movie The Inn of
the Sixth Happiness,
Aylward expressed her
disapproval, and she prayed
with Madam Chiang Kai-
Shek who, after praying, told
her God would “take care of
it.”
Aylward assumed “take care
of it” meant the infamous actress would be replaced. Instead, it
apparently meant that Bergman’s own heart would be transformed by
finding peace and joy in Christ.
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According to J. Christy Wilson, author of More to be Desired Than Gold:
A Collection of True Stories, Bergman became so deeply moved playing
the part of Aylward, she made a special trip to Taiwan in 1970 to meet
her.
Days before she arrived, however, Aylward passed into the presence of
the Lord in her sleep.
Bergman visited the
empty room where
Gladys had lived, and
fell down beside
Aylward’s bed
weeping, saying she
was unworthy to have
played the life of such
a woman of God.
Aylward’s coworker
then led Bergman
through the steps to
peace with God,
showing her that
Christ had died for her
sins. Bergman prayed
the prayer of
repentance and
received Jesus Christ
as her Savior and Lord.
~ Chad Dou
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THE CHALLENGE
by Gladys Aylward
I want to read one verse. Now, the verse itself is quite long. But I feel
that this is a verse which God has given to me for you. Its a verse which
challenges me every time I read it and makes me go back and wonder
whether I have done all I should, have I given Him all He asked, and
rededicate all over again from where I started. The verse is the tenth
verse of the third chapter of the Old Testament Book of Malachi.
Now, you'll find that this won’t, will not be a sermon. You've already
been to your churches, I hope, and had your sermons. Shall we just
listen as if God is speaking to us. Now, as I read this verse, I would like
to remind you that my Bible is Chinese; and so, as it comes to you, it will
come in a different wording because I’ll just turn it round from Chinese
back into English. Chinese is very beautiful, you know. Theres much,
much more of it. And so sometimes the verses are quite long, where in
your English Bible they're quite short.
The tenth verse of the third of Malachi: Thee great over and above all
one, Jehovah, who controlleth the host, leans, saying, if you will bring
into my storehouse your completed tithe, that my family may be
sustained, then you can prove me and see if I will not open wide
windows in heaven, pouring out blessings so many you will never be
able to use them all.
Thee great over and above all one. This in Chinese is a very beautiful
expression, which we use to speak of our God. You just cant use the
word God. A god to a Chinese is some idol sitting in a temple made of
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mud or wood or stone, or sticking on your kitchen wall on a piece of
paper. Our God is over and above, not only all other gods, but over and
above all, everything. He is thee greatest, thee most powerful, thee most
wonderful, thee great over and above all one. Here, when you preach or
you talk about your God, too, you have to, according to Chinese custom,
give as you would to anybody of any standing his status, his name, his
honor. English is very bare, you know.
And so here we have thee great over and above all one, Jehovah. And
what does He do? He controlleth the host. And I conclude that the hosts
are those things, which man cannot control. Man has gone a great
length since Zion, but he still has to get to the moon, and then he hasn't
controlled it. The sun, the moon, the stars, the wind, the sea He
controls. You cannot rule the wind. You can try all you know, but it still
blows the way it should. The sea still comes at that split second of the
tide every time it rolls in. He controls.
And yet this great over and above all one, Jehovah, who controlleth
these hosts, leans. The lovely little Chinese word here, I only wish you
understood it, [Chinese word], which means to lean out. And here He is,
as it were, leaning out of heaven. And He is speaking, leaning, saying, if
you will bring into my storehouse your completed tithe. And you're
going to find that this is something very definite, to be put in a very
definite place for a very definite purpose. There are no perhapses with
God, you know, no maybes, no later ons. Those words are not in Gods
vocabulary.
If you will bring into my storehouse. That is a definite place. And a
storehouse is somewhere where you store something. You put, in those
old days, those jars of pickles on the shelf for such time as Mother
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wanted to use them, and she reached them out at the appointed time. If
you will bring, says God, into my storehouse your completed tithe. And
you will find as I have found that your completed tithe, as mine, is this.
This is Gladys Aylward, the completed tithe, myself. All I possess, all I
have, my head, my heart, my feet, my hands, that that is me, my
completed tithe. And when God asks us to do something, He doesn't ask
for one hand or one foot or even one day. He asks for the complete you.
If you will bring into my storehouse your completed tithe, that my
family may be sustained. And if you will look in the dictionary where I
found this explanation, it says this means to uphold and to keep, as a
nurse a dying patient, as a mother her baby. So it isn't money, is it? A
dying patient has no need of your pound note. A tiny baby has no need
of your half crown. A dying patient needs the upholding care of the
nurse. The baby needs the comfort of the mothers arms.
If you would bring into my storehouse your completed tithe, that my
family may be sustained, this you can prove. Do you see what Ill do? I
will open windows in heaven, and I will pour out blessings. And there'll
be so many blessings you'll never be able to use them all up. And the
words here to describe this is an expression that in Chinese says
[Chinese phrase], which literally means the incoming tide of the sea,
the ever flowing of a fountain.
Now, it doesn't matter what you do down at the seaside. The tide always
comes. The water comes. You can put pipes and draw it off. You can take
buckets and bucket it out. You can build breakwaters. But the water is
still coming, and theres still much. This is what God promises in
blessing to you and me when we have put in a completed tithe.
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And so, friend, you and I have got to come down to realize that why we
have not got a blessing, either in our own life, in our family, in our
community, or in our nation, is simply because we have not fulfilled the
condition that God made. Now, you can say, well, thats all right Miss
Alyward, but remember this is law. Yes, it is law. Jesus said I came not to
do away with the law, but to finish it. And if you go back to the
dictionary, you will find that to finish something is to add to it. The
definition in the dictionary says, To finish a cake, you ice it. To finish a
hat, you trim it. To finish a garment, you put on the buttons.
So if you will bring into my storehouse your completed tithe that my
family may be fed and sustained and upheld and kept, I will open the
windows of heaven for you. It wont cost you anything. Im doing the
blessings. Im opening the windows of heaven. And then you are going
to say, well, I just don't know how to do that because I cant give up this,
or I cant do that. God isn't asking you to fulfill a law. He is asking you to
find the love of Jesus Christ and pass it on to someone else.
Tonight in this testimony I pray that you will realize that it is said for
one purpose only: that it may help you in some way, it will comfort
where you need it, it will challenge where you need it, it will urge where
it is very needed. But most of all, we shall be willing to go away and give to God
what we maybe have never given to Him before, our completed self. We have
most of us given just one part of ourselves, one piece of ourselves, or
just a little bit of our time. Friend, God does not want your bits and
pieces. God is not hard up. The silver and the gold is mine, the cattle on
a thousand hills. He produces. He made them. He created them. Hes not
hard up.
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And so if you think that God is waiting for you to put your sixpence in,
dear friend, He isn't. If you would bring yourself, I will open the
windows of heaven. And may God speak to us, pour out a blessing on
us, so that we can go out and bless someone else.
I went to China exactly 36 years ago. I went as a girl in my 20s, and I
really and truly believed that God told me to go. I was saved, not in my
home, Im terribly sorry to have to say, but after Id left my home and
gone out to work in London. And I was pulled into a church one night by
a group of young people who were standing outside that church door,
who had been saved during the previous week in some revival. And they
were so happy they thought they'd got everything in Jesus Christ, that
they were determined everybody else was going to find Him, too.
And I that night sat in that church and, for the first time in my life,
realized that Jesus Christ, son of the living God, had died for Gladys
Aylward. It shook me. It moved me. And it was going to alter my whole
life. I went out not realizing, first of all, what had happened inside me,
to rush home to the little place where I was living and throw myself on
the bed. And I said, God, if you're real, oh, please prove yourself to me.
And if you prove yourself to me tonight, I promise I will do anything
you ask. I had no idea what He was going to ask. But all I can say is this:
If I was to be put back tonight to that very moment, I would do the same
all over again, in that it has been just wonderful. We have a very
wonderful God and a very marvelous Savior.
That next year I floated around. And before I had joined a church, really
knew how to read the Bible or understand very much of prayer in any
what Id call concrete way, He called me to China. Why He called me, I
don't know. I only know He did. I was reading one day a periodical, and
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in it was an article on China that somebody had written because there
had come into the news just a few weeks or days previous, the fact that
the first airplane had flown over China. And the article pointed out that
Western civilization was going in at a great rate to this great land, and
yet there must be thousands, it may even go to millions, of people in
China who had never heard the gospel.
Well, this shook me as much as the fact that Jesus was real. And I
thought, why, how dreadful. Fancy having to go all through your life
without Christ. Oh, but how dreadful to come and have to die and not
know where you were going. Well, then, somebody ought to be just
doing something. I had not been brought up in circles that talked about
missionaries and mission fields and all this kind of thing. I didn't know
anything about that. And so I felt that somebody ought to be doing
something. Weren't there churches? Weren't there Bibles? Couldn't they
read them? When I discovered there weren't, well, then somebody
ought to be going and telling them. And I now believed that this is my
job, to see that at least one person went to China for Jesus Christ.
And so for that next year and two months, every time I went out, I
called on somebody, either a relation or a friend or somebody I knew,
and later on people who I didn't know but as names I saw in the paper,
with this one idea, that I could persuade them that they were the very
person who should be going to China for Christ. They were all very
clever and educated, and they had good positions. They were doctors;
they were nurses. Oh, they were wonderful. And to me they were just
the very people who should be going. Well, Im terribly sorry, not one of
them even took me in earnest. They all thought I was a bit funny in my
head and asked me such peculiar questions that I came out very
disappointed.
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And then, at the end of that time, I stood in a sitting room at home
while my sister was sending off an aunt of mine who had been to visit.
And I heard her say, Aunt Nell, be very careful. If our Glad knocks at
your door, don't open it because you might find yourself on the way to
China before long. And I decided that even my sister thought that I was
a little bit funny up here. And, well, perhaps I was. After all, it was a
queer idea, wasn't it, running around, trying to push somebody off to a
place you didn't know anything about, to do something you didn't know
anything about, to a people who you also didn't know anything about?
Yes, it was. Well, all right. But I just said, I know, Ill have one last try.
And then Ill throw the whole thing up, and Ill go back and enjoy myself.
My last try was my own brother. I went home, I caught him in the
kitchen, and I proceeded to tell him all that was in my mind. I promised
to pay his fare. I promised to keep him if he'd go. All he'd got to do when
he got there was to send me a letter with what he needed, and I would
send it to him. I would work. I would earn money, and this is where it
would go. And he laughed, and he laughed. And he thought it was the
biggest joke he'd ever heard. And he said, I don't know what you're
worrying about them Chinese for. Do you know anything about them?
No. Know where China is? No. Been reading any books about China?
No. Well, thats a queer thing, isn't it? Well, what you worrying about
them for? Because they do not know Jesus Christ, and I feel they should.
You wouldn't go? What, me? Oh, no. Im not interested.
And he made to run from the kitchen where we were standing. He had
already gone out from the door when he turned back and, very boy-like,
put his head round the door, and this is what he said: If you really
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elieve somebody ought to be going, why don't you go yourself? Bang
went the door, and away he'd gone.
I stood, I don't know how long. And there went on inside me that battle
that goes on inside, as many of us know this: Shall I? Is it me? Isn't it
me? All the fors, all the againsts, you know. It couldn't be me. Why, Id
never done anything really sensible. And I wasn't educated. I hadn't any
money. And I wouldn't know how to begin. I couldn't I didn't know
anything about sermons. I don't know anything about church. Oh, no.
Oh, no. And then, why don't you go yourself, if you really believe
somebody ought to go?
And eventually I just made God two promises. The first, dear Lord Jesus,
if you will open the way and show me how, I will go myself. The second,
I will never again ask anyone to do something that I believe you are
asking me, the person Gladys Aylward, to do.
The first promise I kept within the next year and a half by buying for
myself a third-class ticket on the Trans-Siberian Railway, packing a
suitcase, and going. The second promise I am still seeking, with his
help, to keep. And I praise God that, even although I didn't understand
all it was going to mean and all it was going to cost, I still went.
I wonder tonight, if God owned you, would you go? Oh, not to China.
This isn't a call to China. This is a call to give to God a completed tithe.
Only just the two years ago I realized that to pay my own fare was
something that was rather wonderful. I didn't think it was wonderful in
those days. To me it was just the ordinary conclusion. I went to work,
and I earned the money, and I could spend the money how I liked. And
so I paid my fare to China.
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Were come round to be lazy England. Young man, young woman, are
you a leaner? Your Great Britain is full of leaners. You know, those
people that lean on somebody. Well, you take care, because the leaning
post is going to fall one day. If you want to do something, go ahead and
ask your father for the money, hope he doesn't give it to you. Stand on
your own two feet. You're a man, and you're a woman; and you are
answerable to God, not to a man. Not even although that man be
somebody you love, like your father, or somebody you love, like your
mother. I never asked my parents. I told them I was going. It was my
money, and it was my life. And I believed I was doing what God wanted
me to do. And I praised Him. So although they did not understand all
that it was going to mean, they accepted and let me go.
I went across Europe, Poland, Russia, across to Japan and into the north
of China. And here I joined an old lady, Jeannie Lawson. Jeannie
Lawson was Scotch. She was 74, and she had spent most of her life in
China. And now I had come along. I am perfectly sure that if we had
met somewhere outside with the idea of joining up and working and
living together, we would have parted the next minute. But God is a
great God, you know, and He didn't allow that. He definitely intended
we were to be together, and so we did not meet until we were right in the
middle of China, and neither of us could run away.
Jeannie Lawson had been born in a tiny little fishing village in the north
of Scotland. Shed never been to a big city. She had never been to
England. I had been born and brought up in London and had never been
more than a few miles from my own home. She was 74; I was 25. We
knew nothing that the other one knew. Wed done nothing that the other
one had done. We couldn't. Age and youth, north and south, how could
we? And yet God had put us together. I did not learn to love Jeannie
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Lawson as Id love lots of other people in my life. But I have what I call a
little compartment in there of what I called a proud love.
Seventy-four, the old going for Jesus Christ. I come home to find most
74ers with their feet on the sofa, grumbling about all the good old days
that aren't here anymore, that if they thought very far they never were.
All their operations, all their bad headaches, all the things that haven't
been right. 74ers? Ive met them. I know. If you will bring into my
storehouse your completed tithe. God gives strength, courage, and
everything thats necessary. He says, Ill open the windows of heaven for
them and pour out blessings on them.
And friend, I pray that you will get down before God as some of us have
had to do and just have it out with Him. I pray again and again for some
good old pioneers, still going, even though old, for Jesus Christ.
We opened, Jeannie Lawson and I, in this small city hidden in the
Southern Shanxi Hills in North China, a mule inn. Now, this was not
because we loved mules because we neither of us knew anything about
mules anyway, or because we wanted to go into business or make money
or get important. Oh, no. But because sitting on the side of that
mountain one day, watching those men going over those mountain
trails with their animal trains, Jeannie looked up, and she said, You
know, darling, wouldn't it be wonderful if those men got Jesus? They'd
take Him and His love and salvation to places you and I would never be
able to go to. Lets go home and ask God what we do about it.
And home we went. And down on our knees we went on this mud floor,
and for the first time I heard somebody pray. Oh, Id been to prayer
meeting. Id been to church. But I had never heard anybody what I call
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atter at the gates of heaven for the souls of men in the way Jeannie
now battered for the souls of the men of Yanchang Xian. I, Im afraid,
was a little concerned, and I knelt rather timidly behind her. But I was
to praise God.
And although Jeannie never taught me how to eat Chinese food with
chopsticks, or anything about Chinese customs, or even gave me any
hints on how to learn the Chinese language, I learned how to pray and
win the souls of men for my Lord. Thats why she's got that little special
compartment down there in my heart. And I pray to those of you who
are getting old that somebody may keep you in their heart, not because
you have been beautiful or done some wonderful thing, but because you
have taught them how to pray.
Every night these men with their animal trains came into the inn. They
listened to a story from Jeannie, who sat on a little stool in the middle of
the courtyard while they finished their food or smoked their pipes. I
don't know the story. One, I did not understand Chinese. Even if I had, I
wasn't there. I was out in the yard, looking after the mules. Somebody
had to do this job, and there was no other job I could do. So off we went.
And again, there were times when I can honestly tell you I wished every
mule was in the bottom of the sea. Nasty, pesty, smelly, obstinate
things. And then, as I got irritated with the smell and the heat, my eyes
would be drawn to that moon gate, and I would forget all about them
and all the smell that they gave, and look at Jeannie calmly sitting there
and the men, the owners of the mules, leaning forward, trying to catch
every word of the story she was telling, the story of Jesus.
If you will bring into my storehouse your completed tithe. Friend, when
God asked Gladys Aylward to go to China, He didn't ask for one hand.
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He didn't even ask for two hands. He didn't even ask for one head. He
asked for everything. And this, by this, He got everything. And all I can
do is bring it.
Jeannie died when we had lived together in the inn for just one year. But
the very men who had come into the inn were our first Christians. They
weren't even men of that city where we lived. They'd come down from
the mountain trails with their pack mules.
And then, when Jeannie died, I now believed that, because I was a young
and single girl and alone, I should move. Girls didn't live alone
anywhere in those days, and certainly not in the middle of China.
China, anyway, has been a land of great convention. Women didn't go
out alone, however old. They were always accompanied by some male
servant, male member of the family. And if they hadn't got that, then
they didn't go out.
And so the consequence was I couldn't go out. I found that I was bound
to the courtyard simply because I had no chaperone and no one to
accompany me. And I longed to know the women. I longed to go into the
village. And I wanted to see outside. I was young. I was happy. I wanted
to be free. And now I was bound into one small courtyard. And every
night that courtyard was filled with animals and men.
Well, I didn't know quite what to do about this. I decided that I would
have to move. Where? Well, I didn't know. I didn't know anybody else.
And I supposed God would tell me where to go. And then two separate
thoughts came into my mind. The first was that, did God put a person
for one year in a particular place, pour blessings upon them, and then,
because it was uncomfortable, and yet knowing that they were the only
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eal Christian there, expect them to move? I didn't think so. God was a
god of love.
And the second thought was that I knew the only bit of language I had
learned while I was in this place was only understood just there. So that,
if I moved, I would have to start learning an entirely new Chinese, in
that I wouldn't understand anybody outside, and they wouldn't
understand me. I couldn't see it. No, I just couldn't. God doesn't do
things like that. God is a god of common sense as well as love. And He
knew I was the only Christian.
So I did something that I wouldn't advise you to do unless you feel very
definitely led. I decided that every day, when I read my portion, if I
came across in that particular portion the word go, Id get up and go. If I
didn't find the word go, then I just wouldn't leave. But I read day after
day after day after day, but I didn't find the word go. So I stayed. Rather
puzzled, a little concerned, I wondered, why is God keeping me right
here? Im lonely. All day long, all I could do was study the Chinese in a
very sort of odd way in that I’d no books and nobody to teach me and
really no talk, and then at nighttime get mixed up with the muleteers
and the men.
And then the door opened. I discovered that, because I had been born
outside in a land that was Christian, I was the only woman with
unbound feet. All our women had tiny little feet, just the size of my
middle finger. When the little girl is from two to four years old, and she
could properly balance on those baby feet and walk those baby steps,
her feet were bound down. By the time she was from 11 to 14, her feet
were finished. They were. They were crippled for life.
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Now, down in the capital of China, Chiang Kai-shek had become
Christian. And seeking to put on reforms all over the land he was now
head of, he made a law. The binding of women's feet was now to cease.
So that although I know other reforms went on, I don't know any more
than that this one law was going to mean more to my sisters and to me
than you in Great Britain will ever really realize. You do not know how
much we owe to this man and his courage and his stand for the faith
that is in Jesus Christ. And when you criticize, would you be very
careful? If you bring into my storehouse your completed tithe, you find
yourself in love with people you don't - you might not like, but whom
you know are your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.
This meant that every head man of a district had got now to find
somebody whom he could organize and pay and send round that
district to stamp this custom of foot binding out. And the Mandarin of
Yanchang Xian had decided that this was me. But I had decided that it
wasn't. And so the day he came with the intention of getting me to
accept this job, we stood on each side of the courtyard, getting no
nearer to each other, and refusing almost to listen to each other. I
wished him anywhere. Into my heart was the thought that I had gone to
China for Jesus Christ. And I didn't want to be mixed up with
governments and feet and politics and all these sorts of things. I wasn't
interested. I was interested in souls for the Lord of glory.
But, you know, I couldn't get rid of this man. He just stayed on and on
and on. And I didn't know what to do. And then I sent up a silent prayer
to the Lord to send him out. And something most amazing happened. It
seemed as if away in the distance somewhere was a little voice. It
sounded just like my brother. It wasn't. He was still here in England, and
I was in the middle of China. But the very words that he had slung
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across the kitchen at me all those years before, If you really believe
somebody ought to be going, why don't you go yourself? But feet are
nothing to do with me. Do you really believe they should bind their
feet? Well, no. Then why don't you do something about it?
And I suddenly went and accepted the job. Something I had never
dreamed of, thought of, wouldn't have thought of in a million years. I
became an employee of the Chinese national government, the Official
of Feet. I didn't get the job because I spoke good Chinese, which I didn't.
Or because I knew how to climb mountains, which again I didn't. Or that
I knew anything about the people of those mountains, which of course I
didn't. Simply because of the size of my feet. You see, friend, thats right,
you have to put just all of yourself in. God at that moment didn't need
my hands, but He needed my feet. And He got them.
I cannot tell you that the job was wonderful, that the pay was glorious. It
wasn't. You've never seen our women feet, or else you'd know. I only
know that I was happy because I believed I was doing what God wanted
me to do. And every village, every hamlet was mine. I was an official,
and I could just walk in. I could knock on your door and just go in. My
congregation were there. I had, when I went out on long journeys, four
men; on shorter journeys, two men labor from the local militia of our
own city. They were just little fellows that were so proud to be following
that woman who knew everything. Oh, if only they knew how much I
didn't know.
But we would arrive in a village, and I would stand on the middle of the
threshing ground which is also in the middle of every village, fetch
them all out. Everybody out. And I would wait and watch all the doors
opening and the people streaming from the inside. To men in the fields,
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fetch them in. Bring those children and sit them at the bench. And
gradually we would get organized. They had to be all there. Doesn't take
long to explain about feet, growing and smoking opium, does it?
And so wed start off. Shall we learn to sing? Sing? Government officials
singing? Oh, yes, we sing. But anyway, you do the same as I am doing.
And they learned to sing. And they listened to stories from this, the
book. And they learned that God had created men and women as little
babies, and their feet were the same because He expected them to
remain. I learned very early that every two feet had a heart and a soul
and lots of relations. As through the inn came the first Christians, so
now through my job came the first Christian. Whoever would have
dreamed that God was going to use what was then a heathen
government to open the mountains of South Shanxi to the gospel and
the love of Jesus Christ. There were no missionaries. There never have
been. There was just me. I wasn't a missionary. Im an official of the
government.
And then there came into my life something which I hadn't reckoned
on, thought of, or knew anything about. Because although I was happy,
earning my own living, holding my own and God was blessing in the
most amazing way. Whole villages had come out for Jesus Christ. I had
bonfire after bonfire of their idols and their ancestral gods and literally
sang in my heart as they knelt to take Jesus as their Savior. But I was so
lonely. I ached with loneliness.
I lived one weeks journey from the next white men. They were the only
people who knew anything about England. They were the only people
who knew anything about the fact that I had a mother and a father, and
I still loved them. The mountain people, they didn't know. I was just the
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official, you know. I was just that one sent by the living God to tell them
about Calvary. That I had a home and a mother and a father never even
entered their heads. And I longed, I longed to sing choruses. I longed to
talk and be very happy. And I didn't know how. I was so lonely.
And then I came to problems, not only in my own heart and my own
life, because we don't stay at being little boys, who grow into men. We
don't stay at being girls, we grow into women. And I had grown up. And
I - but because I was sort of facing problems also in the work. This
should have been a man. I couldn't go out alone without at least two
men who were my bodyguard, or the four men who were my bodyguard.
I would never have been allowed more than those few steps from my
front door. I couldn't talk to men on my own. I’d got to go and grab some
old woman or something to stand by. And you couldn't always find
anybody who was willing or had time.
So I puzzled. Well, I came to the final conclusion about the solution to
all the problems in the work, in my heart, and in my life, and in the
need of the city. The whole thing would be solved if I had a husband.
And it wouldn't be. I didn't know how to settle this. And so I took the
matter to God. And I prayed, Lord Jesus, you saved me, called me, used
amazing ways to pull me out and put me down here. Somewhere over
this great wide earth there is a young man. I don't know him. I don't
want to know him. I only know that, if you have chosen him, he is the
very person who will fit into this work and into me. Would you pull him
out? Would you do for him what you did for me? And here we will meet.
Well have the first Christian home, by loving you and loving each other,
and well have the first white babies these people will ever see.
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I really believed, because God answers prayer, that one day I would see
coming on a mule train or on a camel train a young man. He wouldn't
probably have ever heard of me, but that wouldn't matter. Wed meet,
and wouldn't it be wonderful? Oh, the joy of having somebody to climb
the mountains with, somebody to discuss things with, somebody to sing
with and to pray with. But he didn't come.
Do you think he should have come? Maybe you've never thought. And
tonight I further challenge: Do you believe that it was Gods will to leave
one woman all alone, right in the middle of what to you appears to be
nowhere? Do you? Did you do anything about it? Are you doing
anything about it now? Because there are people in the same position
right today. Are you bothered? Then you should be. And I challenge you
men and women to seek God’s Holy Spirit and ask Him to teach you
how to pray.
They are going to fail, as I nearly did, unless you do. I waited, and I
waited, and then decided that perhaps I was wrong. Maybe God didn't
want me to have a husband. Well, if He didn't want me to, then that was
that. But He wouldn't leave me alone. He was a God of love, and He
knew that I longed for fellowship and companionship. I’d pray for a
fellow worker. And so for the next year I did. And I waited, and I prayed
in the same way for that fine girl, who of course, as you know, never
came. I wonder if she should have come.
Young men, young women, in the name of Jesus Christ I challenge you
every one. What are you doing for Jesus Christ? What are you doing for
Jesus Christ? Not what are you doing for your career or yourself or even
your mother and father, but for Jesus Christ. If you will bring into my
storehouse your completed tithe, says God, then you can prove me, and
you'll see what I will do. But you haven't got your completed tithe in, so
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you haven't got any blessing. I do believe somebody should have come to
that part of the world because, you see, it was I who watched the people
who I couldn't get round to die without Jesus Christ.
Into that next year, when I realized that probably no one was coming,
Im afraid I just went lower and lower and lower. And tonight, friend,
may I remind you that, if you have a missionary, or if you know that
native worker or if you don't, then find one you should be praying
every day. They are in the forefront of the battle, and they need
upholding and caring. If you will bring into my storehouse your
completed tithe, for what purpose? That my family may be upheld and
kept. They're not asking for your money. They're asking for your
upholding care and your love.
And so one day there walked up the city of Yanchang a grim, hardhearted
woman. This is Gladys Aylward. Yes. She's not preaching about
a God of love because there isn't one. Love? You talk to me about love?
Hmm. Thats the God who picks you up and pulls you out and puts you
down in the middle of China and proceeds to forget all about you. He
doesn't care whether you're so lonely that you ache or what happens to
you or anything. He only, well, thats all it is to it; and, well, here we are.
Lord, if you want a grumbly, crotchety old maid, well, here she is. Ill
serve you. But you wait and see what you get.
My heart was filled with my own self-pity, my own self-righteousness,
my own pride, my own ideas, myself. Friend, are you there? Are you
there? I meet them every day in the London Tube, on the buses, in the
trains, the miserablest lot you could ever meet. They don't care about
anybody but me and mine and us and ours. Got the worst headache in
the world, haven't you. Well, Im telling you, you haven't. God does not
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demand. God does not push. God does not pull. He says if you will
bring. And when that tithe goes in, it is in Gods hands. And He will do
with you as He so desires in such a wonderful and loving way that you
will find you are usable wherever He puts you.
I walked up the city street, and sitting on the side of the road was an
ordinary mountain woman. Leaning against her knee was a very dirty,
miserable-looking little child. I discovered she was there to sell it. I
bought it. I didn't buy the child, as you now know, because I love
children, because I didn't. Or because I pitied it, because I didn't. Or
because I wanted it, because I didn't. I wanted my own baby. And my
heart at that moment was filled with my own self-pity and my own
ideas.
I bought it because I truly believed that Jesus Christ asked me to. As I
stood on that busy city street, it was as if somebody brushed past me.
And a voice somewhere behind me was saying, Buy it. Buy it for me. I
haven't any money. Oh, yes, you have. And I suddenly remembered that
in my pocket there lay a few Chinese coppers. Do you mean to say that
you want me to buy this with my own money? Yes. Because you see,
Gladys, you can only buy a body, but I can save its soul. Do you know
how I earned this money? Because this is my wages, you know. See that
mountain? I climbed up that mountain, almost on my hands and knees,
because it is too steep for an animal to climb up. When I got to the top of
that mountain, I called those village people together, and I shouted
myself hoarse. Thats my job. And I came down here to receive my
wages.
Yes, said the voice, I know. I know exactly how you feel. You see, Gladys,
one day I, too, climbed a mountain. And I, too, perspired all over
climbing. When I got to the top of the mountain, I didn't shout. In fact, I
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never even opened my mouth. I allowed those men to do exactly what
they liked with me. And they nailed me to a cross. Do you know what
for? Because, Gladys, I hadn't any money. In fact, I hadn't anything else
to give. So I gave myself, my warm life’s blood. I was 33.
And I awoke. I was 33. Friend, have you ever been to Calvary? Oh, not a
place. Can you close your eyes and know that God through the power of
His Holy Spirit will give you a vision of what Calvary cost the son of the
living God? Blood and sweat and tears. Murder. A most horrible death.
And it was for you. I did. Im never going to Jerusalem or Bethlehem. I
don't need to. I know it all. All I know is He brought me. And I just
realized that all I could do was to hand myself body, soul, and spirit
over to Him.
I bought the child. It was the first act of what was going to be the
complete submission of myself to Him. I never dreamed that I was
buying my first daughter, a little girl who was going to come into my life
and mean so much. From her there came, one by one, the others, all in
different ways, all under different circumstances, all so different in
their temperaments and characteristics. But they came. And I praised
God for them. He kept us. He fed us. He clothed us. We all lived in a
higgledy-piggledy mess in the inn. But we were very happy. And by the
time the war came, I had 40 children.
And so one day, looking down on this sort of all scrambling mess below,
I said, O Lord, I don't think I can bear any more. I believe 40 are a good
round number for one woman, and please don't send any more. But you
know, God doesn't always answer your prayer as you expect. That was
the year the war began. And then, being pushed in front of the everadvancing
Japanese enemy, came hundreds and thousands of lonely,
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pathetic refugees. And when they had passed through our little place,
there were always a few children left behind.
So the family grew and grew until there were over 80. Eighty of us
during those years ran around the mountains. He protected us. He kept
us. He fed us. And then we made a final getaway, came over the Yellow
River where He worked miracles for us, to make a new life for ourselves
in the province next door, Shensi. I watched the older ones go away to
join the army, the navy, or the air force. I watched the girls go away to
join Red Cross units and to be put into hospitals for wounded soldiers
and for wounded refugees. And each time I broke my heart, I praised
God for them and handed them over to Him. He had given to me to love
and to bring up. And I prayed and longed that they should go out to be
the testimony and the witness, which I longed to be in the place where
they were going. I don't know what became of lots of them. War
separates. War kills. War hurts. War breaks your heart. But we kept the
smaller ones of us together as long as possible.
And then, as you know, when the first enemy retreated, so a second
more wicked, more evil enemy swept in. And what we had not lost
under the first enemy, we now lost under the second. The Japanese
never took away our Bibles. The communists did. The Japanese did not
do what the communists did. And we watched with aching, breaking
hearts this evil, horrible thing take, bit by bit, everything we possessed.
Friend, tonight I don't know you. I don't know your thoughts. I don't
know that you love the Lord Jesus or that you know Him as your Savior.
But I challenge you, if you have any idea that communism has a good
point, it came from hell. And if theres any good in the devil, then theres
good in communism. Because thats its master. I hate it with every
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eath I breathe because it is my Lords greatest enemy. It has killed. It
has murdered. It has suppressed more love, more people, than any
other thought or religion has ever done since the world began. And all
that amazes me is that you can sit and listen and swallow the bait that
they're throwing out on you.
Great Britain, I challenge you to give to God your completed tithe and
get the blessings because, if you don't, you know whats going to land in?
Something that you least expect. Now, don't say nobody’s ever warned
you. And don't go away and say it cannot come here. Thats what we said.
I sat in a lovely little village on the side of the mountain and said, oh,
no, it couldn't come here. But I watched that village disappear, bit by bit,
brick by brick, man, woman, and child. If you haven't got the blessing,
watch, because you have not given to God what He asks.
We met, the family and I, for the last time in a field outside the city of
Chengdu, the capital city. I had decided it was time to go. I brought
danger on everybody who looked on me or even spoke to me because,
although I held a Chinese passport and was Chinese in my thought, in
my love, in my language, in my clothes and in everything but my face, I
still had a foreign face. I came out. I would willingly have died for
China, but God didn't ask death. He asked that I live. I came to England,
and then I turned my face back. I knew that I could not go again to the
place that had been my home in North China. It was closed. It was
behind an iron curtain.
And so I asked the Lord where He would have me go. I set off, and I
wandered around the East and into the Far East, had some of the most
amazing experiences, going into South Africa, Ceylon, Malaya, and all
around those fields, looking into every face. There might be my son. I
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might find my daughter. I might find a lonely Chinese. I did. In every
place. I found them there, not my sons and daughters in every place, but
Chinese who were lonely, who were refugees, who were longing for
freedom. God gave us blessing.
But there was no witness in my heart to stay in any of these places until
I arrived in Hong Kong. And here the whole place was absolutely
chockablock full of refugees. They literally were there in their
hundreds. Every place where you could put a body, there was one. Every
shop doorway. All the pavements down the sides of the roads. Even
down the middle of the road there were families living. And I who knew
what it felt like to be a refugee, felt this is what God has sent me for. I
will work among refugees.
And so I took a little room, and I sort of set my little house in it, as it
were, and I prayed and expected that God would show me what to do.
Well, He did, because He does. I didn't know in those early days how to
begin. I wandered among, up and down the rows, sitting beside those
heartbreaking families, nursing some of their dirty babies. I wasn't
really doing anything. I didn't know how to do it.
And then a miracle happened. I met one day in the street one of my own
boys. I thought he was dead. He thought I was dead. And now, right
there in the middle of all these great crowds of people, we met. And we
joined up. This has been a most wonderful partnership, my son Michael
and I. I praise God for him, for all he has done, all he means to me, and
all I know he means to God. We opened right there in Kowloon what is
now the Hope Mission. It was just then an empty shop. There was
nothing in it. And for the first couple of months everybody who came in
just either leaned against the wall or stood up. But they crowded in.
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God blessed us from the very moment that we stepped into the place.
And I praise God for all He has done in that little place. We have the
usual activities that go on. Every night there are these different groups,
and they come for their prayer meeting or their Bible study or their
band practice. They're terribly in earnest. Mostly they're young people
who have come out, leaving all their families behind. They're lonely. But
here they find fellowship. This is not only their spiritual home, but they
will tell you its their home. So that although they don't actually sleep
there, they count it as their home.
We now have in Hong Kong four rooftop schools. If you have seen on
television those great high resettlement buildings, and you know what
happens, you rent a rooftop. And you put around it a fence, or what I
call chicken wire, and you build a little lean-to in the middle, and you
open your school. The children live in the building beneath. They just
come up to the rooftop. Every resettlement building holds 1,000
families. We have four. The opportunity is wonderful. And if you see
them, your heart just sings with the fact that they are not only learning
to read and write and understand the things of the world, but they are
learning of Jesus Christ.
We last year opened what we call a poor school, which is for the
children of beggars. These have no status, no name. They cant take jobs
because they have no pass, and so they are beggars. Their children will
be beggars unless something is done. Well, they're not going to be
beggars if we can help it. And so, with others of like mind, these poor
schools have been opened. We have one. It was wonderful to go out
there just a little while ago and have their dirty little hands put on you,
and a little dirty face looking up and saying, Grandma, oh, Grandma.
Are you my grandma? Yes, dear, I am your grandma. Oh, how
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wonderful to have a grandma. But isn't it wonderful to have a Father?
Oh, yes. But He is up above, you know? And they in their simple way are
proving the love of Jesus Christ.
I did not remain in Hong Kong. I, because I again believed that I should
go one step further, went to the island of Formosa. Now, again, I didn't
know why I was going. I only believed that that was what I should do.
And when I got onto the island, I just didn't know, again, where to start.
But I arrived when the island was going through a wonderful time of,
shall I say, not actually spiritual revivals, but revivals of all kinds. All
sorts of reforms were going on. They were unifying the language, land
reform, schools were being built and opened, so that things that never
could, and I do not now think ever will happen on the mainland of
China, are really happening in Formosa.
And I just, as it were, went down into the middle of it and had a most
wonderful time. And while I was having this time of student retreats,
revival meetings, conferences, conventions, which I had sort of come
into because, when I had come out of Shanxi into Shensi and discovered
that our mountain dialect would not be understood down there on the
plains, I had learned Northern Mandarin. And oh, how grateful I am to
God for letting me learn it while I was still, anyway, younger than I am
now, and that it was all ready to go into in Formosa, where it is now the
official language. And imagine, I arrived speaking the official language.
To me it was just overwhelmingly wonderful.
And then, right in the midst of all this busyness, God, as it were, put a
full stop. I went home one night to the little ruin that I was living in to
discover that somebody had already been in it. They had not stolen
anything, but they had left right there in the washbowl, which was on a
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little chair inside the room, a newborn baby. And I picked up the bowl
with the baby in it, and I said, oh, no, Lord, theres some mistake here.
Now, I do not want a newborn baby, and you know that I have nothing
to feed it on, clothe it in, or any time to look after it. And also may I
remind you that mothers are young. I am well over 50. But there was no
answer from heaven at all, just as if God was deaf.
But as I was standing with the bowl with the baby in my hands, it was
just as if I could see myself all those years ago, standing in the kitchen
of my own home. Dear Lord Jesus, I promise I will never again ask
anyone to do something that I believe you are asking me, the person
Gladys Aylward, to do. So I took the baby. God worked more miracles
for that baby in its first few days than He's worked for you and me in all
our lives. So it lived. But before long there were other babies. People got
the idea that I loved babies. And so every time I came home, well, I knew
what was going to happen.
And now somebody told me that outside, in a very lovely place, from
our city, Beitou on the side of the mountain, there was an old hotel. I
took it, rented it, the Gladys Aylward Children's Home. It has been
filled, up to last year, with children of all kinds, all sorts, and all
conditions. Orphans of all sorts. Lonely, pathetic, lost, abandoned
babies God blessed in a very wonderful and mighty way.
And then, four years ago, I came to a very important time in my life. I
had my 60th birthday. Very important in China, you know. And of
course there were great celebrations. And all the important people, you
see, gave me honors and so forth. But at the end of that week my family
arrived. Now, the family is rather large. And they filled everywhere. In
fact, they swamped the hotel, and they were in everybody's house and
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so forth because, you see, the family have grown up and married, and
then they have got children. And so there are they go on and on, you
see. And there they all were.
And on this night, after all the grandchildren had paid their honors and
everything, are just the family, my sons and my daughters. And my
eldest son gave a speech. He is an officer in our Chinese Air Force, and a
very, very fine Christian in that force. And now our honorable mother
has got to the honorable age of 60. And so we the family have decided
that it is time that she had a rest. She has spent all her life looking after
such as us, who were just little bundles of nothing that she picked up on
the side of the road and has loved and cared for. And then of course you
know the usual all sort of thing that would go on. And so now we have
decided, and we've got a little house, and we have even sent outside and
bought a bed. We don't have beds in Formosa, as you know. And so we
are expecting that our mother will now take her rest and sleep every
night and all night on the honorable bed.
Well, I thought this was a very wonderful idea. And I went and took up
my residence in the little house. It was quite small, but it was very nice.
And I slept very comfortably on the honorable bed. For one whole
month. At the end of that month, one of those very boys had been
doing accounts of the orphanage with me. On his way out, very late at
night, to go back to the orphanage up the hill, his foot kicked against
what he thought was a bundle of rubbish just outside my door. He
picked it up. He was on his way up the street to put it into the bin, which
is there for the purpose, when he thought he felt it move.
He was very annoyed that somebody would tie up a little dog or a cat
and leave it on our doorstep. He brought it back. But when it was
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opened, it was neither cat or dog, but a baby. I believe the dirtiest baby
we've ever had. The sickest baby Ive ever had, anyway. It just breathed. I
decided that to wash it would kill it. So I took it to the kitchen. I rubbed
it all over with cooking oil, wrapped it in a towel, and took it to bed with
me. Decided that in the night I would feel beside me a little cold lump.
All I would have to do would be put it out onto the floor, and then it
would have died. Id have done my best anyway. But I slept all night. And
in the morning it was still alive. It lived all that week. Lived into the
next week. Into the third week. And now I woke up, well, wasn't it going
to die? Why didn't it die? I didnt know. Because it didn't seem to move
much. It didn't cry or anything. It just didn't die.
And so I just got hold of two boys from the orphanage, and I said, now,
listen. You go straight down to the police because everybody but the
people who should know, know about the baby. The neighbors had all
been in. The family had all been in. Even some important people from
the government had been in. But the police didn't know, and they ought
to know. And so I said, well, go and report it to the police. And on your
way back you'd better drop into the registry place and just register. You
can think up a name on your way. Its going to die anyway, so why worry
what name you give it?
Imagine my amazement when they came back with the paper with the
name of the baby on it, to find they had christened it, or shall I say
registered it, as Ai-Chi-Guang. Now, Ai-Chi-Guang literally means the
first of a new Aylward family. Well, Ai-Chi-Guang was just a bundle in
a bed for nearly one year. Didn't do anything. Just was there. Just
breathing. Whether he knew anything, understood anything, we didn't
know. There was no voice. There was no nothing of what we would call
sense at all. And I nearly broke my heart.
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And it came to Christmas, and our babies were so lovely, and we were
going to have such a wonderful Christmas. And I stood looking at them,
and they were all gurgling at the Christmas tree and the little silver
paper things wed saved to hang on, you know. And then I went home to
my little house, to Chi-Guang, who maybe would never know a
Christmas tree, would never know that Jesus had ever come or that He'd
ever died.
And I just picked him up, and I said, O Lord, I do not believe that this is
your will. Surely you cant just expect a little breath to go on in a body
like this. Please will you answer my prayer. I will never ask you for
anything again, if you don't want me to. But would you take him back to
heaven? Or would you heal him? And God healed him.
Here tonight is Ai-Chi-Guang. Whos been naughty. Who's even taken
his clothes off in the book. And to you who have had anything to do
with him or seen him, you know very well that, when God heals, He
really heals. Because here he is. There are no spots on him, let me tell
you. We have been here just over four months, and he's learned enough
English to carry on quite comfortably without me and get lots of things
that I don't know anything about.
We come back to the beginning. If you will bring into my storehouse
your completed tithe, that my family may be sustained, then you can
prove me. And do you see what Ill do, Ill open windows of heaven for
you. Ill pour out blessings. And friend, He has. We have in this new
family 26. And then to climax the whole thing, just two years ago God
sent to me my fellow worker. And my heart was filled with a
tremendous joy. And I thought of all the lonely years in Shanxi, when I
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had longed and pleaded, first for the husband and then for the fellow
worker, and they had neither of them come. And I felt, this is worth
waiting for. Here was somebody who was going to fit in in a most
wonderful way.
And I praise God for keeping me waiting and then sending to me dear
Kathleen, who although she had never nursed a baby, knew nothing
about orphanages, and didn't know anything about the mission field,
but who certainly loves the Lord and has fitted in, in a way which to me
has been literally amazing. I have left her there with those babies. And
my heart is absolutely at peace about them, and her, and all that is
connected with the work that doesn't belong to me, but to God.
And so tonight, friend, as we have thought of all these various things
that I in a very simple way have tried to fit together, to not just prove
how wonderful God is, but to prove what you can get for yourself if only
you would give Him your completed tithe. I wonder why people don't.
Tonight would you let God speak to you? Would you allow Him to come
right up close and in your ear challenge your heart? Because I truly
believe that there are many of us here whom God wants to teach how to
pray. I also believe that there are many who should be doing at least
something for Him. Maybe there are those who should be going. And
there are certainly those who should be giving. What you give, I don't
know. Nothing to do with me. But it just isn't money. Its yourself.
If you would bring into my storehouse your completed tithe, that my
family may be sustained and kept, then, says the great over and above
all one, Jehovah who controlleth the host, I will open the windows of
heaven for you, and you'll get so many blessings, you cant use them up
because I will just keep on pouring them out. Oh, aren't we miserable.
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Tonight, as we bow our heads in a word of prayer, shall we ask God
what He is going to ask of us? Would you be willing? Mothers, if God
asked you for your son or your daughter, would you be willing? Young
men, young women, if God asks you to go, would you go? Or have you
some reserve of your particular place when He calls?
You have to go where He puts you. That jar of pickles in your pantry is
put where Mothers hand wants it to be put. And in the same way you in
Gods storehouse are in the hand of God, to be put down in the place
that He knows, and only He knows, you are going to be useful in. God
did not send me to Africa. He knew I wouldn't be any good in Africa. He
didn't send me into the slums of London. He knew I wouldn't be any
good. He sent me into the middle of China because He knew Id fit in
there. And I believe that in this way He does so with each one of us.
If we are not in the way of His blessings, then would you like to go home
and see why, and how you can get back and get those blessings? Friend,
you live in the miserablest place on earth, Great Britain. You're the
biggest lot of grumblers there is. And you've got nothing to grumble
about, may God challenge you. Do you realize how many hungry people
there are in India tonight? Have you ever been hungry? Do you realize
how many people still live in refugee camps? Have you ever lived in a
refugee camp? Do you know how many people live under the iron hand
of communism? Have you ever lived under the iron hand of
communism? Have you ever lived through an earthquake, like Turkey is
right now? Do you know anything about a typhoon? Do you know
anything about an enemy soldier standing in front of you when you're a
woman? Do you? Of course you don't.
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You think you know anything? No. You don't know sorrow. You don't
know suffering. May God break your hearts, and through those
breaking hearts pour His love. Friend, tonight there is one way to get
into Russia. Shall I tell it to you? Prayer. God sent Holy Spirit prayer.
There is one way to save a child in China tonight. On your knees with
believing Holy Spirit prayer. May God teach it to you.
There is going to come a day, friend, when you stand before Gods
judgment throne, and He's going to say, what have you got? Must I go in
empty handed, thus to meet my Savior so? Have you got anything? He
doesn't want your hat, or your pie, or your car, or your land. He wants you
and the souls which you should be catching for Him.
If you're afraid, can you hear the sob in Gods voice, leaning out of that
wonderful glorious heaven? Oh, if only they would give to me
something to use that my family that is dying without me might know
of my love. God has given to you your privilege of living in freedom, of
being able to read this book when and where and how you like, of
praying anywhere, how and when you like. He hasn't given this
privilege to millions. No man in Russia tonight or China tonight can
pray where and how he likes. He lives under the hand of the devil.
As we pray, would you let God deal with you as He's had to deal with
me? Friend, I have not done what I wanted to. I have not eaten what I
wanted or worn what I would have chosen. I have not lived in a house
that I would have ever looked at twice. I longed, as Ive told you, for a
husband and baby and security and love, and He didn't give it. He left
me alone for 17 years with one book, a Chinese Bible. Thats how I know
it and no other. I don't know anything about your latest novels, pictures,
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theaters. I live in a rather out-of-dated world. And I suppose you say,
well, its awful miserable.
Friend, Ive been one of the happiest women that have ever stepped this
earth. Ive had a great family of someone else's children, who I’ve loved
with a great love because Jesus Christ loved me, and who Im now
receiving love back from. I’ve a wonderful family. And they are now
going into the places that I will never go to. They are doing things that I
can never do. Its a fact, for God promised the heavens opening and the
blessings tumbling out.
Shall we pray? Dear Father, accept what we are now going to give to
thee. Something that is precious. Something that we've kept, but we are
now going to hand over: our pride, our jealousy, our self-centeredness,
our prayerlessness. Our silly little empty nothing. All the things we've
got ourselves tied up in.
O Lord, give us freedom, freedom in thee, that you might be able to pick
us up and put us down and use us when and where and how you like,
that someone might know how much you love them. We pray right now,
not only for ourselves, but for those whom we should be upholding and
keeping, those lonely missionaries, sick, fragile, tired of the heat or the
cold, surrounded by hedonism, superstition, cruelty, and sin.
O God, were very near to you. We ask thee that you work to teach us how
to pray for the men in Russia, the children in China, people behind iron
curtains, behind walls. O God, give us visions. Make us to dream
dreams, that we may know something of Calvary, what it cost, and a
lost soul. That we may learn, not only how to pray, but how to do, how to
be, how to go, and how to give.
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Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Gladys Aylward,
whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of China. Raise up in this
and every land heralds and evangelists of your kingdom, that your Church
may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ. ~ Amen
Link to an audio tape teaching of Gladys, that was found in a cabinet
at an orphanage in central China. https://youtu.be/8q3ldpc846w
Gladys Aylward vintage sermon: The Story of One Woman's Life
https://youtu.be/bevn3n1YH30
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Gladys Aylward Quotes
Oh God, here's my Bible, Here's my money. Here's me. Use me, God.
If God has called you to China or any other place and you are sure in
your own heart, let nothing deter you.Remember, it is God who has
called you and it is the same as when He called Moses or Samuel.
The eagle that soars in the upper air does not worry itself how it is to
cross rivers.
Here was I worrying about my journey, while God was helping me all
the way. It made me realize that I am very weak; my courage is only
borrowed from Him, but, oh, the peace that flooded my soul; and
although I know that I may be held up at the border, I am at peace
within, because I know that He never faileth.
Life is pitiful, death so familiar, suffering and pain so common, yet I
would not be anywhere else. Do not wish me out of this or in any way
seek to get me out, for I will not be got out while this trial is on. These
are my people, God has given them to me, and I will live or die with for
Him and His glory.
I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done in China...I don't know
who it was...it must have been a man...a well-educated man. I don't
know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing...and
God looked down...and saw Gladys Aylward...and God said, 'Well, she's
willing.’
“Remember, it is God who has called you, and it is the same as when He
called Moses or Samuel.”
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Elisabeth Elliot recalls a conversation she had with Gladys Aylward
after hearing her speak in Canada:
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” (Elliot).
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