The woman standing on the train platform cuts an unusual figure. She stands only two inches short of five feet tall. She wears a bright orange dress and a large fur overcoat—a strange fashion choice since the October weather isn’t cold enough for an overcoat. She holds two suitcases, both old and worn out. At first glance, she looks like she might be homeless.
But despite her dowdy appearance, Gladys Aylward is a remarkable woman. Her fellow passengers would never imagine that this little woman will become known around the world. But inside her heart burns a fire that will not be quenched. China. Whatever it takes, Gladys is going to China.
Gladys Aylward was born in 1902—the same year, incidentally, as Eric Liddell.
In her late twenties, when Gladys learns of the need for missionaries in China, she quickly becomes convinced that God wants her to go to China as a missionary. So Gladys enrolls in the London training school for the China Inland Mission. But Gladys struggles. She’s a slow learner and she has a hard time keeping up with the other missionary trainees, many of whom are much younger than her. Eventually, the director of the training school tells her that she simply can’t continue the training program. She’s not cut out for missions work.
But though she is discouraged, Gladys won’t give up that easily. If the China Inland Mission won’t accept her, she will find her own way to China.
Gladys looks into her travel options. To try to save the ninety pounds she will need to sail from England to China seems like an insurmountable task for Gladys, but she discovers—to her great joy—that she can get a train ticket for almost half that price. For forty-seven pounds, Gladys can travel by rail across Europe through Russia into China. But there is a wrinkle. An ongoing armed conflict between Russian and Chinese forces in eastern Siberia means that Gladys will have to pass through a battleground if she’s going to complete her journey.
But she is not cowed. For about a year, she works as a housemaid to save the money she needs for her train fare. She also prepares herself for missionary life. She practices sharing the gospel, taking frequent trips to Hyde Park in London where she stands up on a soapbox and loudly proclaims the truths of the gospel to passersby. She also reads all she can about China, learning about the culture and customs of the Chinese people.
In that year of preparation, Gladys gets in contact with a woman named Jeannie Lawson. Mrs. Lawson is a missionary in China in her mid-seventies. She plans to continue her missions work until she dies, but she needs someone to carry on the work after her death.
Gladys write to Mrs. Lawson offering to be her ministry partner and protégé. Mrs. Lawson accepts her offer and the two women agree to meet in the town of Tientsin when Gladys arrives in China.
Gladys has a destination and a purpose and soon, she also has a ticket. She’s headed east. On the day of her departure, her family and a few dozen others gather at the Liverpool train station to wish her well as she sets off. Surely, some of them expect that she will die on her way to China. But if they try to dissuade her, they ought to know better. Nothing short of an act of God can stop Gladys now. In the bustle before her departure, one of the well-wishers hands Gladys a small slip of paper. Gladys takes it and, without looking at what it says, she slips it into her Bible. She lifts her battered luggage and climbs aboard the train. In about two weeks, Gladys will be in China, ready to begin the work she had dreamed of for so long… or so she hopes.
The first week of Gladys’s journey is mostly mundane and uneventful, but as she nears the eastern part of Russia, two things begin to change. First, the temperature drops. Gladys is grateful for the fur coat that looked so ridiculous back in Liverpool.
The group of passengers around Gladys also begins to change. More and more civilians disembark and Russian soldiers begin to fill the train cars. As the train nears the eastern reaches of Siberia, Gladys finds that she is the only civilian—and the only woman—still on the train.
When the train arrives in the town of Chita near the Chinese border, the conductor urges Gladys to disembark, warning her that if she stays on the train she will likely be killed as they approach the battleground. Gladys refuses. She is determined not to leave the train until she reaches her destination.
The conductor shrugs and the train chugs on. When the train stops again, Gladys can hear gunfire in the distance. She looks out and realizes they are not in a town this time. The train has stopped because it simply cannot continue without running right into the battle raging farther down the tracks. Gladys soon learns that it will likely be weeks before the train moves again in either direction.
So Gladys does the only thing she can. She wraps her fur coat around her, picks up her bags, and begins to walk back up the tracks toward the town of Chita.
Miraculously, Gladys makes it all the way back to Chita on foot. She is exhausted and frozen when she finally stumbles onto the train platform and collapses. Russian officials discover her there and—not interested in a British woman living as a vagrant in their town—they throw her into a cell.
Inside her cell, Gladys is bitterly cold, desperately hungry, and deeply discouraged. Has she made it this far only to rot away in a Russian jail? With no one to turn to for advice or encouragement, Gladys turns to the one place she has left. She opens her Bible. When she does, a small slip of paper falls out. It’s that paper someone gave her two weeks ago back in England. She picks it up and reads its short, simple message.
“Be ye not afraid of them, I am your God”.
Just ten words—a message adapted from Nehemiah 4:14. But Gladys finds deep solace in those words as she repeats them to herself again and again in her cold, lonely jail cell.
The Russian officials move Gladys from Chita to the city of Vladivostok. There she is, ostensibly, free, but she knows the Russian officials are keeping an eye on her and they are not about to let her take off for China. With no money and no freedom, Gladys seems just as far from China as she was when she began her journey.
Then, one day, a young woman brushes past Gladys at her hotel. As she passes, the woman softly whispers, “Don’t say anything and follow me.” Gladys follows the mysterious woman, who warns her that she is in danger. She tells Gladys that evening she will receive a knock at her door. There will be a man at the door. Gladys must follow him. The instructions are vague and Gladys has no way of knowing whether or not she should trust this mystery woman, but this might be her only chance to escape from Russia.
That night, at 2:00 am, the man arrives. Without a word, he turns and gestures for Gladys to follow him. Silently and quickly, she complies. The man leads her through the town to the docks. There, Gladys meets the young woman from the hotel. The woman points to a ship, telling Gladys that it is headed for Japan and she needs, by whatever means necessary, to secure passage on that ship. Gladys has no money or valuables to offer, but the captain shows mercy on her when she explains her plight and he allows her to board.
Gladys is treated kindly in Japan and there, she secures passage on a steamship headed for China.
Gladys finally arrives in Tientsin. But there, she is disappointed to learn that Mrs. Lawson, perhaps because she did not expect her to make it all the way to China, is not waiting for her as they had agreed. Gladys will have to travel for another month by train and bus to Tsechow. That’s where Christians in Tientsin tell her she will find Mrs. Lawson.
Gladys learns much about Chinese life during her month-long journey from Tientsin to Tsechow, and when she finally arrives in Tsechow almost two months after setting out from Liverpool, she is relieved when she approaches the mission house and sees a kindly old woman standing at the door. Finally, her work can begin. Gladys shakes the woman’s hand and tells her, “Mrs. Lawson, I’m Gladys Aylward from London.”
The woman smiles warmly, then replies, “You’re mistaken, dear. I’m Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Lawson isn’t here.”
How? After all her trials, after God has taken her through so much, how can it be that Gladys’s journey is still not at an end? If God wants her to be a missionary, why is He putting her through so much before she can even begin the work?
I’m not sure if young Gladys Aylward had a life verse, but I think, in hindsight, it could have been Ecclesiastes 9:10, which begins “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might…”
Gladys was not especially smart, or pretty, or talented. But she knew how to work hard and Gladys didn’t give up easily. Her spirit of perseverance kept her going when she faced rejection, doubts, and threats on her life on her way to China. Her endurance would also serve her well in the hard years of missions work that lay ahead.
In Colossians 3, Paul is exhorting servants, telling them how they ought to serve those who rule over them. But his message is for all of us.
Colossians 3:23-24 “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.”
I fear that in a comfortable modern society where we are free to worship and practice our faith as we please, many of us as Christians have lost our ability to persevere. We have forgotten how to do hard things just because they are the right thing to do. Do we really know what it’s like to keep doing something because it’s what God wants even though the tide seems to be against us?
We have many examples in Scripture and history of God’s servants who kept doing what they knew was right even when it seemed the whole world was against them. Our greatest example? Our Savior, Jesus Christ.
We can run with endurance as we look to Jesus “the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)
Jesus told us that the one who truly wants to follow Him must “deny himself, and take up his cross” (Matthew 16:24). Hardship is not necessarily a sign that we are doing the right thing, but it is often part of God’s perfect plan as we persevere in following Jesus.
Though we live in a day when most of us face very little opposition, I think we could all use more of the spirit of Gladys Aylward, a spirit perhaps best summed up in the words of an old hymn:
“Though none go with me, still I will follow; No turning back.”
Learn More
Read Gladys Aylward: The Adventure of a Lifetime by Janet & Geoff Benge
or Gladys Aylward: Missionary to China by Sam Wellman
Exempla 