The Parlor Maid Who Could Not Stop Hearing China

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was scrubbing floors in a London townhouse when something she could not name kept pulling at her heart. She had no education, no connections, no money. But every time she opened her Bible, every time she heard a missionary speak, the same insistent whisper returned — China.

She applied to the China Inland Mission. They rejected her after a probationary period, saying she lacked the aptitude for language study. Most people would have taken that as a closed door. But the voice would not stop.

Then a letter arrived from Jeannie Lawson, a seventy-three-year-old missionary in the remote mountain town of Yangcheng, looking for a young woman willing to join her. Like Eli recognizing what young Samuel could not — that it was the Lord calling — Lawson's invitation gave Gladys the framework to finally answer.

She saved every penny from her parlor maid wages and bought a one-way ticket on the Trans-Siberian Railway. She arrived in Yangcheng with almost nothing. Within years, she had opened an inn for muleteers where she told Bible stories each evening, adopted orphans, and eventually led over a hundred children on a harrowing trek across the mountains to safety during the Japanese invasion.

Samuel heard the voice three times before he understood who was speaking. Gladys Aylward heard it for years. But the God who called a boy in the temple at Shiloh was the same God who called a parlor maid in London — and neither voice fell silent until it was answered. "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."