The Parlor Maid Who Crossed Mountains

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London earning barely enough to survive. The China Inland Mission had rejected her — too old at twenty-eight, too uneducated, too unlikely a candidate for foreign service. By every reasonable measure, her dream of reaching China was dead.

But Gladys saved every spare penny from her wages, bought a one-way train ticket across Siberia, and arrived in the remote province of Shanxi with almost nothing. She learned Mandarin, earned the trust of villagers, and opened an inn where she told Bible stories to mule drivers passing through the mountains. The local mandarin appointed her the official foot inspector, tasked with ending the practice of foot-binding — giving her access to homes across the region.

Then war came. When Japanese forces advanced in 1938, Gladys led over one hundred orphaned children on a twelve-day march across mountain passes to safety. She had no supplies, no military escort, no plan beyond trusting that God would provide at each turn. And He did — immeasurably more than a London parlor maid could have asked or imagined when she first felt the call to China.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians that God "is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us." Gladys Aylward asked for passage to China. God gave her a hundred children's lives and a legacy that still echoes across continents.