Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman Paperback – June 1, 1970

The movie made from this woman's life, The Inn of the 5th Happiness, was great. This book is even better. There are more miracles told of, and of course it is free of any Hollywood add-ons. This is the story of a parlor maid who feels a call, of all things, to go to China. She meets only discouragement and is told by a local missionary board that she is not qualified. But Gladys audibly hears from YHWH that she is to go. She saves her pennies and takes a train, alone, from England to China!On the trip Gladys just barely escapes being abducted by greedy and lascivious (to put it mildly) Communists who think she could be useful as they think a missionary is a machinist. When she gets to China - where she speaks not one word of the language - all she has to greet her is a 73 year old missionary living in virtual poverty who had prayed for a young woman to come and replace her. Good thing. The elderly lady died in about a year. Gladys became an inn keeper for mulemen, and a government foot inspector (the Chinese law was saying women could no longer bind their feet.)Wherever she went she preached the Gospel fearlessly and won many converts, including the local Mandarin who became a great friend of hers. Along the way she gave up her dream of one day marrying and having her own children. But she had plenty of children - I think about 20 officially, some abandoned, orphaned, or bought from those who were going to sell them for evil purposes. She also managed to get 100 children - 3 to 16 years old - over "impassable" mountains, mostly alone and mostly with only the meager food they could beg in their war ravaged area. They needed to reach a Christian missionary orphanage and did so - though at the cost of Glady's health in many ways. As always, people who give up all to follow Abba's call are very humbling, and when they triumph against all odds, we are inspired. What was also encouraging to me was that Gladys was not a bulwark of faith every minute. She sometimes questioned our Heavenly Father, and called out to Him in desperation like all the rest of us. And just as with us, He often answered her prayers at the very last minute!Though this little missionary had many hardships and trials, I'm sure she would not trade with those of us who sit reading her story in luxury in our climate controlled homes, with full bellies. I guess only those who live so fully dedicated to Yahusha ever really know what true adventure is, or what the truest fulfillment really is."When the saints go marching in" I would guess this humble little lady will be among those placed at the head of the line.

May God awaken the sleeping churches of the west. May the simplicity of faith revealed in this story rebuke our love of comfort and the praise of man. And, may the same Jesus, who revealed Himself to Gladys Aylward, be known again in His churches in the west. Amen and amen.

I saw the movie, "The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness", when I was young. Even though I had no spiritual background, it touched me deeply. I am now 76 and found the movie on Prime. I watched it again, and it again touched me deeply as I am now a Christian since age 20. Then, I found this autobiography by Gladys Aylward. It is quite different than the movie but so good. It continues until after the war was over, and she did so much more than the movie showed.

A courageous young woman goes to China on her own to be a missionary. One of the most amazing books I've ever read.

A biography about Gladys Aylward entitled The Small Woman: Gladys Aylward by Alan Burgess, was published in 1957, and the movie The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness (1958) starring Ingrid Bergman was based on this book. But Gladys wasn't pleased with some of the liberties that were taken and important things that were changed or left out, so she wrote her own book: Gladys Aylward, The Little Woman.As a girl, Gladys became burdened for the millions in China who had never heard of Jesus. The mission society she applied to felt she was unqualified to be sent, so she determined to save money by working as a maid in order to pay her own way there. In less than a year, God provided what was needed, including the person with whom she would work - a 73-year-old retired missionary widow. Gladys left England in 1932, with her few belongings and no money, and traveled to China by way of the trans-Siberian railway through Russia. She found Mrs. Lawson, who was running a mule inn for traveling merchants, and it became Gladys' job to invite the travelers to stay there."Soon our inn became known from Hopeh to Honan. Muleteers were the newsmen of North China and they made it known that the inn of the foreign ladies was clean, the food was good, and at night they had long stories told free of charge."And so it was that Mrs. Lawson and Miss Aylward used their inn to share the Good News of Christ with the Chinese. But within the first year of Gladys' arrival in China, Mrs. Lawson died, and Gladys was left to run the inn, and without Mrs. Lawson's financial support, their funds quickly began to dwindle. Once again God provided and in an amazing way. One day the Mandarin, the local head official, came to Miss Aylward with a proposal:"By government decree the ancient custom of the binding of women's feet must cease in China. The government is holding me personally responsible for stamping out this ancient custom in this part of the province... A man cannot inspect women's feet; a woman must do it. And in all this district there is no woman with unbound feet except you. Will you become the inspector of feet?...Also, from the standpoint of this government decree, your teaching is good, because if a woman becomes a Christian she no longer binds her feet."And so it was that Gladys was provided a mule for transportation, two soldiers to accompany her, a salary, and the opportunity to travel from village to village to share the gospel - simultaneously liberating the feet of many women as well as the souls of many Chinese. By this time Gladys had taken on Chinese dress and customs and knew the local dialect. In 1936 she became a legal citizen of China with the name Ai-weh-deh, which meant "virtuous one."Gladys Aylward spent 16 years in China, ministering to and sharing the Gospel of Christ with war refugees, orphans, prisoners, lepers, university students, and even Tibetan monks. In 1938, when her region was being bombed and invaded by the Japanese, she alone led 100 orphans over mountains to safety, a feat for which she is well-known. Gladys Aylward never expected to return to England, but then God placed a burden on her heart when a young Chinese man suggested that they pray for the heathen land of England where, in spite of its prosperity, "sport, film stars, wealth, amusement - all are far more important that God.""From that time I knew that I must go back to the land of my birth. I must return to do what I could to dispel the spiritual lethargy that had overtaken so many. I must testify to the great faith of the Chinese church. I must let people know what great things God had done for me."But she missed China and 10 years later she tried to return but was prohibited by the Communist government from re-entering. The book ends sort of abruptly with Gladys telling of going to America to tell churches there of the needs in China and of the support she received from World Vision for the mission she started in Hong Kong and the orphanage she founded in Taipei, where she spent her last years and died in 1970.I like a lot of detail, which I found lacking in this books. Often a chapter begins with "One day..." and I found myself asking questions: How long had she been there when this happened? or, How much later was this incident? so I ended up looking for some of this information on websites. I really wished there were more dates included or a timeline for reference, like the one in Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, the biography of an earlier missionary to China. And Miss Aylward's account doesn't include the personal glimpse into her heart or her relationship with God, as Taylor's story does. Also I think an epilogue giving information about her final years would've been a good additional to the book. But Miss Aylward relates important events that happened like a story, making her narrative very readable even for young readers.