Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman

by Gladys Aylward

Book Overview

A solitary woman. A foreign country. An unknown language. An impossible dream? No

With no mission board to support or guide her, and less than ten dollars in her pocket, Gladys Aylward left her home in England to answer God's call to take the message of the gospel to China. With the Sino-Japanese War waging around her, she struggled to bring the basics of life and the fullness of God to orphaned children. Time after time, God triumphed...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802429866
• ISBN13: 9780802429865
• Release Date: June 1970
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.2" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Where is the movie???

Top to bottom amazing, even if you are a nonbeliever just her strength and diligence with amazing faith. You need to read!

A reminder of how fulfilling life can be

This book encouraged me to give my life completely to God. I saw what He can do with one life! It also reminded me that our battle is not against flesh and blood. There are some stories in this book that will give you chills because they show how God works in the most incredible ways! Enjoy!

An amazing story

Somehow, in our time, the adjective 'unique' has come to be misused and heavily overused. Properly it means hardly more than "only" or "the only one (of of its kind)." There is nothing like this story and surely nobody like Gladys Aylward. In several pages is told the story of a warlord who converted, was then held prisoner by his own men, escaped, found his way back to Aylward's inn, and knew that "I belong to Jesus" fully explained his life. I cannot adequately summarize this particular story; you have to read the version in the book, which itself obviously condenses a long story.

God Working through a Humble Faithful Person

This book is in my opinion the best one of the biographies of Gladys Aylward. I've read the others, but they were seen through another author and seemed more like adventure stories. This autobiography, however, puts you in Gladys' shoes so you can see and feel her prayerful reliance on God. You'll see God work through this humble parlourmaid, calling her to China and her obedience through the most harrowing circumstances. Gladys did what God told her to do and trusted in God to provide the means, even when it did not seem obvious and the hardships were many.Every time Gladys got into a dangerous predicament, God would move His Hand and send deliverance, a woman speaking English in Siberia, a Japanese sea captain taking her prisoner, or a Nationalist patrol boat that just happened upon a prayer meeting held at the banks of the Hwang Ho where 100 children asked God to part the river for them to cross.God worked through Gladys to change the lives of slaves, murderers, children, Mandarin officials, bandit generals, lepers, students and many many ordinary villagers, throughout the remote mountainous area Gladys was called to. And He furnished the way, whether it was as a foot-inspector, or in a prison riot, or while warplanes droned overhead in caves and tents, even to a Tibetan Lamaist monastery and finally to an Irish asylum. Everywhere God called Gladys, He used her to touch and transform thousands of ordinary lives. Gladys arrived in China penniless, and she left China almost 20 years later penniless. Every step of the way she trusted God for His provision and His leading. This is truly a story that will inspire you and teach you what great things God can do through a humble person who trusts and obeys Him.

A little woman doing big things for God

Gladys Aylward was a housemaid in England when she felt God calling her to China. The mission she applied to turned her down because of lack of education, fearing that she'd never be able to learn the language. The belief in her call, however, caused her to persevere, raise the money, and head out to China by train by herself, with only a letter of recommendation to an elderly missionary in a secluded station in north China.Not only did she learn the language, but she became the local foot-inspecter, preventing parents from binding the feet of their daughters, and used the opportunity to share the gospel in many of the surrounding villages. She also began taking care of orphans and children that had been sold. During WW2, she led a hundred children on a few days march to the safety of another city. This episode was the highlight of the movie made about her, "Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (which is pretty much the fictitious telling of her amazing life).The book doesn't go into any detail of her life after she left mainland China and began work in Taiwan and Hong Kong among the refugees and orphans, but it's an exciting, quick-moving story, that one could easily read in a day or two.