Gladys Aylward: The Adventure of a Lifetime (Janet and Geoff Benge)

Few missionaries have experienced the adventure, mystery and danger that Miss Aylward did in her work for the Lord in China. Rescuing children from battle zones during a time when China was war-torn was a secondary goal to her, compared to winning them to Christ.

A woman of great faith who worked against enormous odds to manifest the power of God unto salvation.

Gladys Aylward was born in 1902 in the outskirts of London and was raised in the Anglican church. She was never married, and in 1930 she took a train across Russia to China to help aging missionary Agnes Lawson found an inn. In 1932, the province of Mandarin appointed her “foot-inspector” – a job she used to evangelize villagers all over the province.

Her conduct during a prison riot in 1933 cemented her reputation as a woman of wisdom. She became a Chinese citizen in 1936. During World War 2 she was wounded by Japanese soldiers, only months before leading 100 orphans across a dangerous mountain range to safety. Near death, she recovered by God’s grace to evangelize until the Communists evicted her from China in the late 1940s. “The Small Woman”, as she was called, won international fame in 1957 through the popular movie version of her life, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. She founded an orphanage in 1958 in Taiwan, where she died in 1970.