She was hurrying to get away … when someone at the door grasped her hand, enquired her name, and then said, "Miss Aylward, I believe God is wanting you." Gladys was alarmed. When it was over, writes Phyllis Thompson : She was 18 on the evening she allowed herself, somewhat against her will, to be led by a group of young evangelicals into a church meeting. Though she had been brought up a Christian, Aylward's only religious experience was going to Sunday school. ![]() Like many young girls, she dreamed of becoming an actress. Aylward loved being in the heart of the big city, and in particular going to the theater. At the cessation of war, she went into domestic service as a parlormaid in London's West End. At age 14, she quit to work in a penny bazaar and then a grocer's shop. Then she would sit at the tiny old foot-operated organ, pedal furiously and scream out a hymn at a decibel scale calculated to reach almost as high as those ominous silver cocoons droning through the sky.Īylward tried hard as a student, but she did not fare well at school. She remembered how she'd first discovered the antidote to being "frightened." She would bring all the children in the street into the front parlor and sit them down against the inside wall. "She remembered her father coming home," wrote her biographer Alan Burgess, "clumping up the road in his heavy postman's boots." Her mother would be in the kitchen preparing tea, while Gladys and her sister Violet would be "screaming around the house or running wild with the other children in the street." During World War I, when the Zeppelins came over to bomb London, wrote Burgess: Gladys May Aylward was born in north London on February 24, 1902, and grew up a high-spirited, happy child. Remarkably, Aylward survived, believing that God had more work for her to do. She was Gladys Aylward, also called Ai-weh-deh (the Virtuous One), a Christian evangelist who had brought many children to safety from behind the Japanese lines. ![]() Sent to the hospital in Sian (Xi'an), she was diagnosed with typhoid fever and internal injuries, but a month passed before she was identified. Across her back, she bore the scar of a recent bullet wound. In late April 1940, an oxcart stopped outside the Scandinavian-American Mission in Hsing-P'ing (Xingping), northwest China, to deliver the fragile body of a 38-year-old Western woman who was delirious and on the verge of death. Left school to work as a shop assistant later went into domestic service became an evangelical Christian at age 18 (1920) began training at the China Inland Mission but was not recommended for further training (1928) went back into domestic service in London finally departed for China (1930) settled in Yangcheng in Shensi (or Shansi) province helped set up an inn and appointed Inspector of Feet adopted Chinese nationality (1936) led about 100 orphans out of war-torn China to safety in Sian (1940) worked in Tsingsui, near Lanchow in northwest China (1944) moved to Chengtu, Szechwan, where she continued her missionary work and was appointed Biblewoman at the Chinese Seminary (1945) returned to England (1949) went to Hong Kong and then Taiwan, settling in Taipei where she set up an orphanage (1957). Born Gladys May Aylward on February 24, 1902, in Edmonton, north of London, England died of influenza on January 2, 1970, in Taipei, Taiwan daughter of a postman and a postal worker left school at 14 at 28, studied for three months at the China Inland Mission in London never married children: adopted five officially, many unofficially. Name variations: Ai-wehdeh, Ai Weh Teh, Hsiao Fu-jeh. English missionary in China and Taiwan who worked to end the traditional Chinese practice of binding women's feet, led a large group of orphans out of occupied China, and set up orphanages in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
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