We serve a great God, and he is still the same one who parted the Red Sea.Īfter praying, a man showed up who signaled for a boat to come get them – what?! So incredible! His conversation with Gladys included one of my favorite lines in the book. He had so many excuses for why he wasn’t enough to do what God was sending him to do. When we read Moses’ story in Exodus, we see that he reacted the same way. Gladys reacted exactly the way I would have: “But I am not Moses.” Sualan responded, “Of course you are not, but Jehovah is still God!” Sualan reminded Gladys of God parting the Red Sea for the children of Israel. The faith of a child was all that was needed for them to cross. There were no boats to cross the river because the Chinese wanted to keep the Japanese troops from crossing.Īnd so Gladys and 100 children were stuck there, with no way forward. The Japanese troops were heading that way. One of the most amazing parts happened on the banks of the Yellow River. It begins with Gladys deciding whether to stay in Yangcheng or run from the Japanese forces who were getting nearer and nearer. These are my people, God have given them to me, & I will live or die with them for Him and His glory. Life is pitiful, death so familiar, suffering & pain so common, yet I would not be anywhere else.ĭo not wish me out of this or in any way seek to get me out, for I will not be got out while this trial is on. Ai.’ Ninepence says, ‘not call her that, she nice old lady,’ so now you know what I am in the eyes of a child of 8. Here’s the image of the letter, and I’ll transcribe it below.Īi. I love the part about Ninepence as well as the confident assurance Gladys had that she was exactly where she ought to be. Now I know: they were able to send letters. I mentioned in the comments last week that I was wondering about her communication with her family. One more show and tell which gave me so much joy was a letter that Gladys sent to her parents. And today it is called “the old Jesus hall courtyard.” I haven’t read all of the text on either sites, but I loved scrolling through the pictures and getting some real images to go with what I’d imagined while reading. But apparently, this is what the inn was called where she worked with Mrs Lawson and later took care of all of those children and wounded soldiers. The name didn’t mean anything to me at first because I don’t think Gladys ever mentioned the name of the inn in her narrative. Is that right? If you know more about this geography than me, please chime in!Īnother find was this page, which takes us to present-day Yangcheng and the next page on the same site which takes us to The Inn of Eight Happinesses. Then the train they took part of the way ran alongside the river, heading west. When she and the 100 children ran from the war, they went south and crossed the Yellow River (Hwang ho). If I’m reading the map and the book correctly, Gladys started in Yangcheng, in the lower middle of the map. (For that reason I decided against trying to find it and watch it.) Here I learned that there is actually a movie made during Gladys’s lifetime, which she hated because of the liberties they took in changing reality. I found it on this page, which includes lots of other pictures of Gladys. ![]() But googling “Gladys Aylward map” was more successful! So, before we get into this week’s reading, a bit of show and tell.Īlan Burgess included this map in his book The Small Woman. How far was it? Do the villages still exist today? Have the names changed? Searching the maps app on my phone for the places she named was inconclusive. I don’t know much about Chinese geography, and I wanted a good picture in my mind. As I read this week’s chapters of Gladys Aylward: The Little Woman, what I wanted was a map of her journey over the mountains with the children, and over other mountains to the lamasery.
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