Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper

Author:Noel Piper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, Religion
ISBN: 9781581346732
Publisher: Crossway Books
Published: 2005-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

FaithfulWomen.46735.int.qxd 9/20/07 9:49 AM Page 91

Gladys Aylward

91

Two examples nearer the end of her time in China might indicate how nearly Chinese Gladys became.

She spent her last four years in China in the city of Chengdu.

Knowing that she needed a place to live, friends directed her to the China Inland Mission House. She went there, but within days, she moved into a tiny room in the courtyard of a Chinese hospital. The Christian doctor there, a Chinese man she had just met, had work she could help with. The other missionaries were astonished. “How did she get to know people in such a short time, when she arrived a perfect stranger?”146

Later, the Chinese pastor of a church in Chengdu appointed her as Bible Woman, a position unique to a handful of countries. “The term

‘Bible women’ was the common designation of Christian female nationals who were employed for a pittance by the indigenous church or by women missionaries to function as teachers, interpreters, Bible readers, and evangelists.”147 She may be the only non-Chinese who has ever worked in that capacity in China and lived the meager lifestyle that the pittance allowed. She was given a little room behind the church building and received the normal tiny allowance of a Bible woman. She became a servant of the church—a Chinese church, not a mission church. “Servant” is not a metaphor. She filled whatever roles the church and pastor required of her. One of her jobs was cleaning the church building. As she swept cobwebs and grit from every crevice, she was at the same time praying God’s Spirit in and the devil out.

Although Gladys embraced life as a Chinese citizen, she once

wrote, “Sometimes I longed for fellowship with someone of my own kind. I had prayed for years that someone would come out from

England to share my work, but no one came, so I went on alone.”148

N I N E P E N C E A N D L E S S A N D M O R E

God never did send a Western colleague. Instead, he provided companionship in an unexpected way. One day when Gladys was on the way from the inn to the mandarin’s compound, she passed a dirty, rough woman sitting beside the road. Though the woman wore silver 146 Ibid., p. 109.

147 Ruth Tucker and Walter Liefeld, Daughters of the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academic Books, Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), p. 340—also includes further explanation of the role and importance of Bible women.

148 Aylward and Hunter, p. 49.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.