Gladys Aylward's One-Way Ticket to Nowhere She Knew

In 1932, a London parlormaid named Gladys Aylward stood on the platform at Liverpool Street Station clutching a one-way ticket to China. She had no missionary society backing her. No university degree. No guarantee of what waited at the other end of the Trans-Siberian Railway. What she had was a conviction that God had called her to go.

Her own church had told her she wasn't qualified. The China Inland Mission had rejected her application. Friends thought she was foolish. But Gladys had saved every penny from scrubbing floors and serving meals, enough for the cheapest overland route across Europe and Siberia. She packed one suitcase, her Bible, and a small stove she thought she might need.

The journey nearly killed her. She was stranded in Siberia during a military conflict, threatened with arrest, and forced to backtrack hundreds of miles. When she finally reached the remote mountain province of Yangcheng, she found a culture she didn't understand, a language she couldn't speak, and an elderly missionary named Jeannie Lawson who wasn't sure she wanted help.

None of it stopped her. Within years, Gladys had opened an inn for mule drivers, adopted orphans, and earned the trust of an entire region.