The Girl Who Walked Twenty-Five Miles for a Bible

In 1800, a fifteen-year-old Welsh girl named Mary Jones set out barefoot from her village of Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, walking twenty-five miles across rugged mountain terrain to the town of Bala. For six years she had saved every penny — tending bees, mending clothes, gathering firewood for neighbors — all for a single purpose: to own a Welsh Bible she could read for herself.

When she arrived at the home of Reverend Thomas Charles, dusty and footsore, she learned that every copy had already been promised to others. Mary wept. Charles, deeply moved by her tears and her hunger for Scripture, gave her one of the reserved copies. She clutched it to her chest and wept again — this time from joy.

That moment so stirred Charles that he helped found the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has since distributed billions of Scriptures worldwide.

Mary Jones's story mirrors the scene at the Water Gate in Jerusalem. When Ezra unrolled the scroll and read God's Word aloud, the returned exiles wept — not from sorrow alone, but from the overwhelming recognition of what they had been missing. They had lived for decades without hearing the Law in their own gathering. And when Nehemiah saw their tears, he told them, "Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."