The Parlor Maid Who Trusted the Impossible Call

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London — small in stature, unremarkable in the eyes of the world. When she applied to the China Inland Mission, they rejected her. Too old at twenty-eight, they said. Not educated enough. Not the right material for missionary work. But Gladys had heard a call she could not shake. So she saved every penny from her modest wages, bought a one-way train ticket across Europe and Siberia, and arrived in the remote mountain province of Shanxi, China — alone, unable to speak the language, with almost nothing to her name.…