Mary Jones: The Girl Who Walked for a Bible

Mary Jones was a poor weaver's daughter who grew up in a little cottage among the green hills of Wales. More than anything in the world, Mary longed for one thing — a Bible of her very own, to read in her own language, Welsh. But Bibles were rare and dear in those days, far too costly for a poor girl, and the nearest one she could read belonged to a farmer two miles away. Mary walked to his house again and again, just to turn its pages.

So Mary began to save. She kept hens and sold their eggs; she gathered firewood; she did odd jobs for her neighbours; and every small coin she earned she put carefully away. It took her six long years. She was a little girl when she began, and almost a grown young woman by the time her jar of coins was full enough at last.

There was still one problem: the only man with Welsh Bibles to sell lived in the town of Bala, twenty-five miles away over the hills. So one morning Mary set off on foot, walking barefoot much of the way to save her shoes, all those miles across the Welsh countryside, clutching her hard-earned money. When she reached Bala and found the good minister, Thomas Charles, she asked him for a Bible.

At first her heart nearly broke, for the Bibles were all promised to other people — every single one. But when Mr. Charles saw how far the girl had walked, and how many years she had saved, and how she wept at the thought of going home without a Bible, he could not bear it. He gave her one of the promised Bibles anyway, and Mary walked all the way home again, hugging God's Word against her heart at last.

But Mary's long walk did something far bigger than she knew. Mr. Charles could not forget her. He told her story to other Christians and asked: if one poor girl in Wales wanted a Bible this badly, how many thousands of people all over the world must be longing for one too? Out of that question a great work was born — a society to print Bibles cheaply and carry them into every land and every language on earth. Millions of people have held a Bible because one Welsh girl walked barefoot over the hills for hers. Mary Jones had shown the whole world how precious the Word of God is, and how far a brave heart will go to hold it.