Chasing the Dragon (21 page)

After the meeting was over at 10:30
P.M.
, an English friend asked me why we were still praying and had not yet rented the new house.

“We either need the promise of some rent money, the gift of a flat or assurance from God that we should sign a lease without actually having any money,” I said.

“I put the money in a special account for you two weeks ago,” he announced.

So we sent a couple of boys straight out to look for places. They came back immediately, having found a neighboring flat empty, and we settled the rent with the apartment watchman by 11:30
P.M.
And we did all this in Hong Kong, which is surely one of the most difficult places in the world to find accommodation of any sort. We sealed the deal by seeing in the New Year with a prayer meeting in the new house. It was the most memorable watchnight service of my life.

Through praying with Ah Kei and the other addicts, I now knew that one did not have to wait until God “accidentally” delivered junkies. I saw that a man, provided he was willing, could be freed through the power that Christ gave him as he prayed in the words of His Spirit. We never forced the addict to pray when going through withdrawal; it is impossible that anyone can ever be forced to pray. We simply reduced the alternatives to nil, or rather to one alternative—of suffering.

One time, a very well-known syndicate operator from Shep Kip Mei had prayed a prayer of faith in Christ and had been filled with the Spirit just before entering one of the houses, but he refused to pray when his withdrawal pains started. On the second day, he packed his bags and announced that he was leaving. I refused to allow it because I believed that he had been sincere when he said that he wanted to follow Christ and come off drugs. When he rebelled, I knew that it was only the heroin talking.

“You can’t keep me here, you have no right,” the Triad leader objected. He was not used to being crossed.

“Yes, I can,” I replied. “You asked us to help you start a new life, and that is what we will do. We would be selling you short
if we allowed you to leave as soon as you felt pain.”

“I’m leaving.” He was adamant and moved purposefully toward the door where I was standing.

“You will feel much better if you pray.”

“I’ve decided I don’t want to follow Jesus after all. You can’t stop me. I’m leaving.”

“Well, you can choose one of four ways,” I told him, and then began counting them on my fingers. “You can knock me out and steal the keys, you can jump off the roof, you can stay here and suffer, or you can stay here and pray. But you are not leaving without my permission. You will have to step across me first.”

I watched him weighing up the alternatives. A powerful man such as he did not use violence on women; it was beneath his dignity. He knew he would be killed if he jumped off the roof, so he stayed and sulked in his bedroom. The awful suffering drove him under his
mintoi
, and finally he was so desperate that he prayed. As soon as he began to pray, the pain went away, and he slept peacefully.

The next time he was threatened with pain, he prayed. For a couple of days he was too stubborn to admit to us that it worked. But when the withdrawal period was quite through, he allowed himself to confess that he had prayed by himself in tongues and was now prepared to do so with other people.

Few of the junkies apart from Walled City boys had had any exposure to Christianity before coming off drugs. Far from being a hindrance, this actually helped them. Now they would arrive saying, “I have heard how Ah Kei [or some other friend] has changed. He says it is Jesus who did it. I think Ah Kei is the meanest addict I know. If Jesus can change that one, He can change me too.”

Their faith did not depend on any understanding of theological concepts but on seeing Jesus working in others and on their willingness to let Him work in their lives. Each time they prayed, their prayers were answered, and their faith grew as they were healed.

Those who explained this extraordinary spiritual happening as an example of “mind over matter” had to be ignorant of the facts. A drug addict facing withdrawal has a mind already half dead through continual drug abuse and is deeply fearful of pain. Most of our boys began to understand Jesus with their minds only after they had already experienced Him in their lives and bodies. Understanding of the Savior, the cross, forgiveness and redemption came some time after they had already obtained the benefits of these truths.

With four houses to run, plus the Youth Club in the Walled City and the meetings at Chaiwan, we needed more and more full-time help. Doreen Cadney, an English nurse, came to assist, and Gail Castle came back from the United States. Several volunteers from Hong Kong and England helped for short periods, and then Sarah Searcy gave up her paying job to be responsible for running the houses.

In another sense, the work became easier and easier because the boys who had come off drugs themselves were very good at helping the “new boys.” They happily cooked meals and did housework, and they had endless patience. They sat with the new arrivals, encouraging them to pray and praying with them. Having recently been through withdrawal, their faith was high. The other boys listened to them with some respect when they said, “It works—once you begin to pray, the pain goes. Just ask Jesus and pray in the Spirit.”

It was a balmy time. Boys arrived to get off drugs almost daily. Having seen the change in them, many “decent” people were so impressed that they began to believe, too. One High Court Judge even bought our Christmas dinner after coming into contact with boys who had become Christians.

People came to my flat at all hours with problems and went away as Christians baptized in the Spirit. We held Sunday morning meetings in Lung Kong Road that were jammed with students, Walled City boys, ex-junkies and visitors who had come to ask for healing or counsel. Sometimes I could not manage to see them all until 6
P.M.
, so I would ask the other
Christians there to talk and pray with them.

For many years I had tried to do all the jobs and ministries by myself because there had been no other help available, but now we all began to share the task. Now I began to understand the meaning of the Body of Christ for the first time, as each person fulfilled a different function in the overall work to which we had been called. I found I was not indispensable after all, especially in the running of the houses, which Jean managed with fairness, extraordinary spiritual discernment and a great talent for fun.

We learned that it was a long-term job to turn an addict into a responsible member of society. In my Lung Kong Road experiment, I had tried to get the boys into a job or school as soon as possible. The first question visitors asked was always, “Are they working now?” The experience we gained there at Lung Kong Road made us sure that even though the boys were physically fit, they still had to learn much before they were ready to walk alone.

Many had been on the streets for years—their habit was to lie and con in difficult situations. We wanted to keep them very close to a Christian family with plenty of love and strict discipline until their habit was to act in a Christian way. At first we thought three months with a clear routine and teaching would be enough, but then we saw that they would need at least six months for their thinking to change—until they actually forgot their former pattern of cheating, stealing and blackmailing. Later on, we recommended a year as the minimum time to stay in the houses; we preferred two years.

No boy who wanted to follow Christ was ever asked to leave. Those who wanted to come off drugs were told that because they had made a free decision to follow Jesus and come into our houses, we would not permit them to leave before staying 10 days. After that period, when they were completely drug-free, they had the option of leaving or staying on to learn about Jesus. Of course, we did not recommend a stay as short as 10 days—indeed, if we thought a boy was not completely ready to stay
a year, we would suggest he reconsider coming to join us. Following Christ would be a lifelong decision, and if the brand-new believer did not have the basic commitment to change, Christ could not change him.

Routine established itself, although it was never rigid; the boys found security in this and began to settle. Once they knew that we would not allow them to go back home, to their old district, or indeed anywhere at all unless accompanied by one of our helpers, they calmed down and began to enjoy an ordered life. Each day they prayed together and alone, went to the market, cooked and did household chores.

Members of the church gave a Bible study and coaching lessons in Chinese reading and English. Most days, the boys played a sport such as football and used the opportunity to tell others about Christ. The football field was next door to a methadone center, where addicts were provided with substitute drugs by the government. Our team of strong, healthy boys was so outstanding that many of the addicts hanging around the center came to hear how Christ could save them from addiction.

The people in the market soon noticed our boys too, and several came to the Saturday meetings curious to meet this Jesus who got junkies more bothered about the price of bean curd than heroin. The donation of a rotary floor polisher and cleaner led us to form a “Stephen Cleaning Company,” and teams of boys went to wax and clean flats. This provided an opportunity for spreading the gospel through shining deeds as well as through words. It was also an occasion to judge how well a boy could work.

There was never a better supervisor for our floor working jobs than Tony, who dressed in neat tennis whites, watched over the other workers, and ran the company like a military operation. Tony was used to power. We had first met a couple of years before. I was eating shrimp dumplings in noodle soup at the Lung Kong Road street stall. He wondered why a Westerner would be eating at a food stall, especially at that time of night and with a group of notorious criminals to boot. His friend
introduced us, and when he came up to the house, he was clearly impressed. Later, he went to another church and said that it made him feel good but also that it was all rather like a fairy tale that he could not quite grasp.

Tony’s own life had been far from a fairy tale. He was born during the Second World War in Havana, Cuba. He was the eldest son, and when he was eight years old, he was sent by his father to China to be a helper for his childless first wife. He lived miserably with “Big Mother” in Peking until the city fell to the communists. “Little Mother,” his real mother, wrote from Havana imploring him to return, but for a penniless eight-year-old boy without friends, this was impossible.

Tony was selected for training as a Red Guard; the government thought that he would make a good spy because of his foreign looks. Eventually, when he was 14, he did escape from Big Mother and resourcefully traveled across China to the Hong Kong border with a friend. On the way his friend was drowned, but Tony ploughed on and finally successfully crossed into Hong Kong.

Tony had no money to pay for school fees when he arrived, so he shone shoes and picked pockets to survive. Inevitably, he met up with the Triads, who trained him to rob with violence. He began to take heroin at age 16 and soon graduated from chasing the dragon to injecting the drug directly into his veins. He said that heroin became his wife, his friends and his life. He felt no one cared about him and, because of the traumatic experiences of his childhood, formed a hard shell of bitterness around him so that no one could touch or hurt him. This earned him the reputation of a lone wolf among his gang brothers. Even they feared this ruthless leader who had gained so much power. Eventually, Tony and two others formed a new branch of the 14K. They were involved in blackmail, fighting and even killing, both to survive and to maintain their supremacy in particular districts.

Ah Kei telephoned me urgently one night begging me to look for Tony, who was in desperate trouble. It was around Chinese
New Year, the coldest time of year, so I buttoned up tightly in order to pay a nocturnal visit to Diamond Village, the headquarters of Tony’s territory.

I found Tony sitting in a teahouse with his coat collar turned up against the cold. He was shivering. Flanking him were two henchmen; obviously they were addicts too, judging from their gaunt bodies. But as I looked at Tony’s face, it was not its drug-induced degeneration that shocked me, but another expression altogether. He was going to die. He was resigned to it.

I did not know then how he intended it to occur, but it was appalling to realize that he had it planned. He began to tell me what was going on, and as I listened I looked around at the congealed spittoons in the teahouse. The scene was a reflection of the sordid kingdom that he was preparing to relinquish.

He told a story of wars and unfinished gang business. He told a tale of coming out of jail to discover that the rival group had attempted to take over his territory. They had stolen his possessions and, knowing his passion for music, they had taken his guitar, broken it in two and left it in the mud. It was an act that demanded retaliation, and Tony knew the dreary course of events to come.

He was really weary of fighting but had no option but to plan a revenge attack. However, some vague memory of something sweeter nagged at him until he decided to appease the memory by selling his 10-by-6-foot hut and donating the proceeds to the Society of Stephen. He was not surprised to see me in his village, for he had sent for me in order to make this grand gesture. However, before I arrived, the other gang had burned down his house after dragging his clothes through the dust one by one. He showed me the site, and I saw the guitar strings splayed rudely over the ground.

“Miss Poon, I want to give the Church the deeds to this piece of ground,” he offered.

“We don’t want your land, Tony, we want your life,” I replied.

“I will arrange for you to collect the documents so that you can use the land for a church,” he continued.

“We don’t want to build a church building, Tony; we’d like to help you build your life.”