Chasing the Dragon (14 page)

I had prayed that God would keep the wrong ones away, so I had to deduce that the boys who had come were sent by God, but taking drugs on a Christian camp was not quite what I had in mind. The missionaries had advised me that the way to build a church was to work on one boy at a time. When he was a Christian and doing well, then you could work on another one until the house was full. I had done it completely backward, however, and had landed with a dormitory full of gangsters. Who was running whom I was not sure. I began to think that the missionaries were right.

Two days later, Ah Ming was
in extremis
, having run out of his drug supply. He sent a brother to me who announced that there was an urgent matter that three of them had to attend to, so they would be leaving. I intended to argue this, but since the rest of us were having morning service, they escaped.

I sent Nick to chase after them; he was an enormous six-footer. That he could not speak a word of Chinese was greatly to his advantage, for the wily addicts had invented a very good explanation as to why their departure was imperative.
Fortunately, Nick could not understand them, so as they continued to walk he continued to follow.

They walked over three hills. All they could hear was this Englishman repeating, “You must come back, you must come back, you must come back” and “Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you.” But no way were three sick addicts going to turn around and come back. The craving for heroin was so strong that they would have climbed 100 mountains—or even killed someone—in order to get the ferry back to their supply.

Meanwhile, back at the camp we were praying for their return.

Without knowing why they did so, the three fleeing boys stopped dead. Then they lit cigarettes and began to retrace their steps. When they reappeared with Nick on top of our mountain, they looked very sheepish; they could not explain this prodigal turnabout even to themselves. However, when I suggested to Ah Ming that we chat for a while, he nodded as if he had been expecting this all along …

It was pouring with rain, and we were forced to seek shelter in one of our two-man army tents. Poor Ah Ming did not want a lecture. He was feeling intense discomfort, but he could not leave the tent because the downpour had reached monsoon intensity. “I’m sorry, Ah Ming,” I began. “I know you’re feeling lousy, but I’d like to show you something that will help you.” In the earth I drew three crosses.

“I know this sounds silly, but I want you to imagine that you could actually see all the wrong things that a man has done. We’ll use this
lap-sap
[rubbish] to represent them.” I collected up some bottle tops, dirt and waste paper lying around. “Now when Jesus was crucified, two men were nailed on either side of Him; they were thieves, probably murderers.”
¹
I placed a heap of litter on the outside crosses, leaving Jesus’ cross empty. “Do you know why the middle one has no
lap-sap?
” I asked Ah Ming. He looked rather bored and replied, “Yeah, Jesus never did no wrong, so He got no sins on Him.”

I became a storyteller, pointing to the crosses. “So You’re the Christ, eh?” mocked this man. “Prove it. Call on Your henchmen
to save you now. Come on then. You save Yourself, and save us too while You’re at it.” He was dying himself, but he still had plenty of spit.

“You shouldn’t say that,” objected that thief on the right cross. “We done wrong—we oughta die. This man ain’t done nothing,” and he turned to Jesus saying, “Lord, remember me when You get to Your Kingdom.”

“Today you will be with Me together in paradise,” answered Jesus.
²
While I said this, I lifted the heap of dirt off the right cross and placed it all on Jesus.

“You feel like throwing up now?” I noticed Ah Ming looked gray and trembly. “Well, Jesus felt like you do only even worse, because as well as taking that man’s sins, He took all the sins and all the pains the whole world ever felt on Himself, so that we could be free of our sin and pain.”
³

For some time we both stared at the ground and the message drawn there. Then I said, “The thief on that side is forgiven and now can live with God, but why not the other one? Weren’t they equally bad?”

“One believed and the other didn’t,” replied Ah Ming.

“That’s all you have to do. I know you don’t understand, but if you are willing to give all of your pain to Him, Jesus can take it away right now. He’s God’s Son, and that’s why He died. Are you willing?”

Ah Ming was not very willing. His eyes were running and he kept sniffing as he clutched his stomach. It was still raining outside; he was stuck in this tent in great distress. At last he could not stand it any longer.

“Suppose,” he said resignedly, “suppose I—er—well, suppose I try.”

It was enough.

He then prayed clearly, asking Jesus to take away his pain if He were God. He asked for his wrong things to be taken away, too, so that he could start his life again. It stopped raining.

Outside, I found my English friends. They joined me in the tent, and we laid our hands on Ah Ming’s head, telling him that
Jesus would give him healing and power. When we prayed, Ah Ming too received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we all prayed together for a while.

A week later when we returned from the camp, Ah Ming told me how God had answered those prayers in an extraordinary way. He had gone to bed feeling confused after praying and was not at all sure what had happened. As he slept he had a strange dream. He dreamed that he was lying on a wooden bunk in a mountain hut. It was blowing a gale outside; through the sounds of the wind, he heard a knocking at the door. As he was alone in the hut in a terrible state of drug withdrawal, he did not answer it. The knocking came a second time, so he went to the window to see who it was. There he saw a man carrying a candle, which he thought very odd on a rainy mountain, but being in a foul temper he went back to bed. The third time the knocking came, Ah Ming thought,
Poor man, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go
. He went to the door and opened it, and then he lay down again. The man, who seemed oddly familiar, came into the hut and over to the bunk bed, where he put down the candlestick.

He asked Ah Ming to sit up and then gently put his hands on his head. The withdrawal pains disappeared; he never had any pain again. “I knew He was a healer,” said Ah Ming, reveling in his release from drugs.

A whistle was blowing. Early each morning, I insisted that the boys do a version of physical jerks before breakfast. They all tumbled out of bed. Ah Ping noticed that although Ah Ming had risen, he was groping around on the bunk. He asked Ah Ming what he was doing.

“I’m looking for the candle wax,” replied Ah Ming. “I’m looking for the candle wax.” The dream had been so real that he was sure that Jesus really had been there. After that, he joined in the morning exercises with great vigor, surprising all his friends who knew that addicts going through withdrawal could not usually do pushups. Later that day, he was baptized in the
sea. When we all returned to the mainland, he looked fit and very happy.

Ah Ming did not actually do any work himself but had a job at one of the dockyards, where he used to lie in a cabin all day while his younger brothers fed him heroin. On his first day back at work, he sat on the ferry and prayed while crossing the harbor. He prayed so hard that he did not notice when his neighboring passengers stole his flip-flops as a joke. Undaunted, he carried on to work and walked through the dockyard gates shoeless. When he saw a gang of rival Triads armed for a fight with bottles and knives coming toward him, he instinctively took up the nearest weapons—two heavy iron poles—and waded into the attack.

What I had not known when I prayed that God would send only the “right ones” to the camp was that Ah Ming had come to our camp especially to plan his strategy for this gang war. He had given his orders to some of his brothers at the camp, and now seeing him going into the attack, they ran to various street stalls and drew out meat choppers and melon knives to be used in the battle.

Suddenly Ah Ming thought,
Help! I was praying about peace on the boat this morning. I can’t fight
. He dropped his poles, sat down in the road and began to pray again.

A few minutes later, he looked up to see his enemies surrounding him; they were all looking down at him curiously. “What are you doing?” their leader asked.

“I’m praying. I’m a Christian now—would you like to hear about it?” They nodded, dumbfounded, so Ah Ming told them what had happened to him. They were so impressed that several came to see me later and began to attend meetings.

In this way, our Youth Club grew bigger and bigger as those who became Christians brought their friends. I had not yet met the renowned Goko, but his large chop-eating brother came in frequently to sing. Some weeks after the camp, we were praying
in the clubroom when one of the boys had a vision. Since all the boys who believed in Christ had received the power of the Spirit with the gift of tongues, they were not surprised when God caused wonders to happen.

The vision was of us in procession walking down the street singing and dancing. Only 12 were willing to go. The rest made excuses. “Poon Siu Jeh, we live here,” they said. As I imagined myself prancing around my parents’ village in England, I could sympathize.

One of our favorite songs in the club was “Silver and Gold Have I None,” which went like this:

Silver and gold have I none

But such as I have give I thee

In the name of Jesus Christ

Of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

Walking and leaping and praising God,

Walking and leaping and praising God,

In the name of Jesus Christ

Of Nazareth rise up and walk.

I took my accordion. We had one guitarist and a couple of tambourines; the rest of the 12 followed in single file. The street was too narrow for two people, but when we reached the “leaping and dancing and praising” refrain, we all managed to jump around a bit.

It is the only time I can remember during that era when so many vice businesses stopped without there being a police raid. At the blue film theatre and the gambling dens, the patrons rushed to the doorways to see what was happening. One of Ah Keung’s brothers, asleep in an illegal casino, heard the singing and woke up with a start, believing himself to have dropped off during our Sunday morning service. Many people had seen Christians handing out bits of paper before (the addicts used to smoke them), but never before had they witnessed singing and dancing in the streets of the Walled City.

Passing by the opium dens, we came to the two largest heroin dens, where Ah Ming, who had assumed leadership of the procession, stopped and, quite unbidden, began to preach. Inside the den, a tall young Chinese named Ah Mo had just finished injecting himself. He had already discovered that “Miss White” (one of the nicknames for heroin or white powder) did not keep her promises. He had hardly gained a moment of enjoyment from her—for no sooner had he taken his fix than he had to think about obtaining money for his next appointment with the lying lady. Ah Mo was wondering where to do his next robbery when he heard singing outside the heroin shed. Emerging from one gloom into the next, he was amazed to see his friend Ah Ming telling people in the street how Jesus had changed his life.

It was obvious to Ah Mo that something very wonderful had indeed taken place, for barely three weeks previously he and Ah Ming had been squatting side by side taking heroin together in that very same den. Forgetting his projected robbery, he joined the end of the procession and followed it until it wound back to the clubroom some 30 minutes later. There, he came in and listened with wonder as the boys told him how Jesus could change him. But he shook his head and asked to speak to me privately.

“I can’t be a Christian, Miss Poon. I killed my wife.” He told me the tragic tale of his rise to fame in the Triads as a muscle-man. He used to throw people out of nightclubs and bars in a more glamorous district of Kowloon. He had soon become powerful enough to employ his own bouncers and eventually controlled a little empire. He lived with a ballroom “hostess,” but he had a great macho image of himself and enjoyed three other mistresses at the same time. When he was arrested, his hostess visited him in prison, taking him drugs and money. She really loved him. Although he promised to be faithful, he continued to visit the others after he was released.

She was so miserable that she too began to take drugs and, near death, was rushed to hospital to have her stomach pumped.
To placate her, Ah Mo rented a white wedding dress for her and a morning dress for himself, and they had a mock wedding picture taken in a bridal studio. They sent the pictures to their relations in China. But Ah Mo did not give up his lechery, and so his girl overdosed a second time. The third time she overdosed, she could not be saved. She died in the hospital.

Ah Mo was wracked with guilt; he lost interest in his bouncing business and punished himself with drugs.

As he stood before me, all bones and rags, it was hard to imagine that this man had inspired such a fatal passion. But when I told him that he could find forgiveness in Christ, his eyes grew hopeful, and I caught a glimpse of the handsome man he was. He prayed to receive Jesus and left the club in a daze. Some of his cronies were in the passage outside; seeing his face they laughed, “He’s got religion; he’s got religion.”

“But I didn’t mind,” Ah Mo told me later, “because my heart felt light.”

I had assumed that because Winson and Ah Ming were cured miraculously of their addictions, anyone who believed in Jesus would automatically be delivered. Ah Mo was not. He continued to take drugs although I told him that this was not consistent with being a Christian.

I asked Pastor Chan to take him into his center, but he had to wait several weeks before there was a place. I was puzzled as to why God did not save him instantly as He had saved the others.

“Praise God,” Ah Mo announced when he joined our Sunday service some days later. “I haven’t had to rob or steal this week to pay for my heroin habit. I’ve got a job.”