Chasing the Dragon (22 page)

We walked down the dark path that wound through the village shacks, and I saw how the inhabitants watched him. He was the king of the village who had been feared and respected. They all knew of the attack and were waiting to see him take revenge. It was expected of him. He could never walk the streets again as their leader unless there was a reciprocal fight. So he had decided to kill or be killed. Either way, he would end up dying; it mattered little to his tired self.

He was still muttering about the land papers when I said, “God has chosen you, Tony. Come with us.” He refused, so I repeated, “He has chosen to save you. He wants you. Come with us.”

I hailed a taxi and was only half in it, saying, “God wants your life tonight, Tony. Come with us,” when he climbed in beside me and sat down. He did not understand what he was doing, but it was the last time he saw his village for several years. He never said goodbye to his gang brothers. He never went back to fetch a thing.

Up in my Lung Kong Road flat, the boys were awake and ready to welcome Tony. They asked him if he, too, wanted to receive Jesus. He was afraid of God, but he kept remembering, “God has chosen you, God has chosen you” and nodded as they told him how he could be forgiven and receive a new life. Later, he wrote this testimony:

They prayed for me, and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and I received the baptism of the Spirit. At first I felt very cold, but when I was filled with the Spirit a surprising thing happened—I felt my heart burning within me, and my whole body grew warm and I wept. I had not cried since I was a child. I sat shamelessly weeping in front of everyone, and I knew that I had truly been “born again.”
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They took me to Stephen’s Third House to come off heroin. I had tried many times to come off drugs. The pain had always been greater than I could bear. The first
time I went to prison I had to come off “cold turkey” and it was so terrible that I broke out of prison into barbed wire, and I bear the scars to this day. From that day on, I always had heroin hidden on my person so that I was never caught without it. But this time it was different. My brothers in Jesus prayed for me, and I also prayed in tongues and the pain disappeared. Two months later I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Willans, who run the houses. My own parents cannot be traced, but Mr. and Mrs. Willans are now my parents.

I have witnessed God moving in many areas of my life since that time. I not only went with my new mother and father to China, but in 1976 I visited America and England with them and joined them in speaking in a number of churches and on radio and television. What an amazing thing for me, a former Red Pole fighter in the 14K Triad society, an ex-convict and heroin addict, to be given a special waiver to visit the United States of America. And the Home Secretary himself cleared my travel to England when everyone said it was impossible.

I have since been trained in a first-class hairdressing school to be a hair stylist. I work in a leading salon in Hong Kong and live with my parents in a nice apartment. It is truly astonishing and shows that my Lord Jesus is very powerful. But the greatest thing He has done for me is to change my heart, and now I no longer follow sin, because I follow Him.

It would have been ideal if each one of the boys could have become a special son in a family where he was cared for and loved. Tony’s unusual background made him a special case, however, and it was wonderful to see him grow and change. He had lost his life and so found it.
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The other boys in the houses were growing up too, although it was sad to see some leave before we thought them ready to take on the outside world. The strongest influence over them
was their parents who, once they ascertained that their son was drug-free, started whining about money and family responsibilities. For a boy with a dozen years of street habits, it was too much to take on the burden of supporting a family after only a few weeks off drugs. He soon realized his need to stay really close to God’s family. Some went back to drugs and then begged to come back to the house. We allowed them to do so if they seemed really serious about changing.

Siu Ming did not have parental pressures. He was an orphan, and so mercifully escaped a greedy blackmailing mother. His mother had died when he was seven, and he lived with his younger sister and gambling father in a small hut on a hillside. The shack was dark and infested with rats, cockroaches and snakes. The only light came from a hole in the wall covered by a board that the family had propped up with a stick. As with many Hong Kong families, they all slept in one bed and had no kitchen, bathroom, electricity or running water. They burned oil lamps for lights and built a fire for cooking.

Siu Ming and his sister used to sit on a rock by the door of the hut, waiting for their father to come home at night. If he carried something, they knew that he had won and there would be supper. If his hands were empty, it meant that he had lost and they would have nothing to eat that night. They were too poor to go to school, so Siu Ming sold newspapers for a living. He never learned to read or write.

At 15, he joined a Triad society. His father was angry and scolded him so frequently that Siu Ming left home. A year later, his sister found him to tell him that their father had died. Now they had no one left, and Siu Ming began to take heroin in his misery. His sister pleaded with him to stop, but he was hooked. Instead of listening to her, he beat her. Then he left home again, this time forever.

As selling newspapers did not bring in enough money to buy heroin, Siu Ming had to rob and steal to get drugs. He was caught twice, and the second time he was sent to a rehabilitation center. He left there after five months and went back to
drugs again. He was later readmitted to the center, came out for a holiday, and was immediately arrested once more. This time he went to prison. He came out feeling bitter toward the world and went straight back to heroin.

Sui Ming’s probation officer said that he was without hope. He had even broken his probation order and was liable to have a warrant out for his arrest. However, knowing that ordering this warrant would only begin the cycle of imprisonment again, the probation officer decided to give Siu Ming one last chance and told him to find the Society of Stephen. He wrote my name and address in Chinese on a piece of paper and Siu Ming set off for my house, thinking that he was visiting a Chinese lady. He had no idea that we had anything to do with a church, but he must have been desperate for any help at all, as he bothered to cross the harbor and find Lung Kong Road.

He hid his surprise at meeting a Western woman quite well, but when I told him that Jesus really loved him, he looked undecided as to whether to accept this. Eventually he concluded, “It’s either jail or Jesus,” and took Jesus. Some of the former gang members living there at that time prayed with him, and he began to speak quietly in a language he did not know. We then took him back across the harbor to Third House so that he could withdraw from heroin.

Some of the boys who were smart enough to pray immediately never had the slightest twinge. Others, like Siu Ming, waited until they were
in extremis
before learning that God did not want them to suffer at all. Siu Ming refused to pray, which was understandable, since his experience of praying was limited to the session in my house only a few hours earlier. He was in agony with withdrawal pains and did not know how to make a prayer, even had he felt like it.

At last he said he could bear no more and in desperation agreed to pray in tongues. He did not have to think what words to say—God’s Spirit gave them. He said he felt wonderful, and 10 minutes later he was asleep. He slept right through a day and when he awoke, he had a real confidence that Jesus did love
him. Through this experience, he learned to pray in the Spirit and was freed from heroin painlessly. Although this miracle had been repeated each time with each of the boys, they all knew that it was especially for Siu Ming.

Siu Ming was so quiet and seemed to have so little character that for the first few months he lived with us we hardly noticed him. On trips to the beach or football field, there was always the nightmare of counting heads and hoping that none of the boys had slunk off to smoke in the bathroom. Siu Ming was the one we always forgot to count, because he was such a nonentity. But as the year progressed, he began to grow into a person who was kind, trustworthy, hardworking and, most important, spiritual. He learned to read and write through the daily Bible studies and was often found praying by himself. Eventually his ministry of serving the brothers and Christ was evident; he was ordained a deacon in the church and became a helper to all the new boys who arrived.

We also had some older men living in the houses, a fact that was often obscured because we continued to refer loosely to all the inmates as “boys.” Ah Lun and Mr. Wong arrived separately at Lung Kong Road, but on the same day. They had both heard from other addicts about our houses and demanded to be admitted immediately. Ah Lun was running a little heroin den from his cubicle in a resettlement estate. He had been in prison 18 times and only existed to eat and to take heroin. Mr. Wong claimed to have been a general in Chiang Kai Shek’s army. (This may have been true, but I met many nationalist soldiers who all claimed the same thing, and I came to suppose that it was an army composed entirely of generals.) Mr. Wong also said that he had been to many different churches in Hong Kong and that ours was the first one in which Jesus was sitting.

I tried to palm off the two old men. Ah Lun was almost 60, and Mr. Wong was in his 50s. They did not seem suitable for mixing with our younger boys. But every day for some weeks they appeared at my stone steps, waiting to be let in. I could not leave them there and deny them the opportunity to accept
Christ … I could not send them back to heroin dens once they had accepted Christ …

So the two old men came to live with us, too, and fitted in extremely well, making a more balanced family. God was adding fathers to me at last. Of course there were problems too, as Ah Lun turned out to have the habits of a packrat and kept an enormous supply of extraneous objects under, in and on top of his bunk bed. He stored toilet paper, English books, cushions, a vast array of apparel, extra mattresses and just plain junk. He also kept a supply of Jean’s books for himself, although he could not read a word of English. However, it made it easy when anyone in the house needed something unusual.

Mr. Wong thought himself superior to the others because of his position. He had never been a Triad—he had been an army officer waiting for Taiwan to regain China. When this did not happen, he turned to drugs and became as addicted as all the others. Although his rehabilitation would have seemed to be easier than Ah Lun’s, he in fact had the same basic problem as all the boys: pride. Mr. Wong used dreadfully flowery Christian language that he had picked up from the other churches he had visited. He was very preachy; he became self-righteous and easily provoked; he was contentious and a pain in the neck.

After coming off drugs Mr. Wong thought that he did not need Jesus’ help anymore and stopped praying. Sarah, who was in charge of his house, had a way of discovering these things. So she told Mr. Wong to pray every morning and night in tongues as well as to pray at least half an hour during his private devotions. His attitude immediately began to change, and he remarked later, “My heart of stone is melting and God is giving me one of flesh.”
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Yet his manner did not change.

Many of the boys were healed of other diseases when they prayed to be released from heroin. One boy had chronic asthma and tuberculosis when he was admitted, and the others were afraid to sleep in the same room. But after two days, his asthma completely disappeared and his tuberculosis reading was clear (we insisted that he finish his course of medicine anyway).
Also, Ah Lun had an enormously enlarged liver when he arrived, but he too was healed and remained normal.

As long as they were on drugs, the addicts were not aware of other ailments, but we soon discovered any that still remained after the withdrawal period. Teeth were the most common problem. None of us seemed to have the knack of praying for teeth, so we spent a small fortune in dentists’ bills and false teeth. Mr. Wong had to have every single one extracted, as the heroin had rotted them so badly.

Mercifully, the British army made their facilities available to us for severe cases, and Mr. Wong went into the military hospital to have all his teeth out. He grinned throughout his stay there and had no pain, which he “tried to exthplain to the British doctor was because of the Holy Thpirit.” The army completed the job by donating the proceeds of their carol singing to us, thereby providing the funds to buy Mr. Wong a complete new set of dazzling dentures.

This was not the first time the army had assisted the Houses of Stephen. They had helped me with my first house and often made available campsites and coaches for outings. We found this mutually beneficial, as many army friends became Christians through these contacts. If there were any who didn’t, it was certainly not the fault of the boys who would say in their enthusiastic English to a red-faced soldier, “Have you believed in Jesus yet?” and before he could formulate a polite brush-off, volunteer their aid: “We will pray with you now if you like!”

One of the most hot-hearted among these evangelists was 33-year-old Ah Fung. He did not come from the poverty-stricken background of most of our boys but from a very wealthy family. He had completed several years of secondary education and considered himself a thinker. His uncle who had looked after him belonged to the socially exclusive Jockey Club and counted his member’s card together with his American Social Security number and Mercedes Benz as his most prized possessions.

Despite these advantages, Ah Fung was underprivileged. His father had died and his mother had long since disappeared.
He was heavily addicted to heroin and needed a means to support his habit. His uncle gave him a lot of money, which only gave him greater chances to indulge his habit. Eventually, even the money his uncle gave him was not enough. He lied, cheated, stole and did anything else necessary to get enough money for drugs. He soon learned that prison sentences were lighter for living off immoral earnings, and turned to pimping.