Chasing the Dragon (32 page)

This is how it had come about. Back in the last House of Stephen, nearing the 1980s, the Willanses had left Hong Kong and this book’s 15 chapters of history in suspense. A plump Hong Kong
man had helped for a while. I took him to the Walled City, and he also assisted in the new-boy house stuffed with over 10 new men. I thought I was training him, although that really meant, “Come with me.” I sent him to New Zealand to learn more. Sadly for me, he returned with new ideas.

“I feel a burden to work with children,” he pronounced sweetly.

I was not impressed. I did not understand his language.

“I need to leave and pursue this,” he persisted.

“But there are children affected by everyone we meet. Can you not stay and find a way to reach them? The way is open for you,” I almost begged.

However, he had seen a more sophisticated church community where its members were separated into “ministries.” And he did have a way with kids. He left. I was devastated.

It happened that at that moment I was sitting in a little room in our last House of Stephen. No Willanses. No foreign helpers. Just 12 men doing so-so and Jesus doing good. I began to weep. I could only think that it had taken so long to train one man to help and now I would have to start again. Alone. Again. I cried and cried.

Through the door came plates (barbecued pork on toothpicks). Then flowers. Then tissues as I went on grieving.

“We are praying for you,” came the messages from those I lived with, “that you will get better enough to care for all the people in Hong Kong who still need you.”

That was not comforting, and it made me howl even harder.

“You do not understand,” I tried to say.

“We pray Jesus gives you comfort,” they continued.

“I do not
need
comfort,” I retorted in frustration. “You do not understand. I do not need you to pray that I get better to go on. I want you to do what I have been doing. I am only one person.”

The trouble was that it looked so easy. Already I had seen Jesus reach men, touch men, heal and change them; the drawback was that as one person, I could only physically do so much, even if that were mightily empowered. Even Jesus handed
over the world to 12 problem-ridden men. Where were mine? Twelve problem-ridden men I had without a doubt, but they expected me to do it all. And so much of the rest of the Church was engaged in discovering their giftings rather than giving. I went on crying and saw, over a period of three days and three nights, many faces. I knew them all. They slept under flyovers and lived in cages. The old women gathered in parks and all were easy to reach. They just needed someone with time to touch them.

In Hang Fook Camp, we began to see the outworking of my frustration, which some angelic soul described later as intercession. Teams were formed from the broken to reach the broken. The limping helped the limping. Perhaps we should have renamed ourselves Jacob instead of Stephen, although we retained that name.
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And so hundreds more were touched not by me but by those, like me, who were hardly healed themselves. Again I was part of an unfair multiplication. Hundreds thanked God or me, although by now I was but remotely associated with their lives. I still connected with the streets and the addicts seeking help. I still visited the prisons, although most of the walking was done by those who had been touched themselves and served in gratitude. I watched them make the same mistakes that I had done and deal with them rather better.

Elfrida joined a team, too. Her life had been a catalogue of horror. Born to a father with two wives and a mother who was probably his mistress, she was brought up by an aunt after her mother committed suicide. This woman was a lesbian, and Elfrida was exposed to all the permutations of her affairs, which included one with Elfrida’s father’s wife. At 17, she had a boyfriend and was going to marry him, but she was thrown out of the house when it was discovered that she had been seduced by him. Sexually confused, not knowing whether she loved or hated men, Elfrida became a prostitute and dulled her senses with heroin.

For years we had been renting apartments in which men could withdraw from drugs. They were always full, and there was no room for women. I had avoided the old woman’s street. The dark, weeping ghost was persistent in her cries, however, and so came the day when I could resist her no longer and took her in.

In a small room six foot by four, Elfrida prepared to come off drugs. Her back was covered with old black bruises, and she was so weak and frail that my friend took her in her arms and carried her to the bath. She soaked a while and was carried back. We laid her down on her mattress and spoke peace to her. She was healed from that moment. When Hang Fook Camp became available, she moved in and it became home. She worshiped Jesus, washed and ironed and slept a lot. She also cried a lot.

I watched with many questions in my heart and mind. We had learned something of praying for those with past hurts, and I had observed both the courage of those who opened up old wounds still infected with fear and violence and the eventual resolution as the cross of Jesus cancelled the pain and offered forgiveness to the perpetrators. But in her case, how long would it take?

I wondered whether we would have to take her through each nightmare separately. That would take as many years as the afflictions themselves. The cross ought to be quicker. There had to be a solution.

Elfrida went with a team from Hang Fook Camp who visited the poor, wretched and unwanted. She saw sadness and lack of love in the lives of others and realized how much she had been given. One day, she came back from an old people’s home obviously incensed.

“They give them beds and vegetables, but that is all. They do not pray for them like we do,” she proudly opined, as if the omission was obvious.

So she went back, and as she visited came the desire to share what she had received herself. As she bathed the elderly, she prayed for them, too. Elfrida went to see street sleepers with
her team and also found some of the old prostitutes whom she had known before in the Walled City. One was lying incontinent in her urine, having lost the need for a protector. Elfrida washed her body, washed her nit-ridden hair, and spoke of her new life and her Christ.

She loved much, for she had been forgiven much.

This new woman shed pain, bitterness and, as long as she served others, self pity. She seemed to shed years, too, and became so attractive that she found a suitor. Their wedding preparations were hilarious as she planned for the day she had been dreaming of most of her life. Bridesmaids. Flowers. Vows. Rings.

So, in her 70s, she married in virginal white and gracefully walked down the aisle to her future husband. It was a glorious day—a picture of how all things can become new.
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They had a few problems, however. She had not actually thought, in the euphoria of the wedding, about living out a married life. They behaved just like a young couple and had to grow into their new life. One day, she came to my hut. Another elderly lady—Hing Jeh, a widow—was also preparing to get married.

“She asked me if she could borrow my wedding dress, and I said she could,” Elfrida told me, “but she can’t. She cannot wear white—she has been married before!”

Ah, well.

17

YOUNG MEN’S VISIONS
¹

T
he young man walked down a rural path before climbing the mountain leading to the next village. He had no spare clothes, although the journey had started with him carrying a bundle of old ones, and he had also worn several sets himself. He had left them all in previous country settlements as he traveled from day to day. He had no bicycle, either. He had given that away, too. In his pocket was a sweet potato donated by the grateful villagers who subsisted on them and had nothing else to give except a blessing.

He had walked into the countryside and told those he met about his Lord. They welcomed him and his Jesus too. He prayed for them, and many were miraculously healed of diseases. Then he took his Bible and tore a few pages out, for they had none. He laid his hands on them that they could receive the power of the Holy Spirit and pray for the sick. Then he left a changed people and walked on, promising to return when he could.

Another young man lived in an urban block 30-odd stories high, with multitudes on every floor. He had no contact with other believers, for it was an era when this was forbidden. But he had been curiously transformed in his own life when some time before his heroin habit had overwhelmed his veins. How strange that a dead Jesus, apparently alive again, could physically quiet a body and urge a heart into leaping joy.

With the track marks yet on his arms but a deeper impression on his heart, this youth had found hope and a reason to
live. After he had come off drugs when someone prayed for him in this living Lord’s name, he was transformed body and soul.

He sang in his one-room apartment. He shared what had happened with his elderly neighbor who lived alone and had an aching pain in her wrist. She was healed, too, and then they sometimes sang together. Then they found a homeless tramp who camped on the landing, and they touched him too …

These were my dreams. Knowing not what the future might bring in a political sense or what would be permitted in terms of formal structure, I had always wished for such simplicity, no need for organization. One poor man reaching one poor man. “Love your neighbor as yourself” seemed to sum it up.
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Our young people are unlikely dragon slayers. Most have failed society, school and parents. But they have an unearthly courage. A group of them used to visit a certain city in Asia and found, over time, a gang of flower-sellers. They were children. They were slaves. These were children who, along with others, had left home, which was often several days away by train. Some of them had been unwanted. One of them had been sold several times as he was an orphan and some families wanted a son or a worker. He was beaten and ill-treated and ran away, only to be sold again. Another was already bent like an old person for, as a young child, he had to carry boulders strung to his back like the adults did.

They came to the city hoping for money. They slept by the railway station and found a way to make some money. Some sold their bodies, and many contracted diseases of a deadly nature. The very young ones sold flowers to tourists. But they never kept their money. The boss who gave them flowers took their earnings and their precarious freedom. He controlled them.

Ah Chi, with her team of lame young people, met them and slowly made friends. They loved them and took them to eat noodles or hamburgers. One famous franchise holder noticed this and allowed them to meet in his outlet. He had seen the plight
of the kids and the persistence of the Hong Kong teenagers.

One young girl waited in wonder for the group who loved her, touched her, washed her and prayed for her. Her situation was not good. Although she had found Jesus, she still lived on the streets under the imprisonment of her controller. She had no money and nowhere to go.

Ah Chi found the flower-seller boss and pleaded for the little girl’s freedom. In one short explosion, the exploiter apparently was bombed. What had hit him, he knew not, but suddenly the man cried and cried. He did not understand why he was so moved but, as Ah Chi talked, the boss was unbelievably awash with contrition. She told him of the God who sent His Son to die for the child and for him, too, that both could be truly free. He gladly accepted such a Savior and released the girl as well.

One of the team bought train tickets, although he himself had little money. We could not finance him, so he had to pray, like us, for rice and travel money. Having spent all, he took the child with him back to her original family. They rode the train for days and nights to reach their destination. This story has been repeated numerous times except that, in each instance, it is a different boy or girl. Often the families receive them back gladly and are, themselves, greatly affected by a love that they had never heard or guessed of.
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Ah Leung was taken home in this fashion. On arriving at his house, his mother rushed out in tears. She had remarried when he was young and the second husband had rejected her son, so he ran away and was lost for years.

“Let me tell you what happened to me,” she blubbered and heaved. “Let me tell you.” It turned out that six months before she had somehow heard of Jesus and had become a believer. Since then she had prayed non-stop.

“I did not know where Ah Leung was. I did not know which city he was in. I did not know how to find him, so I prayed, ‘Please
God, wherever my son is, please send some Christians to him.’”

Her prayer was answered.

My dreams came true.
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Ka Ming and Esther were the ones who reached out to a new generation in Hong Kong with the same problems as the previous ones but set in quite different living conditions. A new middle class had emerged and a wider form of social security. The new youth were able to enjoy compulsory secondary education and a higher standard of living than their parents had. Many were given watches, credit cards, roller blades and material possessions. A great number, though, still missed out on being listened to or cared for. They were pressed into performance-oriented schooling and fell out of the system.

If you have fallen out, it is hard to get back. Ka Ming tried to give them some hope through meeting them in playgrounds and befriending them. Many, however, had already joined another system and followed the hordes that seldom went home, slept outside and experimented with drugs and sex.

“I do not see them as problems, though,” Ka Ming told me with stars in his eyes. “If God could change me, then he can help them, too.”

He saw them as possible dragon slayers: a band of young men with new hearts and godly values willing to use their vigor and lives to serve the unlovely and unfound. He saw the cities of Asia touched in practical and miraculous ways by a youth who would choose different values than those that their parents had been trapped into serving for survival or promotion. He saw teens and young people in their 20s not trying to go up in the world but willing to reach down.
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