{"id":17765,"date":"2018-05-24T09:58:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T16:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17765"},"modified":"2018-05-24T09:58:07","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T16:58:07","slug":"i-wanna-be-like-jackie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-wanna-be-like-jackie\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wanna Be Like Jackie"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will admit, when I picked up\u00a0Chasing The Dragon: One Woman’s Struggle Against The Darkness Of Hong Kong’s Drug Dens<\/em> by Jackie Pullinger I had no idea what to expect. I knew it was a book meant to get us ready for our time in Hong Kong but that was it. As I read reviews and one quote stood out, “The Walled City was demolished in 1992, but the social problems have simply been shifted elsewhere. Pullinger’s “safe refuges”, now spread across Hong Kong, are as necessary as ever. “How do you raise funds?” I asked. “I pray,” she replied.” [1]\u00a0In my wildest dreams I would be as bold and faithful as Jackie. Her book enthralled me, challenged me, made me question my own work and ultimately gave me hope.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Pullinger gives the reader a remarkable look inside one of the seedier sides of human life. The trading of humanity for the next high, and the destruction which follows this life. She starts with a short description of the youth center she had started, “It was dark, damp smelling and hard to keep clean, as there was no water supply for the inhabitants of the Walled City….Terrible things crawled out of the sewers and across the clubroom walls. I was always more afraid of the large cesspool spiders than the gangsters,” [2]\u00a0Reading this reminded me of Bangkok, Thailand. A beautiful metropolitan city, Western in its appearance (McDonalds on every corner), and yet a seamy underbelly that really was the city. Whenever I have seen Hong Kong in movies it is always portrayed as a gleaming jewel, a place where everyone is happy (in my own little mind anyway). The problem though, where there is displacement in the name of progress, a culture is created. In my minds eye, as Pullinger describes the drug dens and brothels, whether in the Walled City or the more acceptable dance halls, one thing came to my mind. We created this by changing the landscape to fit our Western sensibilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

An example I have experience was Pattaya, Thailand. Pattaya was a fishing village in the Chonburi Province as late as the 1960’s. During the Vietnam War the U.S. was looking for a place for R&R for troops outside of Vietnam but close enough to be usable. Before the U.S. decided to use Pattaya you could not get there from here, was how it was described to me by a missionary who had spent 30 years there. Then the U.S. decided to use it and overnight it exploded. After the war it became a tourist destination and with this designation became a capitol of the sex trade in Thailand.<\/p>\n

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If you look at the two pictures above you will see quite a different story. The first is what the government of Thailand wants you to see, a beautiful destination to come and relax. The second picture is in the middle of the walking street, my friend tells me the locals call it Hell Street. You can get whatever you want on this street and the alleys that run through it. Whether it is an underage girl, the hundreds of “Lady” boys or any drug you can think of. This is what westernizing a city in Thailand has wrought.<\/p>\n

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The next picture is in the middle of a dump just outside the city. Hundreds of families live in this dump, build their “house”, scavenge through the refuse for food and things they can fix to earn money, and of course many drug users sleeping off the last high.<\/p>\n

Getting back to our book, Jackie Pullinger decided at the age of 22 to listen to God and start a ministry to the people of the Walled City. Inside this hell Jackie had to deal with the Triads. She gives us a glimpse, ” All over Hong Kong the Tirads inspired terror, which mad it easier to run protection rackets. The Walled City was the perfect place for them; they took the fullest advantage of its uncertain sovereignty.”\u00a0[3]<\/span>\u00a0To be able to stand in the midst of this and save people one at a time takes great faith. Faith which most Christians I know would not have the stomach for. I do not know if I would have the stomach for this much faith, but it starts with a small step. I was so convicted while reading this book I started praying “God give me a chance just to begin to make a difference in somebody’s life” He gave me a chance two days ago, I got a call from our association office telling me they were sending someone our way that needed help. A while later a man walks into my office, introduces himself and begins to tell me his story. I will preface this by I have a fairly good “BS” meter and usually when I get stories I get a pretty good feeling for the truth. This man brought paperwork galore. He was a Harvey victim whose house had been destroyed by the hurricane, his belongings had been looted and was temporarily housed in Killeen, Tx. FEMA had given him new furniture and other things and was setting him up in Deleon, about two hours from Killeen. He needed money for all the trips he was going to be taking back and forth to move his stuff from one place to another, and it had to be quick as his time in Killeen was done and he had to move out. God gave me an opportunity to help a man, I usually would have sent him to a bigger church but something told me help him, and remind him he is loved. I did so and the joy I received from obedience was immeasurable. This does not make me Jackie but I understand why she does what she does, God calls we listen, peoples lives are changed.<\/p>\n

[1]Richard Morrison. “Voice of the Voiceless; Opinion.(Features).” The Times (London, England), March 15, 2004.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Pullinger, Jackie, and Andrew Quicke.\u00a0Chasing the Dragon: One Womans Struggle against the Darkness of Hong Kongs Drug Dens<\/i>. Minneapolis, MN: Chosen, 2014. 20.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Ibid.\u00a0<\/span>69.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will admit, when I picked up\u00a0Chasing The Dragon: One Woman’s Struggle Against The Darkness Of Hong Kong’s Drug Dens by Jackie Pullinger I had no idea what to expect. I knew it was a book meant to get us ready for our time in Hong Kong but that was it. As I read reviews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17769,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17765\/revisions\/17769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}