At 22 years old, I wanted to be a missionary, but every organization I contacted turned me down. I was too young, too unqualified, too something. Then a trusted rector gave me advice that changed my life: "Buy a boat ticket for the longest journey you can find, pray, and trust the Lord to show you where to get off."
Arriving in Hong Kong's Darkness
I bought the cheapest one-way ticket I could find - a ship sailing from England across the world. When I disembarked in Hong Kong in 1966, I had ten dollars in my pocket and knew no one. The immigration officers only let me in because my mother's godson happened to be a police officer there.
I found work as a primary school teacher in the Kowloon Walled City. This was not a normal neighborhood. It was a lawless six-acre maze of crumbling buildings, officially off-limits to police, ruled by Chinese Triad gangs. There were over 40 opium and heroin dens. Young girls were sold to brothels. The dead bodies of addicts piled up outside the single toilet that served up to 100,000 people. They called it "Darkness."
For years, nobody listened to my preaching. But they watched my life. So I practiced what I call "ordinary gospel" - sharing rice with a hungry old lady, taking a gangster to the hospital after a fight, waiting overnight to register a young girl for school. I started a youth club in a tiny room.
Drug Addiction Healed Through Prayer
Then something remarkable began to happen. Heroin addicts would pray, and they would be immediately delivered from their addiction - no withdrawal symptoms, no methadone, no medical treatment. Just prayer, often in tongues, and miraculous freedom. Crime bosses surrendered their lives to Jesus and were set free.
One man after another experienced painless withdrawal. Word spread through the prisons: "You can go to Jackie's place and start a new life." The pattern repeated hundreds, then thousands of times. Long-term addicts surrendering to Jesus. Freedom without medication. Transformed lives.
Ministry Continues Beyond the Walled City
In 1981, I founded St. Stephen's Society to provide homes for recovering addicts. Today we operate 287 houses. Former addicts who couldn't read became electricians, taxi drivers, restaurateurs, even overseas missionaries.
The Walled City was demolished in the mid-1990s and replaced with a park. But the work continues. I am still here, still in Hong Kong, still watching God set prisoners free. Churches tend to look after the nice people. I do my work with the nasty ones - addicts and prostitutes who feel despised and excluded. They are exactly who Jesus came for.
