The Most Dangerous Place in the World
In 1966, Jackie Pullinger was a 22-year-old music graduate from London with no missionary training, no funding, and no plan. She boarded a slow boat to Hong Kong because a pastor told her: "If God wants you to go, just go."
She ended up in the Kowloon Walled City -- a lawless, six-acre block in Hong Kong where 33,000 people lived in a labyrinth of unlicensed buildings with no police presence, no sanitation, and no sunlight. It was controlled by Triad gangs. Heroin was sold openly. Violence was routine.
Jackie walked in and started a youth club.
What Nobody Expected
She spent her first years learning Cantonese, making friends with gang members, and simply being present. She did not arrive with a programme. She showed up with a keyboard and the willingness to sit with people everyone else avoided.
Then something began to happen. Heroin addicts started getting clean -- not through medical treatment, which was unavailable, but through prayer. Jackie documented case after case of long-term addicts who stopped using overnight, with no withdrawal symptoms.
She was as surprised as anyone. "I didn't have a theology for this," she said. "I just knew these men were free."
The St Stephen's Society
Pullinger founded the St Stephen's Society, which provided housing, rehabilitation, and job training for former addicts and gang members. Over the decades, hundreds of men and women went through the programme, with recovery rates that stunned medical professionals.
Even after the Walled City was demolished in 1993, the work continued. Jackie remained in Hong Kong for over 50 years, serving the same communities she had walked into as a naive 22-year-old.
What This Means for You
Jackie had no qualifications, no strategy, and no resources. She had the willingness to enter a place everyone else fled from. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply show up and stay. God does the rest.