syun lum
wong fuk hon
Once there was an old man named Syun Lum. He was born in Canton, China, in 1922. When he was nine years old he was taken to Hong Kong by his parents who were "hawkers", selling vegetables in the open marketplaces.
He had gone as far as the fourth grade in China, but in Hong Kong he did not go to school as school- ing was expensive and there was no money. He helped his parents selling vegetables but he became involved with the triad gangs and at sixteen years of age he was formally inducted into the Daan Yee Society by a day and a night of ceremonies which included the killing of a white cock and blood being let from all participants which was drunk with an oath of fidelity to the gang society.
When Syun Lum was nineteen he participated in a marriage arranged for him by his parents. When the Japanese took over Hong Kong his new wife died of fear during the bombing. At the end of the war he married again and in 1951 his wife, son and daughter returned to China to visit his mother. They were not allowed to leave. His wife now drives a bus in Canton.
After the war Syun Lum began to take heroin. He was a fighter in the gang society and worked in mah jong gambling parlors in Wan Chai where his job was to beat up people who didn't pay. He work- ed from dawn far into the night and had no energy and people recommended drugs to him to give him energy. This old man wasted his youth in evil ways and was bound by heroin for thirty-four years. He was in hospitals, prisons and the Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts many times for
withdrawal but was never successful. His relation- ships with people always failed and he existed to eat and to take heroin. He was eighteen times in prison and was extremely ill with an enlarged liver.
One day when he was closeted in the little cub- icle of a resettlement estate that was his home, tak- ing heroin with some buddies, an old gang brother who had been a drug addict visited and told him how Jesus had saved him from the old ways and made a new person of him and that now he was an addict no longer.
Syun Lum was certain he was too old and too hopeless to change and yet ... his friend hadn't been much either ... and he had changed. So he took the first step and now two years later this old man has become a new person also. When he gave himself to Jesus and received the gift of the Holy Spirit he was not only born again but was healed of his enlarged liver and his other physical problems. He came off thirty-four years of heroin with no withdrawal pains and now Syun Lum lives at Stephen's Third House where he is a father to the new boys and encourages them in the ways of the Lord. He teaches them to pray to come off drugs painlessly, to pray for their everyday rice and to pray because Jesus loves them and wants to hear from them. He reads the Bible with understanding and sometimes even explains it to the new converts. He acts as Supply Officer for the household as well as doing K. P. duty. He scours so clean that the new teflon frying pan has not one bit of teflon left on it! This old man from Canton is now a new man in
Jesus and he thanks God daily for his deliverance.
!
I am fifty years of age and was born in the nor- thern part of China, My family was once well-to-do but is now poor. Ever since I was very young I was trained to work hard and show initiative, with a view towards bringing the family back to its former status. Because of the Japanese invasion I gave up my education while in secondary school and joined the army, which was then known as the Hundred Thousand Enlightened Youth Army. We were train- ed in Yunnan province, Kwan Ming, China, and we fought against the Japanese in Ling Kwai. When the Japanese surrendered, civil war began and we fought against the Communists in Liu Yuen. Later the gov- ernment moved to Taiwan and our army was de- feated in Canton.
I came to Hong Kong at the end of the fifties. Because of the language barrier, and also because I was unskilled, my situation was appalling. Some- times I had enough but often I did not. My only hope was to go to Taiwan to fight back to regain China. Ten years passed and at last I wakened from this dream. Thoroughly disillusioned I lost all hope in life, stopped trying, and took to drugs to escape reality. After that I lived a living death. For fifteen years I was a masterless soul living a subhuman life. Sometimes I blamed myself and yet I was unable to help myself.
Two years ago in 1975, Jesus Christ, the one who saves men from sin, revealed Himself to me through Miss Pullinger and called me to Himself. I responded
and accepted Him as my Lord and Saviour and I was then filled with the Holy Spirit, at which time I
received a new language.
Through Mrs. Willans who magnified His love, I was taken into Stephen's Third House to withdraw from heroin with the aid of God's family there. The Lord's maid servant, Diane, taught me to pray in tongues whenever I felt badly, and although I do not comprehend it fully, I came off drugs painlessly and regained my health. Then I stopped praying in the Spirit. The old man lived again with his prob. lems.
I began to doubt whether I needed Jesus because other than taking white powder (heroin) I had not previously been in trouble. I had never stolen, raped, fornicated or killed, and as for white powder addiction, I was now off it. So I became proud, stiff-necked, self-righteous, jealous, cliquish, sus- picious toward everyone, refusing to submit, having no patience and easily provoked. But the strange thing is that when Sarah forced me to pray in tongues every morning and every night, and ex- horted me to pray one half hour a day in private devotions, everything changed. Gradually I began to have some strength to resist the desires of the flesh, and to submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I was even willing to search for God's Truth volun- tarily, and Mr. Willans' Bible teaching began to reach my heart and I began to have a deeper under- standing of God's love, which is revealed through His servants. He is melting my heart of stone and giving me a heart of flesh. I am grateful for His mercy and patience and I desire to follow Him all the days of my life.
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