citybuilder.org

I am reading Chasing the Dragon. It’s the true story of a missionary, Jackie Pullinger, an amazing woman who follows God from Britain to Hong Kong. She works (I think she’s still there) in a section of Hong Kong called the Walled City. When Jackie began, the Walled City was run by the notorious Triad gangs, toughs who fought over prostitution, gambling, and drug territories. Inside the Walled City there was no plumbing, no running water, no electricity, and the tall, densely packed buildings were literally crumbling. The result was a place known simply as “Darkness.” People tossed sewage straight from their chamber pots and out onto the street. There were 2 public toilets, and they were both overflowing holes in the ground.

When we started working in Allendale four years ago, many of our neighbors were afraid to leave their houses at night. The 1400 block of Yale Ave. was a plain grassy field, home of pick-up football games, a couple of cacti and, buried beneath the soil, hundreds of chunks of concrete just waiting to foil our spades. The word on the street was that there were a couple of new white insurance salesmen living in the corner house on Murphy (and that was the kindest interpretation).

I don’t have to tell this crowd that Allendale has come a long way since 2002.

So has modern technology.

Think about it for a moment. Four years ago, cell phones were just starting to spread from the cars of traveling salesmen to the cars of the 1986 Corolla crowd. Back then an always-on 56k dialup connection was the greatest thing since hot water that $24.99 a month could buy you. When we moved to Allendale, a blogger was a tree-cutter with a stuffy nose.

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