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Pulling up to the pier in our boat was pretty intimidating as 20 very tough gangster looking men, most with their shirts off with full on Asian triad body tattoos stood waiting for me. I’m just this kid holding his guitar and suitcase.
Then I heard a voice say to me 劉弟兄 “Brother Darvin, we have heard so much about your music school and what you guys do to help the poor, all the brothers here are very excited to meet you, welcome to Dawn Island.”
Some of the men on dawn island that I have been talking to have been been in and out of prison more than 30 times. Each time we start a conversation, it feels like tears are welling up in their eyes as they recall how drugs like cocaine and heroin destroyed their lives and their families.
I met a man named James (names and circumstances slightly changed for obvious reasons). He was actually from Brooklyn! He even spoke English with a slight Brooklyn accent. He asked me about 8th ave, told me that he went to FDR high school and how he used to hang out with his friends on 42nd street. James is in his 40’s so this was a while back. He had spent the early 90‘s in the US but then came back to Hong Kong.
More tears welled up in his eyes as he talked about how grateful he was to be on Dawn Island and how good God is. It started with the party drug Ecstasy and then to hard drugs like Cocaine. He couldn’t go any place with a bathroom because then he would be inside getting a fix. He had to plan his route every day to avoid places where he could do drugs. Drugs had destroyed his relationship with his friends, family but most importantly his mother. He had relapsed many times, but he said to me “you know, you have to believe, you have to trust, Jesus is the real thing, without Him, I would already be dead...and at least here on the island, my mother won’t have to worry about me.”
Bible Verse
“One thing I ask, this only do I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and seek him in his temple.”
Psalms 27:4
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