One of the ministries that we do is called Bar Ministry. Dance Bars in Nepal are thinly veiled fronts for prostitution. The girls dance on stage, walk around the bar and talk to people trying to gain clients. They give out their phone number for the men to call them later.
When we do Bar Ministry we have two goals. The first is to just love the girls. The average age of a trafficked girl is 13 or 14. We just want to love them and treat them like actual humans rather than objects. We will buy a soda and just talk to them about their family, about what they like to do outside of work and anything else. If there is an opportunity we ask if they like their job. This leads to our second goal which is to try and get the girls contact information. We give this information to an organization which works to rescue the women, and then train them in order to get jobs.
The night that we did Bar Ministry we spent about two hours in a dance bar in Thamel, which is the tourist hub of Kathmandu. Our group was about 15 people and we split up around the bar. My teammate AnnaGrace and I paired up. Together we spent time with 4 different girls. All of them had aspirations to work somewhere else. One wants to open a restaurant, another wants to be a singer, and another to be a model. When asked if they liked working there, three instantly said no. We also asked them if they would want to work somewhere else and all four said yes. One girl explained that it is hard to find other jobs, which is why she was in the situation she was. We explained that we have a “friend” who trains girls and helps them get jobs. We gave the girls a number they could call and also got their contact information. Our group in total got about 10 numbers from that bar alone.
There was one girl who we tried talking to who spoke very little English. We had to ask one of the other girls to translate. She seemed to appreciate our attempts and she smiled and giggled. After a little bit, she grabbed our wrists. She took off her bangles and put them on us. I wanted to burst into tears. Here was this girl, who is the age of the students I teach back in the States, stuck without options. We came to help her and she blessed us. Yes, they are just cheap plastic bangles, but to me they are gold. They are my most prized possession. I have not taken them off, since she put them on me.
Society sees these girls the way many would see these bangles: cheap, shiny, dinged up, and worthless. God calls us to see beyond the surface and the circumstance. He calls us to view these girls as His children. To see beyond the skimpy dresses, the stigma and the situation. As Christians we are called to view those that society deems lowly as gold.
Please keep these girls in your prayers. Even when presented with the option to walk out of the lifestyle they are in, they often choose to stay. They could be threatened by their pimp, addicted to drugs, or unsure of the unknown. We just have to trust that God is bigger than it all, and that we have worked to plant a seed of hope in these girls.
-Caitlin
