We walk out of the six-story, glass mall where we’ve just spent the last two hours eating, talking and having a grand ol’ time. Terminal 21 is literally, the biggest shopping center I have ever seen in my life. It is filled with high-end retail stores and boutiques. It is a place for shoppers with expensive taste in fashion. It is a place where a shirt will set you back 1,500 baht (about $50) easily.
Each floor is a labeled as a different country, complete with landmarks, shops and food that represent that country. The Paris floor has very expensive, cutting-edge fashion boutiques and even ongoing fashion shows that are shadowed by the giant plaster Eiffel Tower. The American floor, labeled San Francisco, has the Golden Gate Bridge stretched across the middle and dons street cars, complete with sounds and lights. There’s even an Auntie Anne’s pretzels on that floor; what a pleasant surprise for my tastebuds!
It’s a place for high-class, professional, nicely dressed people. It’s a place for good food, good friends, and good shopping. It’s the picture for happiness and success.
We finish our meals .The conversation turns to ministry. Tonight The 112 is heading out for our first night of bar ministry. We split into groups and agree to visit different areas.
As we walk out of Terminal 21 and head right towards the Nana district, the scene changes drastically.
The air of happiness and the ritzy “high class” feeling that Terminal 21 has begins to dissipate.
A sense of hopelessness, greed and a heavy heart of worthlessness overwhelm me.
The street vendor to the left is selling whips, lingerie, sex toys.
The street vendor to the right is selling sex-drive enhancers and stimulants.
For less than a dollar, males are buying Viagra, Cialis, Xanax, and Valium. Males are lining up and pushing to the front of the line to buy another dose of their chosen drugs.
But, despite the shoving and arguing about prices, they are smiling.
The smiles on their face are sickening. It’s not a smile of joy; it’s a smile of a sadistic nature, filled with greed and lust. A smile that physically represents the filthy thoughts and desires in their head.
“Don’t get caught up on the males,” our veteran bar-minister, Emily says. “We’re here for the girls tonight.”
The girls.
My heart breaks for them already.
During our orientation a few days ago, we sat for hours on the edge of our seats, listening to the situations these girls are in, the way they are treated, why they are here, etc.
My empathetic spirit literally feels what they feel.
I feel the sense of hope they have to enter the “big city” and find a job to support their parents- a task that the daughter of the family is literally assigned in Thailand.
I feel their heartbreak as they realize they have been tricked into working in a strip club and the disappointment they know their parents will feel if they return home, either jobless or to tell them what they have been doing to earn money.
I feel the emotions drain from my body as the days, weeks, months, years drag on and they still aren’t making enough money to leave the club and they are just looked at as a piece of meat; how it’s infuriating that they are nothing to these males, but at the same time, they are thankful because the lust of the males is paying the bills and putting food on the table for their families.
I feel their literal love-hate relationship with these men. They love the money they make and the men for giving it to them. They hate him for beating her and treating her like garbage.
I feel their desire to get out of the business but the harsh reality that they could never make close to this amount at another job because they had to drop out after 8th grade to support the family. And, in Thailand, you need at least a 9th grade certificate to get a legitimate job and 9th grade is expensive. And, even if you had a certificate, minimum wage is nothing compared to what they are making in the bars.
And all these feelings come back in a whirlwind as we walk under the flashing neon lights of the Nana district, one of the largest red-light districts in Thailand.
We stop outside the “gate” and the four of us gather in a circle.
We pray.
There are verbal prayers and there are silent prayers. We pray for strength, for divine appointments, for words for the women.
We pray intently and intensely.
It is 7:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. The neon lights line the soi (street) in front of us. They flash words and graphic, suggestive images to catch the attention of the people walking by. The bars are already busy and males disappear behind the curtains into the clubs.
I don’t hate the males. I don’t want to punch them, like most of my teammates.
I think I want to thank them for giving money to the women.
For helping them.
And then I want to throw up.
Did I really just think that?!
These males are disgusting.
But I just cannot bring myself to hate them.
Maybe I've finally learned to hate the sin but not the sinner. Maybe God has completely freed my spirit from seeing "the sin" and "the sinner" as the same thing. Maybe I finally have the "Jesus eyes" I've been asking for.
But maybe I also just really feel sorry for them- that this is what their life has come to- and that their lust is so high and their worth of these girls is so low.
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter because we have to keep walking.
We’re here for the girls tonight.
We pass a few bars.
A white man has his hand on the back of a definitely underage Thai woman. He’s leading her out of the district. He has just paid her bar fee to “rent” her for the night.
Emily leads us to a bar, in hopes that a woman she has been talking to us working. She prays, as we are walking, that she is there because she hasn’t seen her in a few weeks now.
A woman darts out from behind the circular bar and hugs Emily with a huge smile on her face.
This is her.
She invites us to sit down on the cushioned bar stools surrounding the bar and, as she grabs more to accommodate all four of us, Emily explains she has to serve us. That the bar manager is always watching and we need to order drinks to take up her precious time.
Plus, it will help her meet her “drink quota” for the night. Each night she has to sell a certain amount of drinks and sell herself to a certain amount of males.
I order a Coke, but the atmosphere is already so loud that I guess she hears "Diet Coke". She sets it down on the counter and I laugh and say, “I guess God is trying to tell me I need a Diet one tonight. It’s ok.”
Emily asks her if she wants a drink, too. In the few minutes we have been with her already, the huge smile has not left her face. She smiles bigger for a second and nods her head.
She knows English; well, enough that we can hold somewhat of a conversation.
Every once in a while, we ask a question and she furrows her eyebrows, wrinkles her forehead, cocks her head to the right and looks at Emily for clarification.
Emily says the same thing we just said, but she suddenly understands. Apparently, they are connected somehow.
The twenty-eight year old is dressed in black overall shorts with a black floral-print tube top on underneath. When she is complimented on how good the outfit looks on her, she begins to glow.
“Really?!” she says as she turns around so we can see the back. She’s not used to getting authentic compliments and relishes in it for a minute.
Her thin dark brown hair with lighter ends is thrown up in a high, messy ponytail on top of her head. She’s been working since 5 p.m. and the fact that her hair is disheveled and her thick, black cat-eye eyeliner is worn off in places shows it hasn’t been an easy night already. She gets off when the bar closes at 2 a.m. and she looks exhausted already.
Although our presence seems to have brought a renewed energy in her spirit.
She begins playing with her jewelry- specifically the gold hoops that hang in the two holes in each earlobe and the pendant on the black cord hanging around her neck. She asks if we life her bangle bracelets. She has one on each wrist.
Emily tells her they are beautiful. The other three of us nod our heads. She takes off the bracelet on her left wrist and hands it to Emily. “For you. My friend.” And reaches across the bar to hug her. Emily’s smile is so big, it might just run off the sides of her face.
She apologizes for not having enough for all of us, but promises if we come back, she will have more for us because we are all her friends now.
The rest of the time, we talk about how long we’re in Thailand, about her upcoming birthday, about her house, about when she works, and about the art program Emily does at Samaritan Creation on Thursdays.
She hesitates when Emily invites her to the program tomorrow. She says she has work and she is busy. She says that she wants to come see us though. She asks when Emily will be at the Samaritan Creation center with us (we are living here for the time being) and makes plans to come next week. She says she’ll bring our bangle bracelets when she comes to see us.
They exchange phone numbers and Ning hugs us as we leave.
Emily explains that she has made plans numerous times to come visit Emily and never carries through, but this time feels different. She asks us to pray that she comes this time.
We spent two and a half hours talking to her and “Jesus” never came up.
As weird as it sounds, my prayer for the night was that we wouldn’t have to talk about Jesus.
I wanted to interact with her like I feel Jesus would interact with her.
I wanted to be like Jesus, not talk about Jesus.
At 9 p.m., we walk in the pouring rain back to the Nana skytrain station. We hail a cab on the corner. We get in the taxi and go home.
At the end of the night, she continued her shift at the crowded bar, looking for clients.
At the end of the night, I went back to my air-conditioned room, looking for a good night’s sleep.
I wish this story had a romance-movie-esk ending.
I wish I could say that she left the industry and joined us at Samaritan Creation.
I wish I could say there was a “happy ending” for all when the camera pans out and turns to black in the final scene of the night.
But there isn’t.
All I can hope is that the continued interaction with she has planted a seed in her heart- even if it’s a seed that I will never see come to fruition with my own eyes.
God doesn’t need me to reach people like her. But I like to think that he does delight in using me when I’m willing.
Sometimes I plant a seed, sometimes I water the seed, sometimes I see the seed come to fruition, and sometimes I am not able to partake in any of the process.
And that’s okay.
Because God is working in Thailand.
God is here and the people here are starting to finally see him.
One prostitute at a time. One john at a time.
