Because this month of ministry is very different from the past five months, many of you have been asking me what exactly we’re doing here in Thailand. Are we busting into brothels, pulling girls out, and being chased by angry pimps on motorbikes? No. Are we in physical danger as we seek to give people freedom from the human trafficking industry? Not really. To answer these questions and others, and to give you a fuller picture of what this month looks like, I’m going to describe an average two days working with Lighthouse in Action in Chiang Mai to you.
Our team is living with another team from our squad, and our two teams alternate which ministries we do each day. What we are not doing each day, they are doing so that someone is always covering all of the ministries.
Day 1
9:00 am– Wake up, get ready for the day, eat breakfast
10:30 am– Leave for the WonGen coffee shop
11:00 am– Arrive at WonGen. The people who are working at the coffee shop for the day stay behind and help serve food and drinks while the rest of us go to Chiang Mai University during their lunch hour to meet students and invite them to come to WonGen to practice English and hang out with us.
We help waitress and do dishes at WonGen
Chiang Mai University cafeteria during lunch…see previous blog for details about what is happening in this picture
1:30 pm– Those who went to the university return to WonGen for lunch.
3:00-4:00 pm– Leave WonGen and return to the guest house where we’re living this month
4:30 pm– Leave for the slums. We are visiting the local slums every other day, playing with the kids, helping clean up the area, and meeting people. Many of the children from this neighborhood are forced to sell flowers at night in the bars, and sometimes even to sell themselves. Lighthouse in Action has been partnering with Compassion International to get some of these children scholarships to attend school and have the hope of a better future. More soon to come about this ministry in another blog…
6:00pm– Return from the slums and go eat dinner somewhere (Side note: Thai food is my favorite, and I can honestly say that I have not eaten one thing this month that I would not have wanted an entire extra plate of…the food here is AMAZING!)
8:00 pm– Have team time and then have the rest of the evening free
Day 2
On the days when we do bar ministry, we can sometimes sleep a little later, or sometimes we still go to WonGen but not to the slums.
6:00 pm– Have dinner as a team
7:00 pm– Team time
9:00 pm– Meet as a team for a time of prayer before we head out to the bars.
9:30 pm– Leave for the bars with our wonderful translater, Orn. We spend about 2-2 1/2 hours in the bars, building relationships with the girls and ladyboys. Five people from our team go to the Kitty Kat Bar every time, and two go to the Rabbit Bar. I’ll write more specifically about this in another blog, but we have been having great talks with some of the girls, getting to hang out with some of them during the day, and are praying that we can talk to them about God and about possibly getting out of the sex tourism industry if they want to. Please pray with us for opportunities to help these girls and guys find the freedom they so desperately want, and please pray that we can also love the men we meet in the bars who are here buying sex with the girls. They are just as lost as the girls, and they need the love of God just as much, even if it’s sometimes hard to remember.
Love at a reasonable price.
12:00 am– Return to the guest house and have a time of debrief about the night and prayer as a team before bed
This is pretty much what our lives are like right now. We are loving this month, and we know that God is doing big things in the lives of the people we are ministering to. Please keep us in your prayers, especially between the hours of 10am-1pm Eastern time on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, as those are the times that we will be out in the bars here in Thailand. The more that we can be covered in prayers for protection and knowing what God wants us to say, the better. It’s our prayer that many of these girls and guys can see something in us that inspires them to want freedom, and that God will show us what to say to help them find it.
“The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners.”
~Isaiah 61:1
Also, here are two videos that describe more fully what Lighthouse in Action is about. They’re really worth watching. The first one describes the ministries that we are working with, and the second one is Lighthouse’s founder, Emmi, telling her life story…it’s amazing! If you can’t read the subtitles on hers, find the original video on YouTube and watch it in fullscreen.
