During Passion Conference 2012, I was exposed to the severity of the human trafficking pandemic in the world. I found myself surrounded by 40,000 other college students being motivated by righteous anger to do something. In that moment, I contemplated, dropping out of college to jump into the mission field – I envisioned myself rescuing children off of the street, going on brothel raids, and executing justice on pimps left and right. It was easy to convince myself that I was strong enough to come face to face with the horrors of sex trafficking while I was surrounded by thousands of other followers of Christ. However, the reality is that nothing, not even previous experience, could prepare my heart for the initial shock of walking down Bangla Road in Phuket, Thailand.
My first personal exposure to the international sex industry came in Riga Latvia during our second debrief (March 2014). We were given the opportunity to partner with a ministry called Freedom 61 that relies heavily on prayer and the Holy Spirit’s prompting to guide them in gathering information regarding sexual exploitation in the city, as well as, raising awareness, and providing a safe place for women to escape to. My group and I hit the streets desiring for the Lord to show up in mighty ways, but to our surprise, He kept leading us back to a familiar area of the city. After an hour of walking around, we decided to walk into what appeared to be a normal Irish Pub a few blocks away from our hostel. The front of the pub was decked out with dark wood and red leather furniture, but no one could ignore the black curtain covering the entrance to a stairwell across from the WC. As groups of men, continued to disappear behind the black curtain, we realized that this seemingly innocent bar was actually the cover story for an underground brothel. It was sickening to know that just beneath my feet women were being exploited as I comfortably sipped on a drink. In that moment, I experienced the anguish and anger I had first tasted at Passion 2012, but it was accompanied this time by something else, helplessness.
During our last week in Mongolia (Month 7, July 2014), my team and I helped out with a ministry that focuses on rescuing and restoring women from a life of prostitution by providing them with a safe environment to experience the gospel and a sustainable job to support themselves. It was beautiful to be able to befriend a group of women who had once sold their bodies but had been radically transformed by the saving grace of Jesus Christ. We enjoyed the ministry so much that my friend Lori and I were invited to join some of the staff members for their evening outreach. Without hesitation, we convinced one of the Z Squad men to accompany us, and we hit the streets of Ulaan Baatar looking for prostitutes to love on. I was astonished to find that familiar street corners had transformed into a breeding grounds for lust, self-gratification, and addiction to thrive. At the end of the night, we were forced to abandon our outreach because of the way men were reacting to our presence there. For the first time on the entire race, I felt disrespected and defiled as a woman. As I slowly glanced around seeing women of all ages selling their bodies for money, belligerent drunk men acting detestable, and pregnant women being assaulted, I once again felt helpless. With all that being said, as Thailand (Month 8) approached, the women of Z Squad were buzzing with excitement at the possibility of being assigned to organizations that are designed to cater to women who work in the sex industry. My team and I were disappointed to find that with Bangla Road in our reach (one of the most notorious red light districts in the world) that our ministry for the month included little to no interaction with the adult Thai population at all (We have spent most of this month painting the church we are partnering with, assisting teaching English, and pouring into each other), much less trafficked women. Therefore, we all jumped onboard when an opportunity arose to head towards the Patong Beach area for one of our off days. Unlike my two previous experiences, this time there was no ministry to partner with (the only contact that the World Race has in this area of Phuket disbanded their ministry just a few months ago), and to be honest we didn’t have much of a plan. However, the one thing that that we were sure of was the Lord was calling us to pray. So, that is what we did – we prayed through the night.
Upon arrival, we staked out the area during the daytime to get an idea of what we were up against. At first glance, Bangla Road seemed like the typical beach tourist attraction: there were bars everywhere, food carts had set up shop on the corners of the road, souvenir vendors lined the sides of street, floods of people from all over Europe and Australia were decked out in their beach gear, and to top it all off there was even a Starbucks that stayed open until 2:30 a.m. (how is that for marketing schemes???). However, it was impossible to ignore the poles lining all of the bars, pictures of naked women on the fluorescent signs, and men passing out fliers for the events line up for the evening to come. Spiritually, the air was filled with so much darkness, despair, greed, and lust that it was almost tangible. As a team, we saw right through the daytime disguise for Bangla Road – we knew that this was easily about to be one of the most spiritually trying nights of our lives.
At around 7 p.m., we all met as a team for dinner, and spent some time praying together to prepare our hearts for what was going to come. We were all incredibly excited for the opportunity that we had been given to spend a night interceding not just for men and women caught up in the ins and outs of sex trafficking, but also for a community of Thai people that benefit financially from taking advantage of other human beings being exploited, as well as the tourists that flock to the area for cheap meaningless sex. Before heading out to pray, we had expected to see women that were overcome with shame dancing on bars, drunk men that were filled with insecurities and lust, and all kinds of other dark things – we expected to feel angry. However, the most shocking thing that I observed, at 11 p.m. when we stepped back onto a transformed Bangla Road, was not mostly naked women, scores of drunk men, fluorescent lights, or advertisements for the ping pong shows happening inside of every bar, it was that families with young children were haphazardly walking on this street. I saw babies in strollers, 3 year old little girls shielding their eyes, fathers with their arms around their 12 years old sons, and married couple strolling hand in hand looking to spice up their marriage. I was horrified. As, I looked around at the chaotic scene unveiling around me, the only thing that I could see was darkness. In this moment, I felt more than helpless, I felt defeated — I bought into the lie that there was nothing that I could do to help rectify this situation.
Being two weeks removed from our Bangla Road experience, I have had a significant amount of time to process through the darkness that my teammates and I were exposed to. The Lord is revealing to me that the issue of sex trafficking is bigger than just Bangla Road, the nation of Thailand, women being exploited, or even men being the villain, it is simply a reflection of human nature itself. Sex trafficking is a global issue, that if you look close enough, might be lurking around your own back door. I must admit that predicament of sex trafficking seems impossible to solve, especially when you come face to face with the horrors of its effect, but in reality it is something that can only be rectified by the transforming grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As followers of Christ, we have the responsibility to stand up for the rights of our fellow human beings, not because they are entitled to justice, but because they are images the one true God. We no longer have to buy into the enemy’s allusion of defeat because Jesus won the battle of sin and death at the cross.
