Her son lives with her parents who have no idea this is the line of work she has found here in Chiangmai and Vickie tells me her father would surely kill her if he knew she had dishonored them this way. She only gets to see her son once a month when she can afford the 5 hour trip home. She proudly shows me his pictures as she tells me all about how she is going to study economics and get a job in an office where she will be able to take good care of him. She also tells me that she will not work in the bar forever and this is not the job she came here for but it was all she could find. And my heart aches more. Then the madam calls her over and she stands out front of the bar again to attract clients. Not long passes and she returns to sit by me and I notice as the night goes by she no longer greets the men on the sidewalk. She doesn’t even leave her seat when a man enters the bar. She plays pool with us and just simply sits by me to chat as I drink my Coke.
When the night ends she and her friends smile brightly and tell us goodnight and to come again. And I will come again. I will seek out Vickie and pray that God stirs something in her that makes her seek out the truth of who she is and who the one real God is. I pray He whispers softly into her heart that she is worth more than $100 a night. She is royalty created in the image of the Almighty God. I pray He sets her free. Walls come down, chains are broken. When we arrived I felt overwhelmed at the lostness of this nation and cried out to God, “Why have you not called them and saved them? Why don’t you pursue them like you pursued me?” And our gracious Lord audibly told me, “I am pursuing them, that is why you are here.” Jesus Christ is about to take Thailand by storm and I am just glad to be used as a small part of it. If I accomplish nothing more than shine His light and bring the glory of His presence into the bars I enter, that is enough.
“And we all, with unveiled faces, reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 3:18
