Ministry in Chiang Mai was different than anything I have experienced on the Race. We partnered with Lighthouse in Action and each day we were a part of slum ministry, monk chat, English classes, working at Zion Cafe and bar ministry. We got to choose our own schedule and serve where we felt the Lord telling us to go. Here is a glimpse of each ministry:
Slum Ministry. At 4:30pm, after kids get out of school, we would walk a few blocks down this alley, between a murky, black river and shacks. The path led to a bridge with a open gravel lot at the end. As we walked along the road, we would greet the children and as they grabbed our hands, we would lead them to the open lot. We kicked around the soccer ball, painted fingernails, climbed trees and swung the children in circles until we both fell. I met a 23 year old girl, Sor, and she spoke English. She would help me practice Thai and teach me words that I didn’t know yet.
Monk Chat. Chiang Mai has a temple on almost every corner. These temples are beautifully ornate and filled with history. Every day, monks gather around picnic tables and are available to talk and practice their English. Any topics are free game: Buddhism, Christianity, Harry Potter, soccer, Thai culture; pretty much anything. World Race teams have seen monks give their lives to Jesus Christ through gospel conversations. Monks in Thailand range from 14 years to 80 years old. You can be a monk for only a season of life instead of how we picture monks in monasteries for a life of celibacy and commitment to their religion.
One of our squad leaders came to Chiang Mai on her World Race in 2013 and met Toi (who is not currently a monk, but an assistant to one) who is next in line to be the High Monk of Thailand. Teresa met him and shared the gospel with him, then she visited him again last year and then we got to meet him last month and share more about the peace we have in Christ. As we talked to him, you could see that what he said about Buddhism, he was having a hard time believing. We prayed for him and prayed over him after we left that God would appear to him in dreams and show Himself to Toi in a big way and that He would surrender his life to God.
English Classes. Every weekday, Zion Cafe and Hostel hosts several different English classes for different ages. We taught a woman in her 50’s who worked in a massage spa, a group of high school students, a male college student who knows more about grammar in the English language than we do, and two children who like to run crazy and throw Uno cards around the room. Teaching English has become almost a monthly occurrence on the Race. We have honed our skills and Thailand definitely improved us as teachers. We use methods from flashcards, to Google translate, to reciting vocabulary as we move with actions, play games like Simon Says and sang songs, really anything that can helps. And PS- English doesn’t actually make sense.
Zion Cafe. The cafe that Lighthouse in Action runs out of is amazing. It is a really cute, modern cafe with amazing coffee, desserts and the best pad thai in Chiang Mai. It was really dangerous living above the cafe in the Zion Hostel and going down every morning for coffee and breakfast and sitting in a cafe to spend time with Jesus however long we wished. The cafe workers are women who have left the bars where they were sold every night to different men, or they are women who were about to start working in the bars. Zion Cafe trains them to work hard and provides a place for them to live and earn money. Once they have been there a while, the owner gets to know them and asks them their dreams. Lighthouse in Action gives them permission to dream and allows them to get training for what they want to do, setting them up for success; One girl opened a restaurant, one girl is learning to be a cake decorator, one woman makes jewelry. Most women in Thailand who don’t have a lot of money, go work in the bars because they can make a lot of money to send back to villages to support their families and don’t see any other option. Zion Cafe takes them out of a dangerous cycle of hopelessness and gives them hope and eyes to see a new way of life, introducing them to Jesus and His dreams for their lives.
Bar Ministry. and Intercession. I never thought I’d say this, but my favorite ministry this month was praying. I know, I said it. Honestly, in my Christian life before this month, long times of prayer bored me. With bar ministry, though, when you’re going into an area full of sex trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism and just pure evil, you cannot do ministry without saturating it with prayer first.
Any night that we planned to go into the bars, we prayer walked in the mornings. There is one row/alley in Chiang Mai that is technically the red light district and it is full of open bars where tourists flood to drink and purchase women to take home. During the day, this strip looks like a normal restaurant row. The bars are closed and no one is around so we could stop and sit in the seats, linger around bars where we knew people and pray for a spiritual covering over the area. We prayed all kinds of bold things: “God, make all the ATMs jam so men can’t get money out to pay for women”, “Holy Spirit, as we walk, be present in every step and linger so when people take those same steps tonight, they feel You”, “Jesus, as I sit in this bathroom stall, let the girls who use this bathroom tonight see You and see hope”, “God, in Angel Bar, let everyone who enters this bar tonight see angels and see them protecting them from evil”, “Whichever man sits in this seat tonight instantly feel conviction of his choices and leave and go home.”
Then, in the afternoon, another group would go out and prayer walk again. This time of day, bar owners are starting to arrive, open the garage doors that hide their shops, do dishes, set up chairs, etc. When we prayed in the afternoon, we couldn’t really linger, we just walked through the strip praying specifically for the people we saw and the people we had met previous nights: women being sold, bar moms, pimps, johns (men buying prostitutes), and ladyboys (men who live life as women and also sell themselves).
After dinner, we would dress up and try to look like tourists going out on the town instead of missionaries. Easier said than done when you have a few outfits to last you all year. Then we would have an hour of prayer and worship. We would blast worship music and worship God, who we were doing all of this for and pray over our sisters who were going out. We recited Ephesians 6:10-20 (spiritual warfare and the armor of God) out loud in British accents and clothed ourselves to go out to battle. Then half would go out to the bars and half would stay behind and intercede.
Here comes my favorite part! While 4 girls were out at the bars, we would stay behind and pray. We didn’t just pray blessings and ask for help. We wrote their names on a whiteboard and wrote the names of all the people we met in the bars before and prayed continually for all of them. We would ask the Holy Spirit for verses to pray over them and we would write them by their names on the board. If we saw pictures or were praying specific things, we would write them down. We journaled, prayed and worshiped for 2 1/2 hours. We didn’t just pray, we warred for them. It was the sweetest, most precious, powerful time.
The girls who went out would walk through the bar strip and ask the Lord where they should go. We usually would go visit girls we had already met and continue to build a friendship, but we were also sensitive to where God wanted us to go and who to talk to. When you pass by a bar, the girls usually call out to you, “Hello!” “Come sit!” We would go in, order a coke or juice and offer to buy them a coke or juice. Then they would sit with us and either play pool or Jenga and just talk. At first, bar ministry is super intimidating, but one thing our host told us was “If you take away the ickiness and the situation, bar ministry is the easiest ministry ever – it is literally just talking to people, making friends.” And it was! The people who work there need the life changing power of Jesus and want to be loved more than anything else.
That’s the World Race, meeting people all over the world who are the same as we are. They may look different, have different jobs, have no jobs, or live in jungles, but only the gospel of Jesus can transform their lives. We simply become their friends and share how He has changed our lives. The awesome thing is you don’t have to be in Thailand to do that. We can do share the love of Jesus no matter where we are.
