This is the coolest story!!!! I am so excited to share this with you all! Its probably going to be a little longer than my typical blogs but soooo worth it!!!!!
So we are doing bar ministry and we go out to the bars on Bangela Road and meet the bar girls (servers working in prostitution) and build relationships with them! Its been a weird, amazing, eye-opening opportunity to meet these girls, make friends while they are on the clock working in these situations. They play games at the bars like connect four, jenga and jackpot and thats one way we hangout is by playing games. So we play games in between men coming to the bar and trying to make their "relationships" with our friends. But they love us and we love them!
There is this new bar, called the Tiger, that opened 2 weeks ago but is still under construction. It looks like something you would see at Disney World. Its got tons of giant carvings of snakes, tigers, trees…it reminded me a little of A Bugs Life with the ornate decor. But to call it a bar is a little deceiving though…its one giant building with 4 floors and 100 mini bars on the first floor. Each bar can have anywhere between 10-20 chairs and each bar has its own bar mom and its own bar girls. As we were prayer walking down Bangela Road today I was with my teammate Lacee. We both wanted to walk over to the New Tiger and look at it because the nights we have been down there we have not gone in it. And because I saw a man sitting on the ourside barstool with a lady and was curious what was going on because she was Thai and he was a tourist. Its so different to see the bars without people, without the darkness of night and the party lights, without the girls dancing on the bars, without the music…its somber during the day.
Lacee and I are standing outside the bar and we decide to walk up through it and we get to the back and there are about 25 bars unsold so naturally we both want to stop and pray for the bars not to sell! We don't want them to have enough business to keep building. As we are praying a lady walks by us and we smile at each other. Before we turn to walk out she is walking back towards us and I immediately feel we need to meet her, everything about her looked as though she was important. She was on the phone and also seemed to be telling people orders so I thought possible it could even be her bar. So as soon as she gets beside us she gets a phone call. So we walk back out waiting on the opportunity to go up to her but we never did because by the time we make it back to the road, she sits back down with the man I saw when we first walked up…but at that time I was unaware she was the lady. So I look at Lacee and tell her to remember the ladies face, knowing I need to meet her but we didn't have the chance. We are about to leave, hoping we see her again, when she walks over to us and asks "Do you have a question for me?"
I'm like…Um, yes! Yes we do! It was such a God thing…a divine encounter. I just asked how long the bar had been open and she said 2 weeks and I asked if it was her bar and she just laughed and said no. I told her that I thought she looked important by the way she was walking around a low and behold, she's the assistant to the owner of the entire Tiger bar. To better explain the importance of this is that most nights we have to be careful talking to the girls because we don't want the owners or bar moms to get mad, we can't even go into many of the bars or places. And we just met, on her initiation, the assistant who (in her own words) "Everything that happens has to go through her first." She thens asks us if we would like a tour and of course we say yes. She takes us up to the second floor where there is a VIP section and what we think might be a dance floor, and the third floor with overlooks the 2nd and 1st floors and we didn't get to go to the fourth because construction but it will be a hotel and restaurant. I asked her if each bar hires their own servers (bar girls) and she said yes, so I hope to from there find out where the VIP girls come from. She was soooo open with us about details that I feel comfortable asking her questions that I wouldn't ask the bar girls. One would be that there are glass boxes on the second and third floor of some buildings with European looking girls dancing in them, so wearing masks…and we've all wondered if those girls may have been trafficked? Because the girls downstairs in the open air bars are free to leave but that is not the case for all of them. So, across from the 2nd or 3rd floor Lacee saw one of the glass boxes and we want to ask about them.
Basically, I don't feel that my story halfway describes the excitement I feel about this situation but it was A God Encounter and one that I truly believe will be built on in the next few weeks. Like that phrase, you got to meet the right people, be in the right place at the right time, have friends in high places…we just made one! We just met the one lady who signs off on everything that goes on in the newest biggest bar on Bangela Road. Pray for our relationship, pray for her heart, pray for discernment on what to share & ask, pray we can build a relationship and I'm hoping we can take the lady from the organization we're helping with to meet her and get to know her. Especially because once it is up and running we (or future racers that come) are not allowed to go upstairs for safety reasons but something tugged at my heart for the "VIP" girls and they if not more than the girls downstairs need to be reached out to. So if we can find out as much information and have as good of a connection from the assistant manager as possible, we have a HUGE foot in the door to this new bar.
