We are on our final continent of our Race! It has flown by—just as I knew it would—with a roller coaster of emotions and experiences, but one constant has definitely been God’s faithfulness.
During our third month, I asked God to place a specific country or person on my heart so that I could be intentionally praying and that the Spirit would prepare me for what was to come. God placed on my heart the people being trafficked, specifically the women in prostitution. However, just like everything on the Race, we weren’t guaranteed anything—from our route of countries to tomorrow’s plans.
When I had shared my excitement with others about our potential month in Thailand ministering to prostitutes, I received the quick slap of reality and the response, “It’s not guaranteed, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.” Yet, I knew the passion that the Spirit had built inside of me and, even though they were right, I wasn’t going to question God’s answer to my prayers during month three.
With the months to follow, I decided to educate myself on what God had told me was to come during our month in Thailand. I read the book Not For Sale by David Batstone, I watched the movie “Human Trafficking”, and I continued to pray into our potential month in Thailand.
Finally when it became time to find out our plans for the month, God smiled down upon me saying, “All was not for nothing.”
This month we are doing ministry a little bit differently. Since Southeast Asia is one of the main regions that traffics women and children into slavery—both physical and sexual—the men on our squad would be viewed as clients rather than missionaries. Therefore, we are splitting up by gender for just the month of Thailand.
Since there is an overwhelming number of girls on our squad, we are divided into seven teams. I have a completely new team of girls only for this month’s ministry. We will be traveling today for 15 hours from Bangkok to our ministry location on the island of Phuket. We will be working with the NGO called “S.H.E.” (Self-Help and Empowerment). Our ministry is strictly to build relationships with the women.
As these women have lived with virtually no choice in their whole life, we are there to tell them that they have a choice: to make a new life for themselves out of prostitution and in Jesus. If they choose to pursue the life outside of prostitution, we invite them to participate in learning vocational skills—sewing, English, etc.—with the hopes that they will attain a job with those skills.
This is the very ministry that God gave me a passion for before the Race and further set that passion on fire during our third month on the field. However, I know that this month will be the most taxing out of any ministry. My team and I desperately need to be covered in prayer as we begin the next three and a half weeks of this very rewarding ministry. Please pray:
- for us to be filled with the Spirit every day
- for God to give us continual energy
- for our words and actions to be out of love (even to the men in this industry)
- against the Devil and his attempts at getting our spirits down or continuing this industry
MY TEAM FOR THAILAND: Team Powerhouse
