This past month in Thailand we were in Phuket working with SHE (Self Help Empower) ministries. Their main goal is to help women leave prostitution and give them an alternate life style. They offer cheep English lessons, and for the women who leave prostitution they offer them different kinds of jobs like making jewelry, baking, and house cleaning.
Our ministry this month was going out to the bars at night and building relationships with the women, and hopefully getting to a point where we could invite them to an English class or tell them about SHE. During the day we would work at SHE making journals for them to sell or help clear a plot of land that they had just bought that will soon be dorms and class rooms for the women.
Going to the bars at night was crazy. We usually arrived at 9:30pm; the streets were packed with tourists and the girls were just starting to get up on the poles to dance. My group would usually start out the night by going down Soi Sea dragon, one of the streets completely lined with bars, and stopping in at smiles bar. Two of us would order a coke and then we would ask to play a game. We would play jenga, connect four, or jackpot with one of the girls and talk to them and get to know them. After about 30 min. we would say bye and move on to the next bar. My favorite bar was Wet Dreams most of the girls were young and had just moved to Phuket because of all the flooding in Bangkok. We all became fast friends. One night the bar was pretty packed and there weren’t 4 seats all together for us so one of the girls kicked out a man so we could have seats.
Altogether I loved the ministry this month, but it was draining because it was so sad. It was hard to see the girl you have been talking to for a few nights in a row walk off with a man.
