I went and sat in the first seat I saw. It happened to be next to an older man from Florida. I talked to him for a while, nothing deep or anything, but just had a nice conversation. I didn’t say anything about Jesus, but he came up to me almost an hour after we had finished talking and was asking if I was a Christian. He could tell just by the way I talked to him and acted in the bar that I was a Christian- HOW COOL!!!!!!! We are known to be followers of Christ by the way we LOVE others.
I went and talked to a few more people, but especially the two mamasans, and became great friends with them. Slowly but surely, the parents and the other racers in my group were pulling girls from the stage and talking to them. I was talking the men and the mamasans, dancing on stage with the other girls to make them more comfortable and have attention directed away from them. For part of the night, the mamasans fell asleep… I know it was God who made them fall asleep to distract them, and allowed for us to talk to more girls. After about 3 hours of 9 of us in that bar, not a single man was left. We were hanging out with all of the girls on the bar benches, having fun, and talking about Wipe Every Tear. By midnight, 4 of the girls asked us if they could come stay at the hotel and come to Wipe Every Tear thee next morning. Are you kidding?!!?! 4 women are going to come tonight! Their shifts end in just 3 hours!!!! We were all overcome with joy and the Holy Spirit and ran to McDonalds to meet up with everyone.
When we got there, our group was worshiping on the streets. They were praising and shouting and dancing at the entrance of walking street. We all jumped in and praised the Lord. People passing by were obviously upset that we were there worshiping. The men who were walking by were pretending to dance and mocked us, but none of us stopped.
Most of the parents walked home together, leaving the racers, a few parents, and the Wipe Every Tear girls that went into the bars with us. We went out to a few more bars, talked to tons more girls, and danced a whole lot! At some points, the racers would create a shield on the stage while we were dancing, so the girls could hide behind us. Men would get so annoyed, they would walk out of the bars- praise God!!
When we were walking in between bars, we ran into a European man who was in his 40’s. We were making simple conversation and asked, “what are you doing here?” (we were meaning what are you doing in the Philippines). He looked up and down the street, and said, “well, I’m a sex tourist.” He continued and told us all about his life. He told us how many times a year he would come here, he told us how many women he slept with, how what he does is actually helping and is beneficial to the girls, and LOTS of other ugly details. But the one thing I will always remember him saying was, “this is my passion.” I was so blessed to live a life where rescuing girls from the sex trade was my passion, yet, someone from another first world country lead his life in a way that doing that was his passion… I still can’t get those words out of my head or my mind to wrap around the thought or the conversation even.
Five minutes after he walked away, another man stopped and asked us what we were doing there. We told him and he simply said, “can I come with and see?” So, an atheist Australian man and his friend went to two bars with us and watched what we were doing and “how we had fun”.
It was finally 2:30… the girls from Bamboo Bar were going to get off their shift in 30 minutes and the 4 of them were going to come to the hotel with us!!!!!
