A security guard Walked all 9 of us down this dark ally to a door. Behind that door was flashing lights and loud music and a girl standing on a stage dancing to Gwen Stefani. There was only 1 or 2 other ppl in the dance bar so we spread out in groups of 2 and took a seat. We were on our own no translators no locals just me and my teammate. (Our translators/ host were men so they were there praying but not interacting) The minute I sat in the booth a woman came over and said hi. Her and a friend sat between my team mate and I. It was time, let the ministry begin!
Dance bars are a front for brothels. The woman go on stage they dance, then men sit with them buy them drinks then make plans to sleep with them after 11 when the bar closes. We went in with the goal of rescuing some of girls out of the sex industry. Some of them are sex trafficked some are there on there own free will. Because they have grown up hearing that selling their body was ok. It’s a sad reality here. The woman there very in age, the ones I interacted with were 18 and 25 but there are no age limits there.
I got about an hour to talk with the woman in between her being on the stage. There was a language barrier so it was hard for me to go deep and really get to know her story the way I wanted to I only caught bits and pieces. The piece i caught really well was that she liked girls and wanted me to be her “boyfriend”. At that point a part of me started to wonder if she really did like woman or she had to say that because i was a (in her mind) a potential customer. These woman are asked to compromise so many things and their sexuality is one of them. I can’t even imagine. But her parents have passed away and she had been working at that dance bar for about a month but dancing for 2 years. We got her laughing and talking about what she wanted to do other than dance, she said she loved dancing but she wanted to do makeup professionally. She has other things that she wants to do but for reasons I may never know she’s stuck there selling herself to random men and woman.
At one point as we were waiting for her to come back, I looked across the room to another booth where a man was smoking hookah and groping this young woman. The man had his arm around her she looked extremely uncomfortable. She tried her hardest not to really engage with the man feeling all over her. A few times he went into kiss her and she would dodge it. My heart broke for her, she’s stuck in a place where she has to let some man feel all over her try and kiss and later possibly more just to earn some sort of living. One of the other teammates got to talk to another girl about what was going on and they said for the beer and the hookah that the man order would earn the girl $400 rupees which is about $4 American. Four dollars that’s what she is going to earn for giving away a piece of herself. Every part of me wished I could just walk over there and take her out of the situation and save her, take off running. But in the reality I couldn’t do that, I had to sit and watch and pray! I prayed so hard for that young girl. The look on that girls face will stick with me forever, everything about her body language and everything screamed NO I don’t want to be here. Everything short of tears streaming down her face.
As we were walking out i was sharing with one of my teammates that the woman we were talking to repeatedly kept saying i was her boyfriend, my response I’ll be what you want if i can get you out and tell you about the love of my God! If she needed that to leave, man I’ll let u say what you want to say to make yourself feel better but i have boundaries nothing past talking. ( it was a funny moment in a very serious moment)
I learned awhile ago that helping girls in sex trafficking and things similar was something I was passionate about. Something that I was really excited to get a chance to do for ministry and after month 2 in Ecuador where we got to interact with sex trafficked children I knew it was my purpose and my calling. Getting to actually go in and do it just made me even more passionate about it. I know I can’t save every single girl but I know I can make a difference.
