Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to cabin restaurants and minister to the girls there. I was horrified to do this ministry. I did not know much about what happens in those restaurants and I was afraid of what I would see. In Colombia when we did agua panela there was so much chaos and darkness that I was overwhelmed, and I let that shake me. Since then, I have a stronger foundation of faith, but I was expecting the same sort of chaos and I was afraid the same thing would happen.
This ministry was also vastly different than what we had been doing so far this month. We were mainly doing slum ministry with the kids and teaching english in homes and at a women’s center. At the women’s center, there are women who come from many different places to learn skills that will help them get better jobs. Some of these women are older women who never got the chance to have an education, and some of these women had been trapped in the red light district and had been rescued by the people who work for the organization. So we got to see the other side of this ministry, but now we were going right into the lion’s den to try and show these girls that they are not alone and there are opportunities for them and people fighting for them.
The morning before we went to the restaurants we had a little orientation about what it would look like. Basically a cabin restaurant is like a normal restaurant, but each table has walls around it and a door. They serve regular food, but it is way overpriced because along with the food, you get a girl or two who serves you. The more money you spend, the longer the girl stays with you. For us, that just looked like ordering $5 Mountain Dew and talking to these girls for an hour and a half, but for most people who come into these restaurants, that’s not all they want from them.
The girls are recruited by friends and family, and often times they come into the city not knowing exactly what they are doing until a week into working. Then they get trapped by the owner loaning them money, and they can’t leave until they’re paid off their loans. They could just run away and hide, but the people who own these restaurants typically have big connections, and the girls cannot stay hidden for long.
So, we went out and into a cabin restaurant with a group of 5 of us plus a translator. We walk into one of the farthest cabins and are greeted by a girl who said she was 21, but looked no older than 16. She was very giggly and smiley and seemed very friendly. We introduced ourselves and had some small talk. Then another girl came in who had seen our translator before and wanted to chat. We talked about what their dreams and goals were. The second girl, M, wanted to be a doctor for elderly people, but the younger girl, S, kept making jokes, saying she wanted to be a taxi driver. We could tell that she was laughing to hide deep pain. One guy with us shared a little bit of his testimony, and how he used to laugh to cover up pain, but at some point you need to be honest with yourself, and once you can do that, there is hope that you can make your life better.
Another girl also shared a metaphor about a lake, and how it’s surrounded by trees and mountains and it’s easy to feel trapped, but how overtime as rain falls and water flows, that lake can open up into a stream that leads to the ocean, and even though it seems impossible to escape, there is always a way out. This story really resonated with M, and I felt the Lord telling me to share the meaning of her name with her. Her name means “look”, and I told her that there is a promise in her name. Her name is a command to keep looking forward, and that God will show her the way out of her lake. She then said how much she wanted to have a bible, and our translator told her that he would be happy to bring her one the next time he comes. I then told her that there is a verse in the Bible that speaks into that promise from Psalm 121:1-2. It says “I look up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth!”. I told her that if she keeps looking forward, God will help her overcome her mountains.
Then the younger girl, S, her name meant peace. She actually had her name tattooed on her arm. I asked her why she wanted that on her arm, and she said she didn’t know. We asked her if she felt at peace, and she said she didn’t know. We tried to tell her that God promises peace in our lives, and there are many verses in the Bible about peace that passes understanding, and that is the peace that the Lord wants to give us. She kept getting distracted by people outside and things around us, but I think she heard us enough to understand what we were saying.
We then tried to tell them that there are opportunities to get out, get decent jobs and repay their loans, and that being stuck in this lake is only temporary as long as they have the will to leave. Before we left, our translator asked them to think about the conversation we had today, and think about why it was different. He told them that we could have gone to any restaurant and talked to anyone, but we talked to them. He asked them to ask themselves about the meanings of their names, and that they may hear a still small voice, and that that voice will speak the truth. He then said when he brings them bibles, he wants them to find the meaning of their names in scripture, and to hold on to those promises God has placed in their lives.
Before we left they wanted to get pictures with us, and we took them. We left and we had many mixed emotions. Some people still felt heavy hearts for those girls, and wanted to just pull them out right then and there, but that would not have been safe. I personally left feeling that the Lord’s promises were fulfilled. Last week we were asked to pray over this time of ministry, and I kept hearing the words “peace peace peace peace” over and over again, and when we met S and found out that that’s what her name meant, it just confirmed that God cared about her and wanted us to talk with her today and speak truth over her. For M, this had been the second or third time she had talked with people like us, and she was very hungry for the gospel. She made our translator promise to remember to bring her a bible, and she had a very different attitude than S. She was ready to leave and truly believed that God could help her get out of there.
What we got to do yesterday was just a step in to process of rescuing those girls. It would be wonderful if every time we went into a cabin restaurant we could take all of the girls with us and shut down the restaurant right then and there, but unfortunately that put everyone in great danger, so they can’t do that. What they do is talk with the girls, and they try to schedule meeting outside of the restaurant so they can have an honest conversation about how they feel and what they want to do. If they say they want to get out, then the people from the organization try to help them get rid of any ties keeping them there, like their loans, by helping them get regular jobs. They then find them homes to stay in so they don’t have to stay in the apartments provided by the restaurants. Then once they finally get out, they have the women’s center that we worked at that can help them further develop job skills so they never feel like they have to go back to where they came from to make a living.
The way we help in this process is by offering new and different words of encouragement, but we also help by protecting the people who live here and do this regularly. These restaurants see many different people every day, and when the our translators come with different groups of people each time, it makes it harder to the owners to recognize them and find out what they are doing.
This is a scary ministry to be involved in, just because of the nature of where we are going and who we are interacting with, but the good news is that we go in with God on our side. Just like Daniel in the lion’s den, we have authority over the darkness, and God will protect us from the dangers of the night when we call upon Him. It’s also important to remember that these are exactly the places we are called to go as Christians. If we stay in our little Christian bubble and never venture out to help those who really need it, we’ve missed the point of the Great Commission that Jesus gave us. Doing this ministry just reminded me of where I live. Right outside of my town there is a strip of highway full of dance bars and night clubs. Of course, we are all disgusted by it’s presence so close to us, but what are we doing to try and redeem it? As far as I know, I don’t know of any groups that go in there and try to talk to the women who work them to help them out. I know we pray all the time that the light of God will shine in those places, but we also carry that light. At first, this was a ministry I never saw myself doing, but now I feel like we need to take the things we have learned how to do here and bring that same light and redemption to places right in our backyard.
There is not a doubt in my mind that these girls will get to leave this place. Perhaps M in the next couple months, and S within the next year, and what an honor it was to get to play a part in that redemption story that God is still writing.
