Ever heard of a cabin restaurant? When I think of cabin, my mind immediately wanders to a cozy home with a nice fireplace. I can imagine a family sitting all together, bundled up in warm red blankets… playing something like Telephone Pictionary or Settlers of Catan. But despite the name, there aren’t marshmallows roasting inside and food is rarely served. There are thousands of these in Nepal…out in the public for anyone to walk in. Instead of a room full of tables, they are merely cubicles, each separated by a thin plywood to encourage privacy between the waitress and her client. More than 50,000 women work in these “restaurants,” more than 3/5th of them minors. I don’t think I have to elaborate on what men generally order when they get inside their booth.
My team and I were able to visit one of these restaurants last Thursday. Sometimes being on the World Race, we look like annoying, loud tourists from America. This time, God used it for His plan. It got us through the door of the cabin restaurant with our ministry contact, who was our “translator.” We quickly walked in and squished into this tiny cubicle, practically sitting on top of each other. Four timid girls, all looking between the ages of 15-28 came to us. They took our orders: 5 Nepali teas and 2 Sprites. Honestly, it was the only thing we could afford there… well…enough to “buy” these girls’ times. They came back with 5 Mountain Dew and 2 Milk teas. Close enough, right?
Immediately, we started awkwardly asking questions like… are you originally from Nepal? Where’s your family? We are from America and we want to try your food… what’s good?! We did anything to get the conversation going. They were all so shy, looking at each other before answering questions. One girl even said to the other girl, what is your answer… because that’s my answer too. You could tell some were new to the restaurant (despite their answers) but also very confused to why we wanted to spend our “vacation” talking to them. I mean, their other customers don’t come into the restaurant for a nice, friendly afternoon chat…so why were we?
One short conversation led to another and the topic of America and learning English came up. It gave the PERFECT opportunity for my teammate, Rachel, to talk about one of the ministries we were “volunteering” with… specifically, working with girls who want to learn English. We offered our services to them but they seemed so defeated. They wanted to learn but they’ve never been educated so how could they learn… is what they thought. To them, they were girls from the village who never learned to read and write and so the only job they could find was at restaurants like these.
Having the ability to know English for them, was the key to getting out of that place. At that moment, God just flew the door of opportunity open…we got to tell them of a place where we don’t have to know any particular language to be free. It’s a place that is free from sin and shame, a place where you are constantly loved and there are no hurts or tears. From there, my team and I spent the next hour and a half sharing testimonies and the story of Jesus Christ. Another teammate, Lyndie, was able to eloquently describe how much God loved each and every one of us… despite our shortcomings. One girl was so moved by this that she ran out crying, claiming that her eyes were burning.
After a while, I went back into tourist mode… “girls, even if you don’t think you can learn English in 2 weeks… would you still want to hangout and show us where to get Nepali food?!” They all grinned and smiled, and agreed for Monday morning. We left that cabin restaurant with broken hearts for their situation but we were coming back home with a sliver of hope. We did what God called us to do: together, we planted the seed.
Monday morning came and our teams’ doubts were flying as high as the sky. Between not being able to get the lock off our gate, to confusing logistic plans, to one girl calling to cancel, we all thought it wasn’t going to happen. But as we were walking back to our house, we received a call. An hour drive and one lost taxi later, we were in the home of two of the girls, Pamela and Dawn*.
Both were honored and surprised that we travelled all the way to their home to hangout. After some tea and talks of nose piercings, they insisted we stay for breakfast. Neighbors kept peering into the house, trying to see if it was true… white, foreigners were there to visit! Pamela pointed at one of the two boys who came to visit and said, that’s about the age of my boy. She immediately poured her story out to us… how her husband brought home another wife and left without her. She had two kids, one she was still breastfeeding at the time. You could tell in her story, she had absolutely no hope of getting her boys back.
While Pamela started preparing the vegetables, she ended up cutting her finger. We didn’t bring our first aid kit (whoops, sorry WR safety training!) so she took Dawn’s scarf and wrapped it around her hand to stop the bleeding. Then, Dawn looks at us and goes, yeah last Christmas…A Christian group brought this scarf to the restaurant and gave it to all the girls. Our ministry host and “translator” to them chuckled. She says to us in English, “our ministry gives out scarves with wrapped up bibles every Christmas. We deliver them to cabin restaurants as part of our outreach. I won’t tell her yet but that’s one of our scarves.” Ahhh… JUST AHHH. In that moment, the Lord showed us how He was pursuing His children, and how He never stopped.
Then, I felt something stir inside me. I remember Pamela mentioning at the restaurant that someone gave her a Nepali bible. I brought it back up but she confirmed she had one but it was basically pointless to have. I didn’t understand for a second what she meant but I had forgot…she couldn’t read. I felt an urge to grab my bible and within milliseconds turned immediately to Luke 15. As Pamela was sitting there with her scarf wrapped around her hand, I asked our translator if she could ask Pamela if she wanted to hear a story. She smiled and said yes!
Ten minutes passed by as I read her The Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. I told her how I was a girl who was this Lost Sheep. I was enslaved to a life of drugs, sex and alcohol not too long ago. I was so lost, I thought suicide was the only option. I told her about countless times I felt alone. But then, like the Lost Sheep in the story, I had a Father who was out searching for me. I told her that she had the same Father too. He knew every hair on her head, and every tear that she cried. Even when she lost her two sons and felt physically ill in her chest, He was ill too.
From there, I could see it in her eyes, slightly glistening from across the room. There were 9 girls crammed in this small room but it was silent. I quickly said a prayer to myself and then calmly asked, “Pamela, have you thought about becoming a Christian?” Our translator responded with, “She keeps repeating that she wants to start going to church.” I shook my head no…. I said “Pamela, the cool thing about God is that you don’t have to wait for next Saturday to go to church to become a Christian. He’s here in this room and all we have to do is pray to Him and you can accept Christ here… right now!” She smiled, and then immediately frowned. “But I still smoke, and drink and i don’t know how to stop!” My teammate, Amanda, spoke up. It was the perfect time for her to share her testimony. I thought cool… back on track. Pamela smiled but then frowned, immediately. She replied, “But I don’t know how to pray…” I looked up at my team and we all grinned at the same time. “That’s totally okay, because I can pray with you and you can just repeat after me!” Pamela’s smile came back and it stayed there.
I was holding her hand, crying of happy tears were among the room, and English to Nepali was being translated quickly. After four minutes of reading Romans 10:9-10, God got one of His daughters back. Not even two minutes had passed by before my teammate, Rachel, got to pray with Dawn to accept Christ as well.
They, of course, didn’t want to go to work that day. They felt like new women. They had hope. They didn’t just see their lives as days passing by to make money for food and shelter. So what did we do…? Girls day! Our team was able to take them to the mall for the first time. I can’t express the faces Pamela and Dawn had when they walked in but imagine yourself seeing an escalator for the first time. (LOL Buddy, the elf anyone?). We knew they wanted to do it again so all 9 of us spent 10 minutes going up and down 7 stories of escalators and it was probably the cutest moment of my life. We then spent the rest of the day taking them bowling for the first time and then to a Nepali movie. I had no idea what was going on in that theatre but it didn’t matter, I couldn’t stop smiling… I gained two more Sisters in Christ.
But then… we had to put them back on the bus to send them home. That’s when my heart broke again. They skipped work to spend time with us but they kept getting calls from their boss and clients all day. Dawn probably had over 30 missed calls and I could tell she felt so lost. She knew and I knew they were going to get a beating tomorrow morning… (this is super common for them). I so desperately wanted to take them back home but what would I do? Give them shelter for two weeks before I had to leave. I had to trust that our Father was a better provider and that His way was better than my way.
I was challenged at that moment and I want to challenge to all those reading this right now. Pray that God finds them a job and a way out of the cabin restaurant lifestyle. We need to seek Him out for them and of course, He will reveal Himself. These are His daughters, and as it says in Luke 14… He takes care of the ravens in the sky and the flowers on the ground. How much more will He take care of His daughters? Also, share this. Share this story so we can raise more awareness for these girls at cabin restaurants. I know many of us pray for the exploited and trafficked… but we simply cannot forget about these girls as well.
Even though the end of the night was extremely heartbreaking for me, I wrote this so others can be encouraged. Two beautiful children thought they were enslaved to sex from strangers for the rest of their lives because they didn’t have any education. Two beautiful children received 50 dollars a month to have their body used day in and day out… but today, two beautiful children became daughters of the highest of high King. No matter what suffering they go through on this earth and no matter how much they may have been used, this isn’t their true home. Their eternal life has started today.
