After traveling the world quite extensively in my short life as a 22-year old college graduate, I can tell you I’ve been to some dark places. From cities in the States like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and New Orleans to cities around the world like Cairo, Istanbul and Delhi, I have seen darkness and the enemy’s work but I have never been to an area of the world as dark as Bangla Road. Sadly, I know places exactly like Bangla Road exist all over the world and yes, for you fellow Americans, even places in the “good ol’ USA”, but I have never entered an area as blatantly demonic, oppressive and supernaturally charged in all of my travels. There are no secrets in this place like in a lot of other seedy cities around the world. You don’t have to “know a guy who knows a guy” or seek out a place to find commercial sex…it’s right up in your face, everywhere you look.
As we walk down Bangla Road there are scantily clad women everywhere, blatantly soliciting themselves to male (and sometimes female) customers on the street outside the bar. The usual customer is an older white European or Australian men who is usually negotiating a price with the women while scanning her up and down. Then you walk down different areas like “Soi Easy” or “Soi Tiger” (which are the different bar areas on Bangla Road) where women are literally being raffled off to the customer with the winning ticket (raffle tickets to enter to win one woman for the night range anywhere between 10-25 US dollars). If the bars don’t hold a raffle they simply have women standing on top of the bars wearing numbers over their racing lingerie/dresses and customers tell their pimps which “number” they want for the hour (or the night, or the weekend or the week) and what price they are willing to offer for her.
Every women (about six in each bar) only gets paid very little off of the commission of alcoholic drinks customers purchase and nothing else, so their main source of income is selling their bodies every night for sex. These women are depressed, broken and enslaved in these bars either because of parents forcing them to work in the big city to support their entire family back home in the rural provinces they’re from or simply because they are uneducated and simply have found no other option for making money. I found out recently that to have a career as a hotel receptionist at any hotel in Thailand you have to have at least a 4-year college degree. When I look around Bangla Road I see hundreds of women who are trapped in lives filled with abuse, poverty and depression and my Spirit hears each one of their hearts crying out “SAVE ME”…but they know of no other option than living the miserable lives we find them in.
Fortunately and with glory to God, this story doesn’t end on a defeated note, but on a victorious one because these women are finally hearing TRUTH spoken over them in these bars, and it’s people like my team and I that are bringing the Truth to them. Our ministry contacts have made it their life mission to get these women out of enslavement as prostitutes and into lives they are meant to live as daughters of the Kingdom. Thanks to the ministry we’re working with they have many different opportunities for a new life. These include: receiving an education and getting a degree (either high school or college), receiving job opportunities in business management, hotel training, security and jewelry making through businesses our ministry runs or partners with and receiving help with things like child care for their children and English classes to broaden their future career opportunities. The only thing the women have to do to receive these opportunities is give up their lives at the bar and Bangla Road completely. They are also asked to join the Bible study/devotional time our ministry holds at the mission base every day where they can hear the Gospel and receive their true freedom from bondage…through salvation and a life walking with their Savior Jesus Christ.
So my team and I go out every other night to love on these women and tell that there’s hope for their lives. We sit in the same bars, pouring into the same women every night we go out praying that the Lord softens their hearts and that they trust us and the message we have for them. I spend my time at three specific bars, befriending two specific women at each bar, drinking Diet Coke and playing games like “Connect Four” and “Jenga” (seriously, they LOVE those two games). I’m slowly gaining their trust and displaying to them that I have no evil intentions, selfish ambitions, and only want to spend time getting to know them as friends and as the beautiful women God has created them to be. We laugh, talk about our families and I’m continuously praying for the Lord to speak to them in supernatural ways during our conversations and bonding.
I am praying hard that my small bar ministry team and I continue to win the trust and friendship of these women so that we can take them to coffee or lunch and have a serious conversation about them leaving their life at the bars and stepping into a new world full of opportunities and Jesus. We can’t do this alone. It’s exhausting, frustrating and extremely challenging getting across to these women. But it’s not impossible, especially with prayer. That’s where YOU come in! We need as much prayer as we can get for our ministry on Bangla Road and for these women to have the revelation that they are worth more than they have been told by their customers and this world and they are priceless princesses of the Most High God.
Please pray for us to break through the obstacles Satan’s given us such as: language barrier, the loud bar music, the aggressive male customers, and the demons of fear, depression and brokenness that these women are daily oppressed by. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus that each and every one of those women walks out of the darkness on Bangla Road and into the light with Jesus. Please pray for that, too. I couldn’t have come this far without you, my dear friends and family…and this time on my Race I especially need your prayers. We go out for bar ministry this coming Monday, Wednesday and Friday night from 9pm to midnight. That’s 9am to noon Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Please be intercessing for me and our team during those times. Thank you and good night from Thailand!
my bar ministry team (without our man, Phil) and I at our meeting place near Bangla Road
on Soi Crocodile where the women are raffled off and paraded on stage to be picked
outside the bars on Bangla Road itself on Chinese New Year was extremely crowded
