My heart was lightly pounding as I prayed over our team.
“Let us be something bright in a place filled with darkness, Lord.”
The six of us stood there clutching sunflowers close to our chests or resting gently on our hips. I never thought I would be about to pass out my favorite flower and my state’s flower to Thai women and lady boys working in the Red Light District.
The blueprint for this day was prayer for the Red Light District in Chiang Mai. It was our last day in Thailand and we had the freedom to plan our ministry for the last 24 hours. With some guidance from both the Lord and a long-term missionary that is solely there to build relationships with the girls, we chose to go to the District in prayer in the day and in the night. I was with a team that was only together for a week while some of our other squadmates had their parents visiting for a week-long mission trip.
In the morning, each person of my team carved out time to prepare themselves for what we possibly would face spiritually and emotionally. The District is chaotic, tumultuous terrain to walk into and our team leader (basically my friend Janele) suggested we all find time of peace and solitude alone in the morning at the same time. Later in the day, we walked the street where sex, debauchery, and sin consumes people at night.
The street looks completely normal in the day. I had been there once in daylight and did not notice it was the Red Light District until someone told me later. We walked it in the day to pray over the entire street and the people that work there as well as the lost people that visit there for pleasure. Some people working there choose to be there and some have no other option to earn money.
Being on that street, we felt heavy as we prayed over it. There was a weight that settled on us knowing what happens here every day. People on that street nightly are bound in chains that are snaked and locked around their feet and hands. They aren’t set free. We wanted them to find freedom.
Eventually, we trickled back to the hostel. We bought 60 sunflowers for the women because the plan was to pass them out. We were told by our long-term missionary friend that sunflowers are the ones the girls like the most. For the next couple hours, we each took 10 and prayed over the person that would receive them. We wrote phrases on paper and tied it to the flowers.
You are redeemed.
You are crowned in glory.
You are loved.
You are not forgotten.
You are worthy.
You are found and seen.
You are strong.
You are lovely.
Our mission for the day wasn’t to radically change these women and lady boys in one day. There are missionaries in Chiang Mai long-term investing a lot of their time and resources to reach the women on a daily basis. Our vision for our one time in the Red Light District was to let the women know they are seen and loved. Seen and loved in a different way than they are used to; the kind of affection that isn’t deformed by the dark. We didn’t want anything from them.
In a couple hours, it was time. We split the team into 3’s and we took to different sides of the street. Two on our team felt lead to stay back and intercede on our behalf in prayer while six of us were gone. As we started walking, I took a deep breath and started looking around for women to give a sunflower.
We passed a few out without much conversation. The language barrier caused only broken English to be exchanged. One of my teammates saw a woman in a red dress and that brought us to a group of about four women and one man that spoke English. I handed a flower to a woman in a scanty white dress with jet black hair. She took the flower with a courteous smile and asked me,
“How much?”
This slightly hit my heart because it reminded me she may only know conditional love. Nothing is given without a price.
I smiled back and told her the sunflower was for free. We just wanted to show the love of Christ.
Her polite smile turned to a surprised one and I chose to side hug her. She stood up then to side hug me more. Then she tried to kiss me fully on the lips. My teammate Zach said he has never seen me move so fast because I quickly dodged her. My other teammate Nettie told her she could kiss her cheek, so the woman did. Then the woman asked me if she could kiss my cheek too. I reluctantly obliged.
We continued walking and passing out flowers with smiles. Zach was a key person in this team since he was a male. He was a man in the Red Light District that wanted these women to simply have a flower. Most men that walk those streets are lost. They seek these women out of selfishness, not love. They seek them out of their brokenness, not love. They seek them out of their sick, twisted desires and sin, not love.
We reached the end of the street but we still had flowers so we backtracked. I saw a side street that had nobody on it except one woman in a black dress sitting alone on a bar stool. She was just waiting. I crossed the street with Nettie and Zach to give her a flower.
The flower’s message said, You are sweet.
We told her we were handing this flower to her so she knew she was loved. She spoke better English than most of the women so we traded a little small talk and told her why we were there and where we were from. She told us her name was “Well”. She said she had seen us walking across the street earlier with flowers and was glad we came back down her little alcove.
As we walked back to our meeting point, I felt the threat of oncoming disappointment. I was measuring our success by what we saw. There were not deep conversations but only brief interactions. There was only brief mentions of God and Jesus. I questioned myself instantly when I internally started feeling unsatisfied. I thought back to the mission we had set out for ourselves:
To let the women know they are seen and loved in a different way than they are used to in full awareness we probably wouldn’t witness a radically changed life in one night.
We must remember that prayer battles in the invisible. I cannot see everything but I know that God answers prayers and that prayer is fighting things I cannot observe. I want to trust it really does matter even if I cannot see tangible results. There’s a lot I don’t know like maybe the girls we connected with briefly know the long-term missionaries we know. Maybe our encounter meant more than we think. Or possibly being talked to for once instead of seen as an object made an impact. There’s much I don’t know but I know God is much bigger than my human measure of success.
