**Important announcement! Thanks to your support, I am currently in need of only $800 to be FULLY FUNDED! Please support me to help me reach my goal!**
Let me paint a picture for you: One large street full of
people showing you all sorts of things like advertisements for their bars and
colored lights that fly up in the air. Tourists fill the area, from elderly
couples all the way down to small children. Little girls run up to you, begging
you to purchase a fresh flower necklace. Loud music is coming from every angle,
including live karaoke or special street performances. Shops line the left
side, full of anything a tourist could want. The right side is lined with
smaller streets, containing bar after bar full of women dressed very
scandalously. Games are being played on every countertop; games like Connect 4
and Jenga. Everywhere you turn there are women dancing on bars, flirting with
men, or begging you to come into their bar hoping to show you a good time.
Women also line the roadsides, waiting to be purchased for the night. The smell
of alcohol and cigarettes lingers heavily in the air. Here on Bangla Road in
Patong, this is what you experience.
But this is only surface level. During our first few nights
of ministry, this is what I saw; people having fun and girls just trying to
make a buck or two. But after being submersed in the culture of this particular
area, things started coming into focus: a bar girl laughing and seemingly
carefree sneaks behind the bar to take some pain pills and down a shot of
vodka; a woman pushing advertising takes a brief moment to sniff some more glue
before continuing her lively and upbeat persuasion; a small child being pushed
away from her parents to bring home money for the family by selling flowers.
This is real life for the people who work the streets here in Patong. Every
night, trapped in a place that brings little to no promise for a future.
But among all these horrible things, I see hope, because I
serve a God that promises hope and a future. I see women who want a change, and
are just waiting for someone who cares enough about them to show them a way
out. I see children with strong hearts that will radically transform the world
with the love of God. I see mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends… I see light; little glimpses of light shining
through the midst of such a dark place. I see the power that MY GOD possesses,
and the love He wants to pour out in a place like this. And at the end of the
day, what I feel the most is humility. The Almighty God, Creator of the
universe, Alpha and Omega chose little old me to bring the light into one of
the darkest places on Earth. Prepared? Not a chance. Willing? Bring it on.
Changed? Forever.
