Walking down Bangla Road, beautiful women line the
streets. They say Hello! Welcome! and stick
a menu in your face. “Come sit� they say with a fake smile. Sometimes they even grab your arm, desperate
for you to come sit at their bar. They
don’t want to pass up a single customer.
I’m sure their manager tells them they have to do everything they can to
get the customer.
Prayerfully you decide which bar God wants you to go
to. You smile and let the women seat you.
They eagerly hand you the menu, usually
pointing out some of the good drinks they have there. We immediately order a Sprite, Coke, or fruit
juice. Sometimes they are satisfied with
this and rush to get your drink.
Sometimes they seem annoyed that’s all you’ll be drinking and take their
time to get your drink. They never stop
half-heartedly smiling though.
Most of the women are very eager to talk to you. They want to know “Where you from?� and “Where
you go?�. Pretty much where are you from
and where are you staying in Thailand.
Starting the conversation is easy – begin with shallow questions like
where do you live and how long have you worked here. Then you try to start asking questions that
may open up the door to deeper conversation.
Do you like working here? Do you
have a family? Kids? Usually you can tell pretty quickly if the conversation
will get deeper. The best way to keep
the conversation going is to play a game with the girls. The games consist of Connect 4, a dice game
called Jackpot!, Jenga, and a game where you hit a nail into a piece of wood
with a pointy hammer. The girls own at
these games since they play them constantly every day of the week. I’m only good at Jenga.
Thirty minutes pass.
The manager may start looking suspiciously at you. You are now keeping the girls from real
customers. It’s time to leave, and you
have to leave knowing that there’s a chance that girl will go home with a man
that night. Your heart breaks. She is so beautiful. God loves her so much
and she doesn’t even know it. You leave
the bar and quickly walk away to write down notes about the experience so you
can decide if it would be worth going back to see her again. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the women are very responsive and
don’t want you to leave, and sometimes they seem bored with you. All you can do is what God tells you to
do. All you can do is be available to be
used by Him.
The hardest part of this is defining success. There are so many ways to define success in a
situation like this. Is success getting
a girl out of the bar? Or is it just
talking to a girl? As a team we decided
that success has to be that first you are willing and available to go. Then that you do what God tells you – so you
talk to the girl He tells you to talk to.
That’s success. Even if the girl
doesn’t know English or is not responsive, there were still those 15-30 minutes
that she wasn’t with a man. There was
still that Light of Life that we carry lighting up the bar. There are still seeds being planted that we
will never know about. You just have to
trust God that by obeying Him you are a success.
Needless to say, this ministry has been extremely
emotionally and spiritually draining. I
pray that as our time here comes to a close, God will not let what we’ve done
here be done in vain. I pray that seeds
have been planted and that the conversations we were able to have about SHE
will turn into something more. I pray
that He will not let me easily forget these women, and that I will keep them in
prayer. God is bigger than Bangla
Road. He is bigger than Thailand. He is bigger than you and me, and His plan is
better than we can ask or imagine. We
have one more night out at Patong, next Tuesday. We leave Thailand to head to Cambodia on
February 3rd. I can’t believe
month one is almost done!
“Therefore my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of
the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.� 1
Corinthians 15:58
