Ever since I was a little girl, I grew up going to my grandmother’s salon for a haircut. Along with watching the scissors shape my brunette locks, I watched her dry the hair of countless customers and use various O.P.I. colors for the long nails of older women. My sister and I would play with hair clips, use the curling iron on our dolls, and paint each other’s nails; basically we had a beauty shop of our own as playing grounds! Who knew that the generation of beauticians would pass to me here in Thailand.
This month, we are working with a ministry known as Nightlight, dealing with girls and lady boys involved in prostitution. Every Tuesday and Friday they offer an event they like to call “Beauty Shop”. From 1:30-5, women at Nightlight come together and shampoo, blow dry, and make over the girls and lady boys before their night shift. They offer free food, coffee, couches for rest, and every girls dream of a real “beauty shop”; again, all for free!
After learning more about the ins and outs of this ministry, they asked if four girls could help out with Beauty Shop on Friday; obviously we said yes and Casey, Stephanie, Tandi and myself were the first to go. They gave us a five minute orientation about how it worked and then asked if any of us were good at doing make up, hair, or nails… HA! Yeah no, but according to 1 Corinthians 1:27, God chooses what is weak in the world, right?
Being that I had watched my grandmother countless times wash, dry, and cut hair, I volunteered with Tandi ( I call her T) to help wash hair. They had a whole station set up for washing hair with Aussie (a brand of hair products) shampoo and conditioner. One of the things we all observed were the quality of products they were using; they were so nice and expensive! One of the leaders said because the Lord calls us to do everything with excellence, they get the best products for this event… WOW! What an awesome way to show girls who feel they are worth nothing that they are ACTUALLY worth the best of the best!
T and I had our first customer, who was actually a lady boy. She recently had a mouth operation that left an abrasion on the right side of her head. Obviously T and I were nervous, but we were very careful to be gentle. Just like you would in any salon, we began talking about her age, her family, and how badly she needed her hair washed! Sadly, most of these women know English because a majority of their clients are foreigners; however, it gave us an easy way to converse with them (what Satan intended for evil, God intended for good).
After the first lady boy, T and I began to get the swing of things. It was also a fruitful time for the two of us to connect about what was going on personally while including the customers in our conversation, typically involving family life back home and the work the Lord is doing.
We had about four more girls, and then walked in a frail woman with a pink polka-dotted dress. Her eyes barely opened, and even wrapping the towel around her neck, I felt like I was going to break her she was so small. Like we had with the others, T and I started conversing about what was going on in our lives once we realized this woman didn’t speak english. However, as we began talking I realized something was different about this woman.
She looked so broken and as we were washing her hair, her eyes opened but were rolled back and it looked as if she was unconsciously muttering something. This wasn’t normal, and I just felt the Lord calling us to start interceding on her behalf.
“T, I’m sorry but we gotta stop talking and pray for her.”
Picture this y’all! She is vulnerably letting T and I put our hands in her hair and the Lord uses this vulnerability to grant us with the opportunity to pray. We didn’t have to ask if it was ok to lay hands on her, or if it was ok to pray in general; the Lord already put her in our hands. I started off by praying peace over her that only comes from the Father. I ask Him for anything that is preventing her from rest to be gone in Jesus’ name. As I am praying, that weird thing where her eyes are rolled back and she is muttering things starts to happen again.
I am not saying for certain that there was a demon inside of this woman. However, when we stopped praying, T and I both realized that she had fallen asleep, fully resting in this safe place that her Heavenly Father had created for her that day. We massaged her head for another 15 minutes and continued to intercede and love on her before asking one of the staff to wake her up so she could proceed to the next station. In every station afterward, she continued to fall asleep. It was like the worries of her life fled from 1:30-5 because the God was here, her Savior was present now! Satan had no authority because two daughters of the King were actively praying against the presence Satan had in the woman’s life.
This was only our first encounter, so I am hoping to see her next time during Beauty Shop. I hope and pray that the Lord brings her out of bondage and that she gets to eternally rest in the peace that comes with knowing the Father.
At the end of beauty shop, I looked down and realized my hands were ridiculously pruney! They had constantly been working with shampoo and conditioner on the heads of girls and lady boys that just needed some pruney hands to take care of their dirty hair. We were able to clean their heads the same way God cleans our hearts. All we do is lay down and let Him do the rest!
