Before reading this, make sure you read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of Mae’s story. I know it’s long, but I promise it’s worth it.
I want to take a short detour from Mae’s story and tell you about another miracle that we’ve been watching unfold here in Thailand. Over the course of this month, our Real Life participant, Kayla, has been getting to know another girl in the bar, who we will call Ning. She is nineteen years old, like Kayla, and she is very beautiful, but also very obviously young and still mostly unaffected by the environment in which she works.
As soon as Kayla met her, she felt like she was supposed to help her, but we encountered a setback. Ning is Burmese, but unlike Mae, she has only been in Thailand for a short time and does not speak much English. After realizing this, Kayla brought our translator with her to try to talk to Ning. Unfortunately, she quickly learned that not only does Ning not speak English…she also does not speak Thai. Kayla was really disappointed because she felt very strongly that she was called to help Ning get out of this industry before she gets sucked in too deep, but without a Burmese translator that was proving to be impossible. So Kayla decided to simply love her and trust that God would use her wordless actions to show Ning the light.
A couple weeks went by, and every time that we went to the bar Kayla would just sit near Ning, smile at her, and try to pay special attention to her, but she could not talk to her. After awhile, Ning started seeking Kayla out. She would grab her hand or kiss her cheek in greeting, and Kayla began to feel like they had established a real connection despite the language barrier. Her heart for getting Ning help grew even more, but there was still nothing she could do to communicate her real reasons for being in the bar at night.
Kayla voiced her frustrations to the team, and we prayed that God would just use her loving actions and that some seeds would be planted, even if we would never get to see the fruit. If we only knew then what a small prayer that was! Days went by, and the day of our departure from Chiang Mai got closer and closer with Kayla still being unable to communicate with Ning. Until one day when Mae decided that she wanted out. Mae sat in WonGen Cafe and looked me in the eyes and said, “Before I die, I want to help people.” Suddenly, I realized something amazing. Mae is Burmese. Ning is Burmese. Mae can talk to Ning! Kayla and I talked about this, and we began to hope and pray that before we left we could at least encourage Mae to pursue a deeper friendship with Ning in the future. Again with the small prayers…
The next few times that we went to the bars we watched Mae and Ning’s interactions. We saw them spending a lot more time together having serious-looking discussions. One night, as we were leaving, we went to hug them goodbye and we could see that Ning had been crying. The next time we came to the bar, I pulled Mae aside and asked her how Ning was doing. “She no happy here. She no like working here, but she have no choice.” “You know, you can help her,” I said to Mae. Mae’s face lit up. “Yes, yes! I help her! I am helping her. I never stop helping until I die!”
I walked over to Kayla and told her this was the night. She had been thinking about trying to have a conversation with Ning through Mae about getting out of the bars, and I told her it was now or never. We realized we might be in slightly over our heads because we had just brought Mae to Emmi at LightHouse, essentially dropping an illegal immigrant with HIV into her lap and asking her to figure out how to help her. What would she do if we showed up to our scheduled meeting tomorrow with two girls? We decided to go down the street and call Emmi first to ask her if it was OK if we invited Ning to WonGen too. Emmi didn’t answer, but we left a message.
We returned to the bar, and Kayla took Mae back to the couches to talk to her about Ning. The rest of us prayed while we played pool, Jenga, and Connect 4 with the other girls, and we kept watch over the bar’s madam, making sure that she could not overhear the conversation happening under her nose. Kayla and Mae finished talking, and Mae pulled Ning aside. Kayla and I watched as the two of them talked. Mae invited Ning to come to WonGen and see what a way out might look like. Ning told her to pick her up in the morning and bring her because she would love to get out. As this amazing conversation transpired, Kayla and I stood with pool sticks in hand, watching, and we realized that what had first seemed like the deal breaker to us ever being able to help Ning–a language barrier as high as the walls of Alcatraz–was turning out to be the very thing that allowed Mae and Ning to openly make their escape plans in the middle of a crowded bar, within earshot of the person whose job it is to keep them from doing that very thing. We thought that because she only spoke Burmese, we would never be able to help Ning. Instead, God had planned to let us help Mae and then pass the baton to her to give Ning a way out. Minds officially blown.
As soon as their conversation ended, Joy’s phone buzzed. Kayla opened it and found this message from Emmi: “Bring her to WonGen tomorrow with Mae. I do not know yet what we will do, but we will help her. We will pray into this more. Praise God!”
At the end of the night, we hugged the girls goodbye, I reminded Mae again to be very careful and not to tell anyone what they were doing. They promised to see us tomorrow, and we all went home to pray that that would indeed happen. The next day I sat in WonGen with Kayla and Joy, waiting. The girls were late, and we were trying not to worry. We all felt very strongly that there was something holding Ning back from coming. We knew she lived with her brother, and we worried that he might be preventing her from completely wanting out. So we decided to pray. Just as we finished our prayer, the girls walked in the front door, hand in hand.
We took them upstairs, ordered lunch, and immediately sat down with Emmi to talk. Again, the conversation was entirely in Thai and Burmese, so Kayla and I could not understand anything that was being said, so we just sat and prayed for complete openness and honesty. If Emmi is going to be able to help them, she needs to know absolutely everything. After about an hour, she turned to us and said, “I think it is good. She is ready, and she wants out. The only thing is her brother. He is ten years old, and she is responsible for him, but if we can find a safe place for him, she is ready to get out. We will meet again to talk about getting them legal in Thailand, finding them a place to live, and deciding what job they can do here.” We agreed to meet with Emmi the next morning as a team to talk about the next steps to securing their freedom. Both of them.
Mae got her wish. She got to help someone. Only four days after she told me that she wanted to do something good before she died, she literally got to lead her friend by the hand into freedom.
To be continued…
