This place is intense.
This ministry in dark.
This month is difficult and draining.
I’ve met some amazing girls while being out in the bars. I say girls and not women because that is what they are. The first girl I met, Sarah (not her real name), looked like she was in her early twenties or late teens. She had only been here two weeks and told me “I just want to go home, but the money here is a lot.” We played a few games and talked and laughed. When a group of men came up to her she went to the other side of the bar to keep talking with me. That was amazing- from me she is only making about 30 baht, but off of them she could have made hundreds.
I told her I liked the color of her nails and she laughed and said she wanted to paint mine… then she froze, her smile faded, and she slowly looked around. She remembered where she was. My group had to leave soon after that and as I looked back at her she was just blankly staring at the bottles of alcohol with her back to the men that were shouting at her and grabbing for her. When I came back to visit her the following week- she was gone. The bar manager told me that she quit and went home! I started dancing through the bar smiling and praising God out loud- amazing.
I’ve met lots of other girls here but one has really stood out to me, I’ll call her Hope. She is truly one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. When we met she said she was 21, but later in the conversation she gave me a younger age. Her parents are raising her 16 month old a few hours north of here while she works the bars trying to earn enough money to send home. She said she is only here for the money, and wishes she could do something else. When I came back to visit her the following week- she was gone. The bar manager told me that she was “with a customer” for a few hours.
I kind of lost it when I heard that. I almost started crying at the bar when I realized what Hope was being forced to do at that exact moment. There is a game here where you try to be the first to hammer a nail into a stump- I took my emotions out on that. I spent most of the rest of the night praying for her, and I hope to see her when we go out Tuesday.
This place is intense, it is dark and it is painful. But it is more than that. Two weeks before we got here Dustin had a dream about the scene here- he saw a girl who looked like she worked in one of these bars, and then he heard a voice say “Don’t give up on Hope!” He felt like it had a dual meaning- not to give up on the idea of hope and also that there is a girl out here named Hope, and we can’t give up on her. That is why I am choosing to refer to this girl as Hope. Because I am fighting for her in prayer, and I will not give up on her, no matter how much my heart breaks. Please be praying for her and for all the other women out here.
This is a brand new log for the nail game that the bar was dedicating to the spirits at the beginning of the night. We had to wait until the incense finished burning so that the woman could ceremonially splatter the shots on the ground, then we could play.
