It’s been a crazy week here at SHE Ministries, Phuket, Thailand.
It started off with about 4000 US Navy men (and women) and marines going on leave here, flooding the bars and vying for the attention of the women in the red light district we’ve been reaching out to this month. The second night they were in town, a flood of a different kind hit, and the rain that we’ve been praying for kept most of the bars empty so that we could easily chat again with the women who work there over cokes and water and games of jackpot, jenga and connect-four.
In the middle of the week, the rain kept coming and didn’t stop. By the time Thursday night hit, we heard that the streets of Patong (where all the bars and strip clubs are) were under four feet of water. Needless to say, we didn’t go out to the bars that night, and praise God, neither could anyone else!
Mark wanted to talk with us about our last night of ministry at the bars under the assumption that all of us were going to be going to the bars that night! An hour and a half later, we were packed into two trucks, on our way to Patong for the last time. It was a few minutes past nine when we got there and we found ourselves standing outside of the bar where we had canceled our gig, thinking that we weren’t going to make it because of the flooding. After chatting with the staff about playing on stage, the band that had never played some of the instruments (it was Annie’s first time on the base, Scottie’s third time touching an electric guitar, and Vinny’s first time on a drum set since India), let alone practice together, was getting ready to play their first gig on the streets of Patong!
It was an amazing 45 minutes of worship! The band rocked it and God came down and joined us. People on the street stopped to watch the band, one lady came in just to see what was going on.
Even though we weren’t even expecting to be in Patong that night, by the end of the evening, everyone was psyched about the amazing night that God had given us – everything from the gig at the bar to getting to tell our friends at the bars how precious they are to our Heavenly Father as we said our farewells.
Guess we won’t be going home quite yet. J We actually start heading to Cambodia tomorrow evening!
