My final deadline is quickly approaching for my fundraising goal on January 1st! I need just over $2,300 to stay on the race and to be fully funded! Please consider partnering me in this great adventure. Remember, every donation is tax deductible! Thank you again to all my amazing supporters back at home and also to future donors. You make it possible for me to be here, and in return I hope that we can share this journey together.
“Some Give by Going, Others Go by Giving” – Mother Teresa.
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Thailand came and went in a second. It started with a weeklong debrief in Pattaya, which is a tourist city on the coast of the Golf of Thailand. Debrief is a time for rest, relaxation, and debriefing the past month with your team with our squad leaders, coaches and mentors. It is also a time to get ready for the upcoming months.
When we first arrived in Pattaya, we were surrounded by the large amount of prostitution that was all around us. In Thailand, and in especially this city, prostitution and human trafficking is very popular. At night, girls line the streets hoping to get picked up by guys and they also work in the various bars and nightclubs. They can also be hired by the hour during any time, so during the day we would see dozens of girls escorting men around the city who were twice their age. What caught me so off guard by it all was not the women, but the men. The men are white American or Europeans, both young and old. They travel both alone or in packs. We saw white men drop of prostitutes on street corners in the middle of the day, we saw men hire women right before our eyes on the boardwalk by the beach, and at night men would file into the nightclubs and bars. Walking by the bars it was hard to look at the white men surrounded by Thai women and not judge them. It was also hard to not be horribly disgusted by the mere thought of their actions and agenda.
The week we spent in Pattaya was a rude awakening, but it also prepared us for the month that was ahead. My team, along with two other teams, were placed at Lighthouse in Action (lighthouseinaction.org) in Chiang Mai. We were each assigned to different ministries for the month. Lighthouse in Action has three missions that they pour into: Zion Café, Love Acts, and X-Life. One team was assigned to work in Zion café, which is where we lived for the month. They got to pour into the employees and interact with customers. (The café is a Christian café is on the bottom of a six-story building. Our team lived on the sixth floor-a lot of stairs). The other team was assigned to one part of Love Acts, which is what we called bar ministry. Their purpose was to go out at night and befriend prostitutes. They would go into bars and nightclubs, sit down with girls working and would try to build relationships with them. As the month went on, relationships grew to friendships and this in turn made it easy and normal for the team to hang out with the girls outside of the bars during the day.
Our team was assigned to the other part of Love Acts, which were slums and monk chat. I’m going to be honest- this was the ministry I wanted the least. When I first signed up for the race, I had dreams of going to Thailand and working in bar ministry. I wanted to do something radical like save a girl from sex slavery, but as always, God had other plans. So instead of closing down bars and sending white bar owners to jail (again, my radical views on what the month was GOING to entail), our team went into the slums everyday for a few hours to hang out with kids. We also went to the main Buddhist temple each day to hang out with Buddhist monks and to become friends with them. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE kids. But this month, kids acted differently toward us. Usually wherever we go, we are treated like celebrities. Kids run to us and climb on us, and never let us go. Thailand on the other hand was much different. When we first arrived in the slums, the kids literally would not even look at us. They simply continued to do whatever they were doing before we arrived. After four months of being treated like a celebrity, this was a bit hard to say the least. So as we stood in the middle of the field where the kids would come and hang out after school, we were confused, mad, and felt incredibly useless.
As the month went on, however, the walls that the kids had up started to come down. One girl in particular sought me out every day when she saw our team come in and ran straight up to me with a huge hug. Although none of us could communicate with the kids because they don’t speak English, and we definitely didn’t speak Thai, we depended on gestures to get us through conversations. The young boys that were there played soccer with some of team, while the rest of us hung out with the few girls that lived there. As the days passed, we began to see our purpose and the light we brought.
When we first arrived to Zion Café, we were educated on the huge epidemic of human trafficking. We learned the ins and outs of the bars and nightclubs, but we also learned about what happens in the villages and slums like the one we went to every day. In Thailand, and in other parts of the world, sex brokers come into villages to buy children, mostly girls, from families. The girls will be sold either into a prostitution ring and will most likely stay in this lifestyle their whole life, or will be sold for a certain amount of time. Parents who are struggling with finances will willingly give up their daughters so that they can put food on the table. This has become a huge epidemic in villages, especially all around Thailand and Cambodia.
So as we became more involved in the slums, we noticed something missing: Girls. Only a handful of girls seemed to live in the village and they mostly came from one family that seemed to love and cherish their children very much. Where were the other girls? We honestly don’t know and never will know. But the thought of the girls that we did meet being sold or coerced into sex slavery still keeps me up at night.
During the last week we were there, we were able to go out with the team that had been working in the bars the whole month. This was such an eye opening and deeply moving experience. I was able to go out with Ara and Megan and meet the girls that they had been talking about all month. I got to hang out with them, play games like Jenga and pool, and was able to buy them drinks of their choice like coke instead of the typical alcoholic drinks that their customers buy them to get them drunk. We hung out at two bars that night and each one I had an amazing time at by just talking and hanging out with the girls. It was also very powerful to be able to connect what I had been doing all month. Our team was essentially assigned to the beginning of the sex trafficking cycle before it began. We were there to show the kids love and respect and to show the parents that they are worth fighting for. The bar ministry team was assigned to the end. They weren’t there to prevent prostitution, but instead to show them that they are loved and appreciated no matter who they are or what they had done in the past. It was incredible to be able to connect what we had been praying and fighting against all month with the experience I had with the women at these bars.
Sitting at the table, you could see that they saw us differently than their customers. They saw us as friends and as confidants. Girls would have to get up to entertain the men in the bar or to attract men to come inside, but after a bit they would come back to us, sigh a relief that they had a break from the show they had to put on for the men, and were able to sit knowing they could be themselves. Ara and Megan had created a safe haven for them all month and it was a beautiful site to see. As I sat there with the women, some as young as 17 or 18, I pictured the faces of the girls that we had been working with all month. I realized how easy it was go from point A to point B in a matter of a few years. I got to hear a few stories of the girls working at the bar and learned about their daughters or their families. I learned how long or short they had been working there. But more importantly, I got to become their friend even if it was just for a few hours. I learned especially that night that even in the darkest of the dark, light can be found. And once that light starts to grow, darkness can never overcome it.
I realized last month in Thailand that I consider myself a doer. When I want something done, I do it myself. When I get passionate about an issue, I bring it to light and advocate for it. But having this mentality isn’t always the best thing, especially on the race. This year I have learned and will continue to learn that it doesn’t always have to be ME doing everything. It doesn’t have to be ME doing the ministry that I want. Instead, I have learned to let go and let God. I seem to think that I know what’s best for me, but that isn’t always the case. For whatever reason, it was not a season for me working in bars. Maybe it never will be on the race. But that doesn’t mean that the team that DID work in the bars didn’t do what God needed them to do, or didn’t show them love because they absolutely did. Because in the end, God is going to do what He needs to get done and that doesn’t always mean me doing it. I had to learn to be happy for the other team’s experiences, swallow my pride and stubbornness, and continue to fight for the ministry that I AM assigned to. Looking back, it was a beautiful and wonderful month and I wouldn’t trade it for the world (or in my case, home).
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Currently in Cambodia and loving life! Will update with a blog soon!
