As I sat down at a food court table, with 40 Baht coffee in hand (which is only a little over a dollar, but rather pricey for my three dollar a day food budget), I felt a tinge of guilt that I was about to enjoy a cup of hot coffee before stepping foot into the largest sex trade district in the world. While I was enjoying the air conditioning and fresh coffee at 3:30 pm, there were 15,000 prostitutes just beginning their nightly jobs at the bars. Somehow it did not seem right that I could sit in comfort, complaining about the coffee being too pricey for my budget, while the bar women (and men) are trapped in the prostitution business because it is the only way to provide for their families’ debts and still have money for food. Many of the bar girls are sent to the city, before even finishing high school by their families. They are sent to find work and expected to send money back to their poor families.
These women and men do not have the education for most other jobs, because even restaurant workers or store managers need to have finished high school and sometimes even college to be hired. Some of the girls are illegally trafficked and forced into the business as well. While I drank my coffee, which I could easily afford, precious women were selling their bodies, and giving in to Satan’s lies that prostitution is the only way, just so they could have enough money for a meal the next day. I have nothing to complain about, especially not something as selfish as the price of coffee!
The two evenings I spent in the bar district were difficult at times, but after meeting even just a few of the girls, I felt the urgency to show them God’s redeeming love. Me and several other girls on the September team joined some women who work at one of the three organizations in Bangkok, providing protection, shelter, and jobs such as hair and nail services or jewelry and bag making for girls wanting to escape the bar/prostitution life. We partnered up with either the missionaries working at the organization or some of the girls who had left the bars because of the organization. I was partnered up with a Thai girl who used to live a similar life to the girls we were ministering to, and now knows the incredible depths of Christ’s love, and desires to lead other girls into that redemption.
Just to hear her testimony and the painful stories of her past, that God was now being able to use for His glory and His children’s salvation, left me in awe of God’s immense power. I was walking the bar districts to pray for the women’s beautiful hearts and as a willing heart to show the girls that someone truly cares about them. But the most beautiful picture was to watch God use this Thai girl that had been freed from the bondage of prostitution, reach, love, empathize, and lead other women out of the same bondage she had once been in. Satan has no reign over her life anymore; she was “loosed from the bonds of wickedness” and every yoke that had kept her enslaved is now broken (Isaiah 58: 6). Visiting the bars for two nights only gave me a glimpse of the vast need for salvation and freedom for these girls, men, and bar owners. I see the work God is doing in the bar district by the missionaries and Thai women like I just mentioned. God is using the workers here, but as Luke 10:2 perfectly explains about the bars in Bangkok, the “harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”.
