For the last 4 days or so I have been trying to put into words my thoughts and emotions from my first days working in bar ministry. My thoughts are jumbled, my emotions are clouded, and it’s just hard to put into words exactly what we are witnessing each night. So until I can put an intelligible blog together, here is a blog written by squadmate Marissa Villa who is also serving in Phuket this month with SHE.
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Her name is Nook.
Her eyes get wide as we play Jenga and she carefully places the block in her hand on top. She’s really pretty, 26 years old, and studied marketing for a couple of years. She has long brown hair that sometimes she has to tuck behind her ear as her bangs fall over her left eye. Her son is 4 years old and he lives with her parents on the other side of the country. She calls him every day to remind him that she loves him.
And her heart breaks every time he tells her that if she really did, she’d be by his side.
Instead, she is working at a bar on Bangla Road in Phuket, Thailand, one of the biggest sex tourism capitals of the world. Selling herself so her son, who has no idea what she does, can have an education.
I asked her if she likes her work.
“No!” she said as she quickly shook her head.
“Do the other girls like their jobs?”
“Nobody likes living this way,” she said.
I nod, not knowing what to say next and continue to play, laugh, and act like what we’re doing is perfectly normal. But it’s not. It’s NOT normal.
It’s not normal to walk down the streets as a man walks, quickly looking left and right as his wife or girlfriend frantically walks behind him holding on tightly to his hand. It’s so hard to see the little girl trying to sell you a flower necklace as women dance behind her on poles. It’s hard to see the couple walking down the street with their toddler in tow. And it’s hard to see the men walk into the bars as the girls flirtatiously greet them. It’s hard to walk past the men and women who hand out fliers to live sex shows.
And it’s even harder to love them.
Last night, on night two, I found myself glaring at two men who’d walked into the bar next to the one I was in as one grabbed one of the girls by her hips and pulled her towards him. I glared as his friend also grabbed her and she threw herself on him, too. As I looked on, I glanced downward to a man in a wheelchair and as I did, I was reminded that at some point in these men’s lives they felt rejected, like they didn’t belong. And now they’re looking for a deeper need in these women. The high suicide rate among sex tourists is proof. They’re looking for acceptance. For intimacy.
And that makes them just like me.
Someone in need of something bigger, greater. Someone in need of something that changes lives from searching and living in such sadness to joy, fulfillment, and confidence.
What makes us different as we walk into these bars isn’t that we order sodas instead of alcohol. It isn’t that our clothes are different. Our cutoff shorts and t-shirts scream tourist. It isn’t that we leave before everyone gets really drunk. It isn’t even that we’re women.
What makes us different is that we are called to look into every single person’s eyes and say, “You were made for something more. You ARE loved. You ARE accepted.”
Someone once told me that.
Now it’s my turn to do the same for them.
