Imagine with me, if you will, what it would be like to be homeless, cold, and hungry; and by cold and hungry I mean it’s 30 degrees outside and you haven’t had anything to eat for four days. Now imagine someone you trust (like your best friend) coming up to you and offering you a warm place to stay, three meals a day, and a lot of money, and the only thing you had to do was go to the city and work at a “restaurant”. Would you turn it down? Oh yah, by the way, your family and you children are starving and you’re the only one with a chance of helping them. So you get on a bus and drive five hours to a big city that is full of things that you have never experienced before in your life. I mean after all, you spent your whole life in a village with no running water. You show up at what you are expecting to be a fine eating establishment only to find a bar located in the middle of some fancy tourist destination. You are now faced with the choice of letting your family and children starve to death or putting on the skimpy outfit the bar owner hands you and be a little more the friendly with the men that walk through the front door. Knowing there will be nothing left to go back to if you don’t send some money home soon, you do as he tells you. After a few weeks of selling drinks the owner gives you the opportunity to sell something else for a little more money. Reluctantly you accept and begin to sell yourself at the highest price; night after night you give yourself away to every guy that is willing to pay to sleep with you until you become numb to the pain and forget who you are.
Somehow that doesn’t sound like what I thought human trafficking would look like, yet that’s exactly what happens here. There was always that picture of a gang of men covered in tattoos and dressed in black, driving a creepy van, snatching pretty girls off the streets. While that is a problem in certain areas of the world, exploiting people by tricking them out of poverty is the main method of enslaving woman in Southeast Asia. Most of the time the girls don’t know what’s really happening until it’s too late. None of them want to be there, but they feel like they have no choice and once there in, it’s almost imposable to get them back out. It makes the task of fighting the battle against modern day slavery seem impossible. That’s what I felt when I encountered it for the first time, hopeless! How ridicules of me? It took me a second to remember whom I’m really working for, namely the God of the Universe. He has all of this under control; all He needs are a few people to partner with Him to change the course of history.
There are many definitions for (human trafficking), but it ultimately boils down to the exploitation of another human being, anyone who takes advantage of someone else by exploiting a weakness. That could be a physical weakness, a mental disability, financial status, or any other thing someone could take advantage of. It has to end!! But, what can we do about it? We can fight against the real enemy. We can pray for change and tack action in educating people about this epidemic sweeping across the globe.
Please stand with us in prayer this week as we intercede for the teams that are going out into the bars at night. Our ministry is to build relationship and trust with these girls, to show them the true and pure love of our Lord Jesus Christ. The spiritual heaviness of this nation is so much greater than anything we experience in the US. We have been attacked right and left by the enemy, but he has no stronghold over us, however, he does have a foothold on this nation that must end. With the love of the church and the strength of God we will push the light of Christ into the darkest places of this land and claim it for the sake of the Gospel. We are only here for one month, but with the love and continued work of the people who have dedicated their lives to this place, Thailand will come to know Jesus.
