I will fill you later with the happenings of this month. But this has been on my heart.
For the first 10 days my new team and I stayed in Pattaya, Thailand, known as one of the biggest sex trafficking cities in the world. The only way I can describe it is Las Vegas on steroids. Sex is not a taboo here, it is life.
I posted my latest blog on Friday at Starbucks. Of course, Katy and I were the last people there. So it was late and to top it off it was raining. But we were excited because we were able to get some things done that needed better wifi than that of our hostel. So in the rain we begin looking for transportation to get home.
The cheapest, fairly easy form of transportation here is what we call a “tuk truck”. This is a pick up truck that has benches build on the flat bed part with an awning on top and a small step to stand on if there are no seats. You can really just hop on and off around the city for 10 TBH, which is about $0.30!
Katy and I hop on the truck to find there were no seats. There were basically two groups of people on the truck, a group of Russian men with a young girl no older than 10 years old and another group of men (don’t know where from). So of course because we didn’t have seats we had to stand on the step. One man gestured to Katy for her to sit on his lap. Her response was, “not on your life”. Unfortunately, I did not see him make any gestures to her and only heard the response. Because of my protective nature I started watching the men to make sure they didn’t try anything with her. But Katy started to watch the young girl and immediately began to think of the possibilities of why she was with 3 middle aged men at 10:30pm. Katy’s natural instinct was to begin to intercede for her.
I didn’t notice anything strange until one of the men from the other group began to rub the young girl’s cheek. That’s when I started questioning why does God allow us to see stuff like this. I mean yes, I know it happens and I hate it as much but seeing it hurts so much worse. She looked uncomfortable but didn’t ask him to stop. The men she was with laughed for a bit before one batted the strangers hand away. Everything in me wanted to scream but nothing came out. Only silent prayers to the Father.
What got me even more was when we all got off at the same stop, the Russian group and Katy and I and we walked in opposite directions. The thoughts that began to flood my mind. Was this what it looked like? What is about to happen? How is she feeling? Is she alone? Sad? Scared? Or is this her life? Were these men her family? Was I overreacting? Katy and I started to verbalized what we saw. And almost immediately Katy began to cry. She felt the pain and weight of all of our questions. I grabbed her hand as we walked down the rainy street and fervently began to pray for this young girl.
In Romans 8, Paul talks about when we don’t know what we ought to be praying for the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. This is what I began to speak over this little girl. Because it was so ugly to see this happen before my very eyes. Now that I’ve been able to think and pray about this country my prayer has been not only for this little girl but for all the unknowns. All the alley ways, all the bars, all the massage parlors for people to begin to get sick of it. It gets old to them and when they look for something else they will see Jesus.
Now that our whole squad is here along with Fusion squad I pray that the light of Christ that is within us shines so brightly that people can’t help but to be blinded by His love.
Please take a minute to also read Katy’s account of this night. When we got back to our hostel she could not shake the thoughts from her mind of the unknowns. As I mentioned, her natural instinct is to intercede. So she sent out a plea to everone to pray. This is now my plea; don’t forget to pray for the unknowns all over the world.
