My heart skipped a beat this morning as I was invited to
attend an all night worship / prayer meeting where between the hours of 12 and
2 a.m. we’ll be praying for those involved in human trafficking. As is so often the case, one has but to
say the words “Thailand,” “Prostitution,” or “Human Trafficking” and I am
quickly reminded of many memories where these “simple words” take on faces,
stories and personal emotions. As
I lay in bed trying to get some rest after the ever traditional all night paper
writing session, sleep is held at bay as memories and the emotions that follow them once again fill my
thoughts. I never want to forget
what I felt, saw, and how my heart was broken for these women… and so this
morning I am writing this blog in hopes that it will help me remember, and in
hopes that I can introduce you to the “ones” I’ll never forget:
———
As I left my
little house where myself, and seven other WR girls were staying, I didn’t know
exactly where I was headed. We
were on the streets of Chiang Mai, and in broken English our translator
informed us that “downtown” wasn’t a far walk. Not knowing what I was getting into, or where I was going,
me and the seven other girls followed our translator in almost a single line
fashion. I remember passing block
after block that night, trying to take in all the smells, sounds and sights of
the country that would soon come to steal my heart. Although there were several turns along this particular walk,
I’ll never forget the night I turned left down a dark street corner in Chiang
Mai. Before the translator even turned
around my spirit twisted inside of me, and I remember thinking “I’m here.”
As I lifted my eyes from the side walk, I tried to keep the
tears from my cheeks and the grimace off my face as I saw bar after bar, at
least 100 of them, most filled with no less than 15 girls. Young and younger lined the streets and
alleys, and filled the seats of the ever so many bars. I watched the men (most of them white, and all of them too old to be sitting with the average aged 18 year old) I knew that needed to have compassion for their borkenness and emptiness.. but mostly I felt hate and anger pump through my veins. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach,
as my brain silently did the math: 100 bars, at least 15 girls each ….. no less than 1500 girls on one block… how
were we going to “save them all.”
My heart wrestled with the injustice of it all. I began to ask the Lord (as I still ask
him so often) “what are we going to do?”
My heart sighed in an almost defeated fashion as I heard my Jesus
say “it’s about ‘the one’.” I
learned in the 3 and a half weeks to come, that saving them all meant saving
“the one”… one at a time. So night by night,I
began to learn their names… hear their stories… and try to bear just a little
bit of the shame that hung itself around their neck and the pain that filled
their young eyes.
These are the stories of “the One”s I hope to never forget:
———————————————————————————————————
There was Ja… Ja is a 42-year-old mother of twin boys. Before
coming to the bars she was married to an abusive husband who would crack beer
bottles over her head in a fit of rage. In order to save her boys from becoming a man like their
father, she packed them and herself up, and left. In order to provide for her boys education (education isn’t
free in Thailand), she went to work…. At the bars, the only place she was ever told she would find work.. doing the only thing her family, her father, and her culture told her she was made for. There are so many wonderful things I remember about Ja… her
smile… her broken English….her love for connect four or uno (really anything
she thought she could ‘win’). How do you tell this woman there is a Jesus / a daddy / a man that loves her? I couldn’t figure that out… so we played a lot of connect four, went shopping, shared a lot of hugs, stories, and yummy food… and tried to plant some seeds of what real love looks like and replace awful memories with some good ones.
There was Nu…. the 18 year old with short brown hair and
beautiful brown eyes. This quiet,
and yet sassy girl broke my heart one night as we went to the night market together. As she studied a pair
of earrings, I offered to buy them for her, and when she asked me if I liked
them (to which I stated yes) she said “good… I was going to buy them for you.” She took the money I had used to get
her out of the bars that night, and bought me earrings. A story which I still can’t tell without tears in my eyes. (This was done for me when approximately 90%
of what each girl makes is sent home to feed the family that sent her to the bars in the first place).
There was MI… the “lady-boy” with a heart of gold. This young man came running to greet us
every night as we entered the bar. This young man spoke life into our lives with his compassionate heart,
and fun loving nature. God
opened a door with MI, to share with him who God saw him as… the man that he
was, and although we didn’t know if he would ever believe a word spoken, we
found out later that he left the bars. 🙂
And then there was the girl with the rose. I never learned this girls name, or a
thing about her story, but her face is the one I see most often when I think
about the girls in Thailand. I’ll
never forget her sad eyes, or the way her shoulders fell as the man that came
to see her every night walked to the bathroom… and subsequently the way she put
a smile back on her face and picked herself up as he walked from the bathroom to sit back beside
her. I’ll never forget the way he touched her and spoke to us about her… I believe his exact words were “this is all she was made for.” She looked about 16… maybe 18 at the most, and even though you could see the shame on her shoulders, and the fear in her eyes… she always managed a smile when we walked passed. I never learned her name..
never bought her out of the bar ( as this man was always present when we were
there), never did more than buy her a rose, and yet every time we passed by she
lifted her eyes to smile a “thank you.” — did she know she was worth so much more?
——————————————————————————————————-
*For the sake of those I am writing about, their real names were not given, however their stories are real. I have felt their hugs, heard their laughs, and seen their smiles. Theirs are the stories of the 1500 girls that fill just one street corner of Thailand, so tonight, if you think about it… please say a prayer tonight for “the one.”
