Thailand.
Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Broken. Joy. Exciting. Busy. Hope. Crazy. Love. Fun. Big prayers. Laughter. Heaviness. Wonderful. Too short. Spiritual Warfare. Favorite month of the race so far.
This pretty much sums up my experience in Thailand. I fell in love with this place pretty close to the moment I arrived. I can't explain to you the amount of joy I felt when walking through the door of our ministry site. One of my teammates even cried because she was so happy! I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that I just came out of 3 months in Africa, maybe it had to do with the fact that living conditions were much easier and similar to home. But what really sold me was our amazing ministry, our wonderful contacts, and the incredible people I met and worked with. This place rocks, seriously.
This month we worked with a ministry called Dton Naam. Which translates to 'source of water' in Thai. It was sweet because one of the founders is actually from Midwest City (pretty much my hometown!). The organization focuses on working with ladyboys. There are lots of organizations in Bangkok that are aimed at helping women get out of the bars and out of the sex industry but the founders of Dton Naam really have a heart for the ladyboys. Ladyboys are basically men that are living as women. That's the short answer….it goes way deeper than I could have ever imagined. A lot of times you can't even tell by looking at them! What I didn't realize is that it isn't always a choice. Most of the time it is spoken over them at a very early age. In the slums grandmothers believe it is lucky to have a ladyboy in the family. Lots of different factors go into the making of ladyboy that would take a while to explain. So back to Dton Naam…they run a coffee shop that gives jobs to people that have come out of working in the sex industry so that they can have some type of job training. Dton Naam teaches them how to work in a coffee shop setting, offers counseling, offer discipleship, and teaches them other skills that will be helpful in life. It's a beautiful community that made my team and I feel so so loved and really made us feel like part of the family. They welcomed us with open arms and taught us a lot about human trafficking which I am so thankful for.
What my team did while working with Dton Naam:
I taught one of the students how to sew (just ignore the awful picture haha). Someone had donated a sewing machine not long before we got there and one of the students has a dream of becoming a designer. He had a design made up for aprons for the coffee shop workers to wear so I showed him how to work the machine and helped him get started! It was so fun 🙂 He is a natural at it and I can't wait to see his designs famous some day.
Other teammates taught English, dance, and nutrition/fitness.
　
This is a fairly new ministry so we got to help with lots of little projects that they haven't been able to get done yet. We made up an orientation packet for future volunteers, made a resource packet of other organizations in the area, made up maps of the Red Light Districts with names of all the bars, made new decorations for the cafe, painted and varnished the second floor balcony, and also helped make cupcakes sometimes 🙂
We lived on the 3rd floor of the cafe so we spent our time working on the projects or teaching classes, but we spent most of our time building relationships with the students (and staff) and encouraging them, speaking truth into them, and pouring the love of God into them. The students were so great! We had daily worship and Bible study time where we got to hear some of their stories and have sweet sweet worship together. God is doing some big BIG things in each of their hearts. It's a beautiful thing.
We also went out into the bars, into the Red Light District do to outreach (which i'll save for another blog).
This really has been one of the best months for me. Everything about it has been so wonderful. Thank you Jesus for a good month, for opening my eyes to how serious human trafficking is and what it's all about, for new sweet friends, for being able to help out a new ministry, for teaching me how to fight in big prayers against spiritual warfare, and for seeing this broken city through your eyes.
