Right now I am sitting in a coffee shop waiting for two of my new friends to walk in the door. For the purpose of this blog, lets call them A and M. A few girls on my squad and I met them the other night when we went out to the dance bars for ministry. Earlier that day I had also gone to the cabin restaurants to talk to women. Cabin restaurants are places that from the outside seem normal, but once inside there is a clear difference. Each table has a little cabin built around it so customers can have some privacy.
They go into these places and order food—the more money they spend..the more they can do with the waitress.
In Kathmandu there are over 50,000 women working in these restaurants, half of whom are minors. We were able to talk to 3 women in one of the cabin restaurants. We shared about ourselves and they shared about themselves. The whole time we were talking we could hear another women crying from the other room—she was with a customer. I left there feeling so defeated and wondering where God was. How do places like this exist? I felt such darkness and despair in the restaurant, and left feeling it fully.
Then that night we went out to the dance bars for more ministry. At this point my heart was already breaking for the women I had met earlier in the day—I was praying for God to give me the strength. We split into small teams and walked down he street praying over which dance bar to go into. There are so many different dance bars in this city so it was hard to choose which door we should enter. My squamate Tyler said he felt like God was telling him we needed to go to one he saw called, “Teenage dance bar.”
Teenage dance bar..the name sent shivers down my spine.
Was I ready for this?
Could my already breaking heart handle seeing what we are about to see?
We found the Teenage Dance Bar but couldn’t find the entrance—they are pretty hidden down alley ways and so forth. So we just followed the load music until we found a door and a long dark hallway. We walked in and saw a bunch of couches facing a stage that was exactly what I had feared. There was a girl dancing on the stage only wearing short shorts and her bra, while men of all ages sat around staring at her. After the shock settled in we all sat down and tried to make conversation with some of the girls.
After some trial and error we met our friend M. She is so wonderful and just loves to laugh at all things. She speaks some english, which was incredibly helpful to us. We found out she is only 22 years old. 22 years old, thats how old I am…
What is the difference between her and me?
Why have our lives led to such different places?
M has been working there for a little over a year, and we still don’t know what she was doing before. We are guessing she was at another dance bar before this one. While we were talking to M that night, her boss continually came over. Whenever he approached she would pretend like she didn’t speak english, and he would laugh at her. This made a few of us really mad but we didn’t want him to make M leave so we just kept talking. At one point she had to go because it was her time to dance—this was so hard for us to watch.
While she was dancing I started to kinda survey the entire room. I stared into the eyes of each man that was looking at M like she was an object he could buy. I wanted to do so much more but all I could do was pray. I prayed the entire time she was up there. As I looked around I saw one man that was sitting on a couch with a woman. This woman is A. She was looking miserable and he had his hands all over her body. He was groping A while staring at M with this look on his face that I can’t get out of my head.
In that moment I knew I had to meet A. I needed to talk to her and love her and pray for her.
When it was time for us to leave (We were told by our ministry host not to stay past 11 because it gets much worse and he doesn’t want us in a dangerous situation) a teammate and I went to find M again. We wanted to ask for her number so we could go get coffee or something sometime soon. I saw M sitting on the couch with A and that man, the one who’d been staring at her. We walked over and hugged M. Then I looked at A and asked for a hug from her as well. Her whole face lit up as she stood up and walked away from that man. He stood there for a minute surprised then he too walked away as we continued talking. We got A’s phone number as well that night and made plans to meet for coffee the next day. That next day as I sat in the coffee shop waiting, exactly like I am doing right now, I was nervous but also excited. I had felt so defeated and dejected about where God was the previous day, I didn’t know what was going to come from a cup of coffee. But let me tell you God showed up and He showed up so big.
He shone so brightly that day that all the darkness attached to me from the previous day was gone instantly.
[John 1:5].
We talked for about two hours, using a translation app on our phones. The conversation flowed from favorite foods to their personal life stories. When we started talking about their jobs, we asked how they got started in the dance bars. All that A said was “My parents.” Then we continued to talk. We talked about their dreams and began to dream with them about their lives. It was in that moment when they both said they wanted out of their jobs. They said they wanted to leave and that they needed help. When I heard those words, my heart leapt. We told them all about our ministry host and about how they rescue women from these situations. They became elated and were so excited to meet them.
Today we wait for them again in the same coffee shop where God did so much. We are waiting to take them to dinner and talk more about there lives. We are going to show them how incredibly loved they are. We are also going to make a plan—make a plan to get them out of the dance bar so they never have to go back.
We are waiting, we are praying, and we are having faith that God is going to work here today.
