For our first month of ministry, we have been in Chiang Mai, Thailand. My entire squad has been living above a coffee house. We were separated into several different ministries: Zion cafe (the coffee house), in the slums and market place, in the bars, in the local college, and in worship all around the city.
Our contact’s name here is Emmi. She is a beautiful Thai woman who has such an inspirational testimony and I have been blessed to get to know her . Emmi works with Lighthouse ministries in Chiang Mai. They have Zion cafe ministry, Love Acts, Xlife, and The Guest house.
My team, team Mosaic, has worked with Love Acts in bar ministry this past month alongside two other teams. Love Acts is just what is sounds like, showing the love of Jesus through our actions more so than through our words. We go out everyday to share the love of Christ with the women, lady boys, gentlemen, and children in the red light district. It has been a very challenging month for me. I was really excited to work with girls stuck in the sex trafficking industry, but it turned out to be harder than I realized.
From 9-11 in the morning, we would walk in groups of 2-3 throughout the bar area praying. Later on in the day, from between 2-5 we would go back out to the bars and try to build relationships with the girls while they were setting up for the night. From 8:30-10:30pm two of the teams would go out to the bars and hang out with the girls there while the other team stayed behind and interceded in prayer.
For the first two weeks. I really felt ineffective. I had a much harder time building relationships then I anticipated. However, God worked through that and He showed me that the “success” level I was trying to achieve was not His success level. He was calling me to prayer.
So I had to shift my attention to the prayer side of things. I have never prayed so much in my life. It was wonderful. And God continued to move. The last week, He blessed me with the friendship of a ladyboy. A ladyboy is a person who has been born a boy, but receives hormone injections(usually around age 6) and breast augmentations (around age 12) to become a woman. They are not always forced to do this, but most have parents that have decided this route for them if they are the second boy born because the family desires to have a girl. When they get older, they go into the sex industry to earn money to send back home to their families.
My ladyboy friend, (I’ll call her Emily) is a very sweet girl. She spent a lot of time with myself and two other girls the last week we were there. We took her to a movie and she took us out for ice cream. As we were preparing to leave, to brought us gifts to remember her by. Mary, one of the girls on another team, was able to have a great conversation about Jesus with her. Please be in prayer for Emily as she was very open to the idea. We have been emailing back and forth since we left Chiang Mai and I am so glad to have her as a friend.
I am in the process of trying to put together a monthly newsletter for my recaps. I had one completed, but the program I used is not compatible with other computers, so my lovely team leader 🙂 will be showing me how I can fix that. So I appreciate your patience with that. If you would like to receive these newsletters as well, you can send me your email address: [email protected]. I would love to be able to share my pictures and other information with you. Thank you so much for your support! I am 91% funded and about $1,467 away from being fully funded! Praise the Lord!
