The Best $10 I’ve Ever Spent

It is crazy how far our money has stretched on my first two months of the World Race.
In India, our budget looked something like this…
Housing and Utilities- $3 per day
Transportation – $3 per day
Food – $3 per day

And now in Nepal our housing is a little different because our whole squad is together, but we get $4 per day to eat and we spend less than $1 per day for our bus rides to and from ministry sites. It’s a struggle to find food that keeps us in our budget, but we get by. And those of you who know me, know I use some of my personal money for cookies, chocolate or coffee if I feel it’s necessary. It usually is.

I spent some of the money I saved from working in the States to see Mt. Everest, but other than that, the single most expensive item I’ve bought during Ministry in Nepal was a can of pineapple juice. 

It cost $10. 

I bought it in a cabin restaurant where young girls work to sell drinks to traveling men. And the more money the men spend the more ‘service’ they get. A cabin restaurant is a brothel.

I was told what to expect when I walked in and our ministry leader, Ruth, described it perfectly.
She told us there are small restaurants that look perfectly normal from the outside and these cabin restaurants are all over certain pockets of the city. If you walk in, there is a counter and a few rooms that just have a crude table and benches with 3 short walls to give the appearance of privacy, but there really is none. During orientation we were told almost everyone is trafficked into this. After she gave us the run down of what to expect, we spent time in prayer for the day, the journey, and prayed for protection for ourselves, and we headed off.

After a long dusty bus ride we got off at a major bus hub. It’s a place that everyone entering or leaving Nepal has to stop. Many men travel to other countries for work and they come back to bring their families the money they made. This particular bus hub would be their first stop everyone has to make on their way back home. There was a big pedestrian bridge that arched the four lane highway and it was covered with men just standing there watching the buses pull in and out. It looked like a huge crowd watching an accident or something….Something just wasn’t right about it.

Then I was told all the men were pimps that were looking for traveling men with suitcases who were coming home from working far away, because they had money in their pockets and the pimps could sell them a girl. I was sick. There was at least 100 men on that bridge.

So we got off our bus and walked down a side street. We were in an area that had seen some of the worst of the earthquake damage in Kathmandu. In all the mess, the restaurants and market type shops were still standing. Most of the restaurants had beautiful young Nepali women sitting in front. They didn’t look any different than a typical hostess you would see at a restaurant you’d eat at in any city, but they were very different. These women were someone’s property.

When we turned into the cabin restaurant we were going to, there was a nicely dressed girl about 19 years old who was sitting in front of the place. She had black dress pants on and a white button up shirt. She was stunning, her hair and make up were perfect and she looked very professional, like she was ready to head to an office job.

There were nine people in our ministry group from our whole squad, so we took up the only two cabins in this small establishment. Our ministry leader, Ruth, had become friends with the woman who managed the place in previous visits, so this was a place Ruth was welcomed to bring friends like us who call ourselves tourists. We all sat down and Ruth started talking to the manager. Her name was Ashmita. Ruth said she was acting very sad and depressed since the earthquake, and Ashmita had also had an abortion right before the earthquake, Ruth didn’t know if it was the earthquake or the abortion that was upsetting her but Ruth told us she could tell something had stolen any happiness Ashmita had before. Ashmita served us our small, pricey juice cans and then went to attend to some business at the front counter. Before she left our table Ruth chatted with her briefly about church. Ashmita was saying she wanted to go to a church to try to find happiness, but she had to work during church. When she walked away, Ruth was obviously stressed and she said “I would like to send her to a church, but where can she go? I don’t know any churches near here that would accept a woman like her into their church.”

It was an incredibly profound and convicting statement that I think, applies to the Church all over the world.

Another girl wandered over to our table and started talking with us. Her name was Ashmita as well. So we started hearing about her life. Ashmita had been there for 11 years….ELEVEN YEARS! She came from her village in the mountains when she was very young. She has never been able to go back. She told us she has no friends, she wants no friends, she only goes to work, then comes home and sleeps. She was a little drunk when we arrived, but I had no judgment to pass on this poor soul, I would probably do anything I could to forget about my day if I were her too. She was obviously depressed.

There were five of us crammed at a tiny table, and I was smashed in the corner peeking around the other people from our ministry to see her face. My two friends closest to her started to share the Gospel and their own testimonies. I started praying as I listened. As the conversation went back and forth, I could also hear what was going on in the next cabin. The other half of our group was talking to the beautiful girl who was at the door when we walked in. As my friends on the other side of the wall shared the Gospel, they got some of her story. Her name was Mona and she had been there for two weeks. The events that brought her there were devastating. She had become a Christian a short time ago, but her Hindu parents disowned her and kicked her out of her house because of her decision. She had no place to go and somehow she ended up working there. 

As our interpreters were relaying the message and stories of God’s love, men were stalking outside to see what was going on inside with all the white people. All of the sudden one of the girls from the front started shouting orders and Ruth said “Ok, we have to go right now.” One of my favorite squadmates, Jen, was talking about her darkest days and how God rescued her when we were interrupted. Ashmita reached out her hands and laid them in Jen’s lap and gave a sad, disappointed smile. She said she wanted to go with us and hear the rest of Jen’s story. It was heartbreaking.

We got her phone number for our ministry contact to follow up with her later, we paid for the drinks and immediately left. There was a line of men outside that were waiting to go in. 

We kept walking until we got back to the bus stop and I looked up again at the bridge of men looking for potential customers. They were all still there, doing their business for the day. The whole thing was sickening.

Ruth gathered us together and told us to pray, to shake off everything we didn’t want to carry home with us. So we prayed silently as we waited for the bus, praying off all the darkness we had just seen. And as we left, I felt like the Holy Spirit had held the men outside at bay for just long enough for the love of God to be shared with these girls. I hope the follow up is successful, but I know God can do a lot with one conversation that is not easily forgotten. So please pray for Ashmita, Mona and Ashmita, the owner, that they would be free from this prison they are in and somehow find the family and love they are so desperately looking for.

It was a heavy day, but I also felt a little victory that we got to carry the light of the love of Jesus into this incredibly dark place. I am so thankful I got to meet these beautiful women so I can keep praying for them. I will never ever forget that day. The best $10 I have ever spent. I volunteered to go to that particular ministry that day because my team is heading to Cambodia where we will be working at a transitional home for girls 6-18 who have been rescued from trafficking, rape, and abuse. I wanted to see a small part of what their life looked like or could have potentially looked like. 

We leave for Cambodia tomorrow and I am so excited. We get to spend time with the girls in the afternoon and do a little Recreation Therapy, which is right up my alley. I’m sad to say goodbye to Nepal because it has been an incredible month of stretching and growing my faith. God has shown up in so many big ways, I wish you were all at this coffee shop with me right now so I could tell you all the stories. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me financially and in prayer. I wanted to write this blog to you to show you the value of the dollars you gave and the prayers you said on my behalf. The two hours we spent in that cabin restaurant are partly because of you. Sometimes I feel like you are all right here with me. Thank you for partnering with me in your prayers and support. I only wish we could all do more. Don’t you?