After 3 months of being home from the Race, I decided to go back and read notes I typed on my phone. At this point, I had just arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The night before my team took a 22 hour bus ride to our ministry location in Da Nang, I wrote what I saw and experienced. For some reason, I feel like I need to share it now.
December 2015 – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Loud music and flashing lights wake up the night
as crowds of people swarm the streets below.
Vendors and bars begin to come alive,
but yet feel so dead inside.
Unaffected by the darkness, there they are.
Prostitutes, brothels, pimps.
Men buying women left and right.
“Who can find the cheapest girl?” They ask.
I am sick to my stomach.
No. Stop.
You don’t know what you’re doing.
As I look at the girls,
I see emptiness and hurt behind calloused eyes.
Brokenness, pain, and shame seep from their souls.
How did their lives come to this?
How did they end up here?
I get to walk in freedom each day,
yet these women are chained to their bedposts,
enslaved to the evil desires of this world.
What can I do?
What can I say?
We have the freedom they are longing for.
And that freedom is in Christ alone.
For freedom Christ has set us free,
and He wants to set them free too.
So we show them who Jesus is.
Through our actions and words.
To love in a place where there is lust.
To bring joy in a place where there is sorrow.
To share the good news in a place where there is hopelessness.
Therefore, there is no time to waste.
Let us step into the darkness to break free the chains.
“for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control”
2 Timothy 1:7
