Last week, we were given an invitation to travel to Buriram to see where a lot of the bar girls come from. One of the first women to come to The Well has moved back there and begun her own ministry to her family and the neighborhood.
We wanted to go, but did not want to miss out on spending time with the girls we are trying to reach here in Bangkok. Michelle and I decided to go for two days while the other girls stayed here to continue the teaching and outreach.
We were scheduled to travel by van sometime between 5pm and 9pm, but after several phone calls back and forth and a lot of waiting around, the van finally came at 10pm.
It was a very bumpy seven hour trip. The van stopped about every hour for bathroom breaks or coffee for the driver. It felt like we would never get there.
We finally arrived in Buriram at 5:00 AM, just in time for the sun to come up. We made our way into the house and were guided to our room where we promptly settled in to sleep for a few hours.
Buriram is the name of the province as well as a city. We were about and hour outside the main city. The countryside is covered with rice paddies and water buffalo. It was also very hot and humid, and there is no air-conditioning out here. In fact, the electricity was out when we arrived, so we couldn’t even turn a fan on.
One of the things this family does is produce handmade silk. She does the whole process there at the house. They grow the worms and boil the cocoons, extract the thread and clean out the burrs. They spin the thread and dye it, and then weave the thread on a loom and sell the fabric. We got to see her dying some of the thread and hanging it on a line to dry. I would have liked to see the whole process, but we were not there long enough.
Later that afternoon, we went to the school to teach English classes. We each taught our own class so that we could cover more. This school was very interesting. They are short on teachers, so the kids were just hanging out and playing. If they have a teacher that day, they will have class. If there is no teacher, it becomes more like a day care.
Surprisingly, the kids are very will behaved despite the lack of structure. When we gathered for a class, they all came in and sat down without any complaining. They are very polite too.
We each taught two one-hour classes. These kids did not know a lot of English, so it was hard to even explain anything. I don’t know how these kids get any education with so little structure in the school.
Later that evening, we heard there was some kind of dance thing going on at the school for the adults. We decided to go check it out. When we arrived, there were a bunch of kids running around while the mothers did aerobics.
We joined the back row and tried to follow along with their routine. Apparently they are preparing for some kind of competition. They asked us to teach them some American dance moves, so we showed them some Macarana and Electric Slide. It was fun, and it felt good to exercise, but it was so hot and we were feeling a bit dehydrated.
We headed back to the house early so we could bath and go to bed. When the rest of the gang got back, we gathered in the living room to have a time of worship with her family. This is a nightly tradition for them, and more and more people are beginning to come to join them. They are essentially planting a church in their home.
It is great to see how God redeemed one life and now is using that life to bring many others into relationship with Him. It is the vision of The Well, that the girls will grow in their faith and return to their villages to share the gospel and make disciples. It was beautiful to see that happening, and a privilege to be a part of. Over dinner, we got to hear the story of how she ended up in the bars and how she came to The Well.
She was married to a Thai man and raising their kids, when she found out her husband had another lady. Her friends and her mother encouraged her to go work in the bars where she could make a lot of money and hope to meet a foreign husband to take care of her and the kids. Her friends told her she could get back at her husband by making a lot of money and meeting a rich man.
So, she moved to Bangkok and started working in the bars. She was only there for a few weeks when she first met Jim. He had just arrived in Thailand, and she was the first bar girl he met. The Well had not been started yet, but he encouraged her to leave the bar and let him help her. She did not go, but they kept in touch.
Eventually, she met a German man and they got married. He built her a big house back in Buriram, and took care of her and her family. Then one of the girls from the bar got jealous and started a rumor that she had a Thai boyfriend. He got angry and left, with the house still unfinished.
About a year after meeting Jim, she agreed to go live at The Well and let him help her. There, she learned about Jesus and became a Christian. Her faith grew, and she felt the Lord calling her to go back and share it with the people in Buriram. She moved back to her house with her family, and began reaching out to at risk girls in the neighborhood.
Many of the kids are encouraged by their own families to go and work in Bangkok. They believe it is the only way to secure a good future for them. It also benefits them because all of the girls send money back to their families as well. They do not talk about what they do there because it is shameful, but they are more than willing to send then off to a “waitressing” job in the city.
Her vision is to reach these girls before they get sent off to work, to give them hope and a new direction for their future. She had a few girls living there with her until recently. One of the neighbors began a rumor that she was going to sell the kids to America. The parents were told to keep their kids away from the Christians because they are trying to take away the Buddhist traditions. All of the girls that were staying with her were forced to move back home to their parents.
Despite the persecution, and the apparent set backs in the ministry, God is working there. The devil is angry because she is making a difference, but her family is responding more and more to the gospel, and their little house church is growing. Kids still gather at her house after school to play games and hear Bible stories. We were still able to teach at the schools, and I believe people are beginning to see through the lies. God will prevail in Buriram.
