beginning of our ministry in Chiang Mai. The first night we were there, we
prayer walked all up and down bar street asking God to lead us. And He brought
us to the Darling Bar. Night after night we felt led back to the Darling to spend time with those women. And some beautiful friendships developed as a result. We got to know their hearts and they are precious. We knew from the beginning of the month that we wanted to “buy a girl” for the night to spend some quality time with her outside the bar scene. And again, we all felt led to take one of our darlings…
As we approached the girls tonight, Oy, the main friend we
wanted to hang out with, was dealing cards to herself finding out what kind of
luck she would have tonight. The results of the game were that she would find a
young man with lots of money to take her away. I chuckled to myself and thought
‘I bet those cards didn’t tell you what is really in store for you.’
At first I was a little worried. I mean, this
is awkward. Legitimately awkward. What are people at the bar going to
think? What if the girls do not
want to come? But soon after we had asked our friend who spoke English,
she talked to our other friend, and sitting in between the two of them
was a third that volunteered to go. Coo told us, ‘it is very expensive.
400
baht a girl.’ (That’s about $13 USD each.) We told her this was no
problem and she got very excited and told us we could have a deal and
get three for
900 baht instead of just two for 800 baht. Okay, good salesmanship.
Sold, to the
small Thai lady in the pink shirt.
On the way to our first hang out spot (to find
dinner) I
heard Carin behind me talking with Coo (the one who speaks very good
english). Carin
asked her where she wanted to go for food and Coo said ‘Where ever you
want to
go. Whatever you want, we will do.’ Carin stopped her and got very
serious for a
second, ‘No, Coo. This is not a normal night. Tonight’s not about us.
Tonight is
about what YOU want to do.’ On hearing this Coo started taking fast Thai
to her friends and it ended in a climactic ‘We ARE FREE!’ with arms
flailed up in the air and dance moves ensuing afterwards from each of
them.
At dinner, Coo told us they have never been taken out by
women before, which probably means they’ve never been taken out for a ‘fun’ night before either.
After dinner the girls wanted to go out
dancing. Ironically, as we started walking to the dance club, we passed
by a random group of people dancing frantically in a courtyard. We
figured ‘why not’ and ran across the street to join the dance. During
this, the random guy next to me (perhaps from England) told me that we
were going to be in a Thai music video. (I can only hope.) We pried
ourselves away from this dance party and headed for the club, picking up
another girl, Pawn,
who just wanted to come along.
We walked and walked to the dance club and ended up in front
of a glowing building called Porn Ping. Uh… we were all thinking, maybe we
didn’t convey as clearly as we’d meant too. I asked, ‘this is for dancing,
right’ shaking my hips in my ‘all too white girl’ dance moves. Yes, they assured
us, just dancing.
So, I guess Porn Ping is the name of a place or something,
because it wasn’t nearly as scary inside as I had started to imagine. It was
just a normal club… music switched between loud techno and a fun Thai cover band. We
danced with the girls for hours. I admit I was a little worried about my dorky
dance style, not sure how it would flow with these girls. Turns out they are
just as dorky as me, they just know how to shake it a little better.
(Thankfully, I know how to drop it like it’s hot- thank you Joy Henning.) Besides
this, we would get really close up to the cover band and act like teenage girls
and scream and do hand motions and stuff. They gave us a shout out- they were
pretty excited to have such involved fans.
At the end of the night, there was a lot of hugging and
‘thank you’, ‘no, thank you‘. Not really sure who was indebted to who out here. We are so blessed by their friendship. These are all ladies that we have
been building relationship with over the last few weeks. It’s really special to
see how their perception of us has changed over time. I think at first they
didn’t know what to make of us. The last few meetings, they say to customers
that pass by ‘no, I don’t want to talk to you. I am talking to my friend.’ As
we parted tonight they said excitedly ‘see you tomorrow’ cause they know we
will be back.
Two things strike me as I reflect tonight:
The first is how Coo thought we didn’t know the
price to pay
for her and the others, that ‘it is very expensive’, and her surprise
when the price was no big deal. And her even bigger surprise that
tonight was a night of freedom. My
prayer for her is that she would know her worth to Jesus- and know that a
much
bigger price was paid for her ultimate freedom.
The second is how, for the
rest of my life, I can now gauge things, like maybe a first date or something, against tonight. E.g., ‘Yeah,
this has been nice. But it doesn’t compare at all to the night I spent with the
four prostitutes.’
