This blog was written month 5 in Thailand. I am now in month 10 in Zambia. My blogs about the months in between are to come hopefully soon. I’ve discovered I love to absorb what’s around me and it takes awhile for me to really process and reflect on all my experiences.
Also I am almost fully funded. I still have $715.00 to raise. If you feel lead to give you can click the support me tab or send a check to my home address.
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Thailand literally means free land. I sit here wondering if the people here really feel free or if they feel trapped, chained in the shackles of emptiness and brokenness.
While walking the streets of Thailand I looked into the faces of the women I passed by. What I saw broke my heart. Smiles, with no light in them. Masks hiding the pain and despair. Their empty smiles seemed to be hiding their reality.
One particular scene brought a flood of tears to my eyes. It was a young Thai girl dressed like no eleven year old should ever be dressed holding hands with and romantically embracing a white man in his 30’s or 40’s.
This. Is. Reality. Here.
After Bangkok, Chiang Mai is the most prominent sex tourism destination in Thailand. It is a destination for many tourists looking to “have fun”. It is home to at least 5,000 male, female, and child prostitutes working in bars, massage parlors, and other service businesses, as well as thousands more trafficked for labor and other things.
Many of the children working in the red-light district there live in or are from nearby slums. The children get trafficked from these slums. Sex traders come to the villages with empty promises of a better future for the children, money payments, and dirty lies.
This is where my team was placed for ministry this month. The slums. The slums actually lie right in the heart of the city not far from the streets lined with bars. I walked into the slums the first day of ministry ready to pour out the love of Christ on the children.
What I walked into was not what I was expecting. The children were few, and very closed off. This was a stark contrast to the friendliness and openness of the children in Central America. I noticed that the number of girls and boys were vastly different, but based on what we were told it made sense. It was a sad, but true reality.
We played with the children and showed them unconditional love, but it was frustrating because they were so hesitant and we had no translator to share kind words and simply ask how they were. I was frustrated because I couldn’t see that I was really touching the lives of the children there. I really wanted to know that we were communicating the love of Christ, but there was no way to know if we were.
As we continued to go to the slums and pray over the village and play with children, I noticed that the children were slowly letting their walls down. Did the children see or experience Christ’s love in us? Were there seeds planted that might later blossom into something big and beautiful for the kingdom?
I honestly don’t know.
I do know now, however, that this is where the Lord takes over. He uses us. He uses our smiles, our hugs, our hello’s, and our attention to the people who may go unnoticed by the rest of the world to speak volumes of His love.
“And he that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit unto life eternal: that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap u that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.
(John 4:36-38)
I’ve had to learn to trust that the Lord is using me even though it might not seem like He is. God needs harvesters, but when the timing is right. God ALSO needs and uses willing, faithful, and trusting planters, but it’s up to Him to bring new life and harvest what was planted, in His perfect timing. It’s hard but I’ve discovered that you might not see the fruit of what you are planting at the time but that is where trust comes in. It takes faith. It requires that you TRUST that the Lord has a plan for your work to be harvested when it will bring His kingdom the most glory.
We many not see God move miraculously right before our eyes, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t moving in the hearts of those around us.
I think God wants us to keep asking that we may see fruit of our labor, but we shouldn’t let seeing the fruit now be our source of encouragement and motivation. Our encouragement should simply be the fact and TRUTH that God is faithful and He keeps his promises.
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord”
1 Corinthians 15:58
