If you have trouble understanding aspects of how human sex trafficking works in Thailand, go to my blog “7 Things I Learned about Human Sex Trafficking” here.
It was my first night going into bar ministry. We got off the skytrain and stopped to pray for our time doing outreach. Then we started walking down a seemingly ordinary road with a couple of street vendors. Suddenly we turn the corner and the whole sky is plastered with neon. Now that I’ve seen a small handful of red light districts, I can confidently say that there are never any warning signs or indications that you’re about to walk right down a street heavily bombarded with prostitution.
We walked down the street cluttered with girls in six inch heels in order to reach the bar we had planned to go to. I immediately felt like we were out of place wearing our oversized T-shirts and chacos. The room was primarily lit by black lights and with a neon green undertone and everything shook from the obnoxious techno music. Immediately a handful of girls flocked toward us. Our ministry guide picked one girl and turned the rest of them away. This is primarily because the women expect you to buy them a drink when you sit down. Getting customers to buy you one or two drinks is crucial to receiving a full salary for the day in this industry.
For the sake of her privacy I won’t tell you this girl’s name. But her number was 146. You see in some of the bigger bars the girls wear a number (in place of a name tag) so that if a guy sees her dancing onstage he can easily pick her out and ask for her.
She asked what we wanted to drink and we just asked for a few cokes, some sprites, one pineapple juice, and a drink of her choice. The girl gave us a funny look. It’s probably not exactly a normal thing to come into that environment and not actually consume alcohol. As she went off I took in everything going on around us. Girls practically throwing themselves at the men, the ones with no customers to entertain slumped over in their seats, and one speed walking to the back room looking as though she were ready to burst into tears. Our girl came back with a tray of drinks and sat down with us.
As you can imagine, sometimes the girls don’t totally pick up on the fact that you’re not there to party. So she was bouncing up and down, trying to get us all hyped and dancing. Once she tried to get me to get up and dance on a pole (which of course I declined.) What I wanted was to talk to her, to get to know who she was.
She told us all about the little town she was from in the countryside. This woman had come to the big city to make enough money to support her family and her daughter. She came to the bars and pretty much ready to sell herself every night for the last three years. We asked if her family knew about what she did for a living. She told us they didn’t. All they knew was that she was a waitress at a bar. Even though she was trying to dance and talk, I could tell that she had a heaviness in her. I asked her how she was. Like how she really was. She told us that a couple weeks ago her father had died and how hard it’s been on her. Also the bar had been pretty harsh toward her for how many days she took off to return to her hometown to go to the funeral. You could tell from how she was talking that she didn’t have a particularly good relationship with her boss.
Our ministry partner had been to this bar before so she had seen this girl many times.
“I’ve seen you here before and heard that you’re a hard worker.”
We then proceeded to explain that we are Christians that want her to have a good work environment and that we had a job offer if she was willing to take it at Samaritan Creations. She told us that she was interested (as they always are) and that she would consider it. I felt a little unsteady as this discussion was going on since I saw the bar mom making her rounds and she was staring at us a little more intensely than normal.
As far as my knowledge goes, she has not left a life of prostitution yet. Building enough trust for any of the girls to leave can take a lot of time and patience. They don’t want to get tricked or kidnapped and sold. Not to mention, these girls and women are very accustomed to an unhealthy working life. They will often give you a fake name and change up all sorts of facts about themselves so they don’t get stalked or threatened by customers.
If you want to fight human sex trafficking, start by praying over these ministries (such as Samaritan Creations) along with the red light districts in Bangkok and Pattaya, Thailand. We serve a really powerful God that can literally do anything. Pray, pray, pray, pray. It works.
If you want to financially support the ministry I was involved with in helping women out of a life of prostitution, sharing Jesus with them, offering employment, housing, counseling, and childcare go here: samaritancreations.org
Sponsorships for individual women should be available soon as well.
That’s all for now. Peace.
