Ok this one is going to be long. Just so you know. I was going to tell you about my tattoo guy, but then something else happened as is the usual. So I will start by telling you about last night. My team is on bar ministry this week. I was not excited. Anyway, we start the day off by prayer walking around the city and the bars in the morning and that went fantastically, and I was automatically less nervous. The afternoon rolls around and we do day bar ministry and it was…different. I decided then and there that I couldn’t do the night bar. I was afraid. So night time rolls around and one of the guys on my squad wanted to go. For a guy to go out he must have two girls with him. No one else would go. so I had to. I.WAS.LIVID. So mad. I rushed up to my room and angrily threw on some “going out clothes” and went back downstairs with a scowl on my face. I was gonna show God. I was gonna teach him a lesson for making me go to this stupid bar.
I am partnered up with one of the guys on the squad named Robert who I don’t think I had ever spoken to before last night and Ariana who is on my team. None of the three of us are particularly outgoing, especially not in this setting. We walk in and sit down, order a couple of sodas. The girls aren’t really talking to us and we aren’t really talking to them and its awkward. I’m sitting over here smugly thinking, “See God, YOU were wrong. I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t going to work”. Suddenly I notice the man sitting sort of across from me. I don’t know why but I start talking to him. Out of respect for him I won’t tell you his name. Or I’ll make one up. I think I’ll call him Geraldo for the purpose of this. Geraldo is an older man from Dubai, and he is my friend. He is retired and has spent the last few months traveling around Thailand. While I have not directly seen Geraldo purchase a girl, all signs point to the fact that he is probably a john. Geraldo and I had a nice, surface level conversation, and then ,my team and I left. We walked down a back alley and I noticed, really noticed an older white man pulling a girl down the alley. She was hardly capable of walking she was so drunk and he had the biggest, slimiest smile I’ve ever seen on a person on his face. I immediately felt ill. I was pissed. How is this ok? How is this normal? Somebody told us in one of the meetings we sat through that during the high tourist season somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 prostitutes were in Chiangmai. How is that even possible? I was enraged. I could feel the enemy smiling, watching as people fell pray to his games. It was the most broken I had ever felt.
Or so I thought.
We walk back to the hostel and sit down, I’m trying to process through my rage, when we hear the sound of an accident. We go into the street and there had been a motor bike wreck. One man was up and screaming “Oww Oww Oww!” The other man wasn’t up at all. The other man was lying face down in the street and he wasn’t saying anything at all. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t doing anything. All I could do was beg. “God! No no no no no please no God! Please no no no” I kept chanting it over and over in my mind. I walk up to the man in the street. The face sheild of his helmet had come off. It was still intact it had just detatched from his helmet. I picked it up and it was covered in blood and spit. I just stared at it for a second and then dropped it to the ground. I feel like the whole world stopped. Was this man at my feet alive? Is he laying here at my feet dead in the street? God, what are you doing? And then I heard the man speak. One of my squadmates had asked him his birthday or something and he knew it. He couldn’t feel anything from the waist down, BUT HE WAS ALIVE. I began to pray. Eventually the ambulance came and we went up to our room.
I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t process what I had seen the last four hours and I was angry that God had made me watch it. I went onto our balcony and yelled at God. Screamed at him. Gave him a real piece of my mind. I went to bed broken and hurt and scared an angry.
I woke up this morning not feeling much better, the weight of this place bearing down on me. We went out again for our morning prayer walk, and thats when the single most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me, happened. I’m not sure if I even believed this stuff was possible before today.
I’ve felt a spiritual heaviness in this country since the second I stepped foot in it. To the point that it almost physically hurts. I am always exhausted, always a little angry, frustrated and sad.
Its just so heavy.
Well today we were walking and all of a sudden I felt someone grab my shoulders. It felt like they had run up and jump on me in a playing kind of way, and then I realized that no one had touched me. Someone was physically pushing me down, but no one was touching me. I was afraid. I thought I was just imagining it, but it wouldn’t go away. The further I walked the heavier it got. Erika, one of the squad leaders, asked if I was okay and I said no. I’ll be honest and say I dont remember much from here except that when she asked me to recite a scripture I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t let me think it and my mouth could not form the words. You may be reading this thinking that I’m adding to the story or making it more exciting so you’ll donate to my fund or maybe you think I’m flat out lying. I’m not. I can tell you that I have not ever been more afraid of anything in my life. Not ever. My team prayed over me, sang worship songs and recited scripture. Eventually I remember being able to read Matthew 11:28-30 through tear filled eyes with a shakey voice. I got to a place where I realized that I was sitting in an alley in Thailand, terrified of what had just happened to me, wondering if it was real or if I had had some really bad pad thai. Then I heard God’s voice, the tiniest of whispers in the back of my mind saying “I am here“. Eventually we got up and moved on and rejoiced in that victory. I still feel the weight of this place in my heart. I think I might always feel it.
This is the last part I promise.
Tonight I decided to go back to the bars because I knew that if I didn’t fear would beat me and I wouldn’t go back at all. So I got all dolled up, put on my battle armour of prayer and headed out. We went to the same one we went to last night and wouldn’t you know it Geraldo was there. So I sat down beside him. He remembered my name and everything we had talked about last night. He told me about his life, his beautiful daughters, he showed me their pictures and told me all about them. He told me about how he got to Dubai, what he had done to get there. He told me about the work he had retired from. He told me what he loved, what food I needed to try while I was here, what tourist attractions were worth it, he even skirted around asking me to go watch the movie Unbroken with him, (not in a creepy way). I realized that this man is a human. He is not a monster. He is a lost person looking to be found. He and I are the same. I may not buy girls, but I buy into the lies of this world. I buy into the lies the enemy tries to tempt me with. That I am weak, and incapable, that I don’t belong here or that I can’t do it. But I am here to proclaim that I can through the power of Jesus who lives in me. So I made friends with a john. I came here to be Liam Neeson and save the girls from the monsters, but instead I realised that those “monsters” are victims too.
I commend you if you made it this far, I know it was long, but it needed to be told. If you feel so inclined to give, I do have a deadline coming eventually and I would be very greatful. If not, I’d appreciate your prayers for sure. Actually I’d appreciate your prayers either way.
–Mary
