Rule #1 in bar ministry is, 'don't be fooled.'
The girls behind the bars aren't smiling because this job is everything they'd hoped for and more.
The older white men holding hands with the beautiful Thai women probably never made a vow to love and to cherish.
The little kids selling flowers on the street aren't actually making a profit, and they're usually not allowed to leave until every last flower is sold.
Even if that means they work the streets all night.
Even when school starts at sunrise the next morning.
Even when this is their life, night after night after night.
Don't be fooled.
I was fooled.
It's our last night on the streets of Patong, and my heart is broken.
I'm saying goodbye to prostitutes with dreams of a future and a better life, who don't want to us to leave forever.
I'm walking the streets, taking in the men hopping from bar to bar, feeling up women whose names they'll never know. Or even care about.
I'm watching all the little children marching up to strangers, demanding they buy a flower so they can go home and sleep.
There's an old woman who prowls the streets every single night, a hunch in her back, a mouth full of rotten teeth, a handful of flowers in her hand. Every night she tries to sell them to me, and every night I thank the Lord that my own grandmothers have never been subjected to this humiliation.
It's our last night on the streets of Patong. My heart is broken. I've been fooled.
When the little old lady asked me to buy a flower, I did. Paid her double what she was asking (and probably ten times its cost)- a whopping three dollars.
Did she get to keep any of that money? Doubtful.
Will she even remember me, or my face, or the fact that there were tears in my eyes as I watched her walk over to the next group of tourists? Definitely not.
Was that a smart use of my money? I don't know.
But what I do know is this is real.
These people are real. Their lives are real.
Ignoring them has never made them go away, or get better, and certainly won't save them.
You know why James 1:27 is quoted so often?
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
It's because the Lord cares about these widows, these street kids, these beautiful young women selling their bodies night after night.
I'm not telling you what to do. I don't even know what I'm doing.
But we have to do something.
I was fooled.
Fooled into thinking I could make a difference.
Fooled into looking for hope for these wanderers of the night.
Fooled into remembering that we are all broken, all in need of a Savior, all deserving of death and all offered the miraculous gift of life.
This is a fool's errand.
And we've been sent on it.
saying goodbye to some of our favorite girls
