So we got to go to the red light district tonight. It was not quite what i expected… The atmosphere wasn’t quite as in your face as i was expecting. All in all it looked like any other bar scene you would find in any city in the US. Except there were lady boys everywhere. In other terms, men that dress as women. For all practical purposes they are women, except for obvious reasons that they can’t change. But they look like women. And the other fact that the scantily clad women are for purchase rather then just looks. But from a naive onlooker, the red light district in Chiangmai looks no different then any other street full of bars. The atmosphere is very chill.
Before i got there i was already in an emotional reck… This ministry has a special place in my heart and as soon as we started praying before we even left the coffee shop to go meet up with the others, the tears started coming. I was an emotional reck all night, until we got to the bars. The closer we got the more control i had over the river behind my eyes. But i know that is only because we were so covered in prayer.
While half of us went out to the bars the rest stayed back at the house and were in prayer and intercession for us. And we could feel the effects. The calmness that we felt could be attributed to nothing else.
As me and my partner Miranda walked around wondering what to do, i felt God leading us to this women in a red dress at one of the bars in the middle of the street. Here in Thailand there is a thing called “saving face”, it basically means that you don’t want to disgrace yourself by showing unwanted emotions. Smiling in any situation is generally the symptom of “saving face”. But this woman in the red dress didn’t even attempt to smile. There was misery and hopelessness all over her face.
We walked by a few times and finally we sat down at the table with her and asked for a coke. Let me say that going into a bar and asking for a coke was something foreign in this place… She looked at me with an expression as if she didn’t understand me and asked “you want a coke?” in English, with her eyebrows in the form of a question. I answered yes and she walked 2 steps the counter and said something to one of the other girls. This girl now walks over to us and asks us again, “you want a coke??” We again say yes. So she walks over and tells the bar tender our order. As soon as she finishes all the people at the counter including the bartender look over at us 2 small girls whose order was a coke in this obvious bar and laugh….
So we are sitting there gulping down our cokes, and trying to talk to this woman in the red dress, but that isn’t going too well. She walks away after the silence becomes too much and we are left with the eyes of the people at the bar looking at us. Unaware of the parodical we are unsure if we need to pay for the time the girl spent with us or just the cokes… While we sit there contemplating this, I asked God what we were doing there. What would you have us do??? This isn’t working…. And He answered.
Pray for this bar. And all of them.
So we did. We began to pray out loud over the bar. That there would be no more customers the rest of the night. And that the alcohol would taste bitter. That everyone who thought about entering would be so uncomfortable that they would have to turn around. I’m sure we looked pretty interesting sitting there waving our hands in the air and speaking in loud voices to an invisible force. But we felt the mission. We paid for our drinks and started our walk praying over all the bars these very same things.
So we didn’t really get to talk to the woman in the red dress very long… But God gave us a mission to do while we were there. And that was enough for me.
Even though we only went to the bars one night. God used us. And He touched my heart with a passion for this ministry. I can only hope that in the future He uses that passion once again.
