SHE Thailand

 

I can tell you straight up that I did not want to leave Thailand yesterday. This has been one of my favorite months yet.

 

We worked with SHE ministries; a bar outreach run by a couple from the UK – Mark and Sharon (and their family). At night we would go into the bars to talk to the prostitutes that worked there. There are hundreds of girls who work on Bangla Road who end up there due to a lack of educated and inability find work elsewhere. When they cannot find jobs elsewhere, the women turn to prostitution where they can make enough money to provide for themselves and their families if need be (it’s actually a fairly profitable career).

 

Honestly, this ministry was really difficult for me. Although this may seem contrary to peoples’ impressions of me, I am not particularly skilled at starting conversations with random women in bars. It‘s hard to hear and carry on conversations – the music is loud and the women speak only broken English.  I‘m not a good conversation carrier. I also felt like I was being covert and even a little deceptive with my motives for being there. It was sometimes straight up awkward! And for all these reasons I spent the first two weeks really not enjoying going into the bars.

 

The good news is, I got over it and eventually realize that whether I was any good at the ministry, was beside the point. The fact of the matter is that God brought me to Phuket Thailand to love on these women for a month. To do anything less would be a straight up selfish. Time and again, our contacts would remind us that regardless of whether the women leave the bars while we are hhere, we are still planting seeds of hope that cannot necessarily be seen. This just re-affirms my belief that, it takes a lot longer than a month to be a “successful� missionary. I believe that for most Christians it takes a lifetime to see any sort of harvest.

 

So by the end of the month, I realized that if I didn’t get even one girl out of the bars, it was okay. If I brought joy into one girls night; whether through a smile, a loving word or a hug goodbye, my mission and better yet, Christ’s mission was accomplished. We realized as a group (there were four teams working together at SHE this month) that our presence on Bangla road was noticeable whether we said a word or not. We (and this should be true of any Christ follower) are simply covered in the Holy Spirit – at all times – we are bathed in Christ‘s love. We started noticing as we would walk around the Red Light District, people staring at us for no apparent reason. At first we thought it was the way out bo-ho outfits were pieced together, representing the last eight cultures we‘d been a part of. But I’m pretty sure there was just something inexplicably different about us besides our questionable stench, and slightly disheveled appearance. Something spiritually different; something lighter, more full of hope and purity when everything else around us was dark, lustful, and self-seeking.

 

Please check out the link to SHE ministries Thailand to learn more about Mark and Sharon and their ministry on Bangla road.  http://www.shethailand.org/