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Light in the Darkness

 “Father, break my heart for what breaks yours.” 

     This is a prayer I have prayed many times over, but had never tangibly felt the Lord bring to fruition until our first night on Bangla Road in Phuket, Thailand.

     I had heard statements such as; “This is a spiritually dark place”, “You will experience/see some very hard things”, “The enemy has many footholds here”, etc., but no words can truly describe the darkness that is Bangla Road, the Red Light District here in Thailand. It is a darkness that can’t be expressed through words. A darkness that you not only see, but you feel as soon as you step foot on the road. Bangla is a 0.2 mile stretch in Patong, Phuket, lined with close to 200 bars, where anything goes. During the day it is home to many tourists engaging in some day drinking before they hit the beach, but at night this road truly comes to “life”. I use the term life lightly because the reality is, at night the street becomes filled with bright lights and loud music that is alluring and sets the tone for the party atmosphere, You cant take 5 steps without someone waving a sign in your face advertising for the nearest Ping Pong Show (a live sex show where tourists pay to sit and watch a woman get physically taken advantage of, and by doing so partake in degrading her and violating her human rights, as if it is a circus act), and tourists fill the streets shoulder to shoulder. This nightlife is a scene that so many believe is fulfilling, but in reality is lacking life.

     When you come to Phuket you learn very quickly that in this culture, it is a norm that every woman has a price tag. Whether you go to get a massage, get a haircut, or enter a bar, you can offer to buy a woman for sex and more often than not she will agree to it. It is easy money, and most of these women come from poverty stricken, rural areas of Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and have moved here seeking a way to bring in “easy” money to send to their children and family back home. In the bars the “bar moms”, who are usually older Thai women who run each bar, teach their employees how to dress, act, and speak in order to attract more men, and cause these men to desire to purchase them. Then as soon as a man shows interest, the bar mom sets a price for each woman determined by what she believes she is worth. Women, who are PRICELESS, are given a price, and in turn treated as a sexual object, a thing, no longer are they viewed as a person, but something to be bought.

     There are a handful of Russian bars along this road that display women dressed in beautiful gowns on the street advertising for their Russian strip shows, and if you look up you will see big glass boxes elevated above the street with a pole in the middle that contains woman after woman taking turns dancing on the pole for all the tourists to ogle at. As soon as she steps into this box she is turned into a zoo exhibit. For many different reasons, we believe these women are not here working on Bangla by choice, but rather as a result of the sex trade that is very active here in Thailand. These women stick out like a sore thumb, white skin, blue eyes, dressed to the nines in gowns, BEAUTIFUL, but something isn’t right. You look into their eyes and they are empty, due to the drugs forced into their systems in order to make them easily obey their pimps. I can only imagine that for them these drugs becomes a way to detach, and numb the feeling and emotions that come with being violently raped and taken advantage of, by multiple men, on a nightly basis. These women are taken away from home and forced into a life of being objectified by their pimp, given a price tag, and sold, to whatever man is willing to pay, with no voice in the matter.

     Each one of these women, whether choosing prostitution as a way to make money due to coming from a life of poverty, or being sold into this life by their pimp, as a sex slave, are all lacking the same things. They are voiceless, hopeless, without love, and empty.

     But the beautiful part of this city is that there is also LIGHT here. The same God that is present in my everyday life is also the God of this city, even in the midst of all the darkness. My team and I are here because He has sent us to be vessels to bring this light to His daughters and sons who are lost. We are able to be a voice for the voiceless. We have the hope, and love of the Father we are able to pour into these women and men, which in turn brings so much JOY! We have made friends on Bangla road that we visit daily, and sit and talk about whatever is on their mind, whatever they are passionate about because people here don’t do that. In building relationships with these women we pray God restores some of their value that has been taken from them. We desire to make each one of these women feel KNOWN, whether that is just by a smile from across the street, sitting down drinking ginger-ale while talking about cats for thirty minutes, or giving a rose, full of life and beauty, to a woman who had been forced into a life of slavery, and has had both of those things attacked. Each task, to us seems so small, so simple, yet to these women means everything. For someone to take time to show these girls they are known, beautiful, and loved with no strings attached is not a common theme here. The smiles we see give me a glimpse of life being restored in these women. And it is amazing. Our hope is that eventually our friends question why we do what we do, which opens the door to share the gospel, and encourage an alternate lifestyle, but until then we love, we make friends, and we pray.

     God is moving y’all. Whether or not we see any fruit, I have so much peace in knowing that many seeds have been planted and are now in God’s hands, and I trust in His promise that the harvesting and growth will come in HIS time, which is perfect.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.”

1 Corinthians 3:6-8

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