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Beach day

I got sunburnt yesterday. Hanging out on the beach for 4 hours will do that to you. As crazy, and lovely, as it is, that is what we did for ministry. My Bangla team (Amber, Saraw, and Sabrina) and I met up with Noi and her roommate Roon, who we hadn't met before, and goofed off on the beach for most of the afternoon.
The girls bought us food and we stuffed ourselves on pappaya salad (song tom), fresh fruit and veggies, pop, noodles, sticky rice, chips, and chocolate. Amazing. We tought them Uno, took pictures, swam, talked, ate more, swam more, learned some Thai and some Esan language, and laughed. But there will be two things from yesterday that I will remember most of all.
The first was an incedent that made me really angry. Sabrina had brought Mrriah's guitar to the beach, so she was playing and we were singing. This old German guy walks by, pretends to dance a bit, we smile, he leaves, whatever. A bit later we had put the guitar away, and the German guy comes back with a friend and they said that they wanted Sabrina to play a song. Basically, eventually she does and the rest of us are sort of dancing a bit. Then one of the German guys comes and is like hugging Noi and picks her up. Me and the team are just kind of like, uhhhhh what do we do to stop this guy. Sabrina stops playing and Amber goes over and is like, "this is our friend" and sort of teasingly says she'll fight him. Anyway, they leave, thank goodness, and we are say we're sorry to Noi that that happened, and she says it's ok. Sabrina says, no, it's not ok. So later all of us are sitting next to eachother on the chair thingys we have, looking at pictures or something, and the one guy comes back and is offering Roon money. She says she's with her friends and he just keeps offering a little bit more. He finally left. Infuriating jerk. I'm very protective of my friends and family, and that this German guy would just assume that any Thai woman he sees can be bought, and that he treated my friend like something to be bought, makes it practically impossible for me to love these men that come here buy my friends.
The other thing that I will remember was a conversation. We were out in the water, and Roon and I were talking. She's a 29-year-old that is absolutly hilarious and looks about 22. She dances at a closed bar, which we aren't allowed to go into, so it's awesome that Noi brought her, or we never would have been able to get to know her. We just met her that day, but her English is pretty good and she's fun and open and easy to be around. Anyway, so we were talking, and I can't remember the exact words, but basically she didn't want me to think that she was a bad person. She was saying that she only goes with men because she needs the money and not just for fun. That her family needs her support. That she is not her job.
I hardly knew what to say. I tried to make sure that she knows that we don't think badly of her, that we understand. I also tried to talk about SHE and that she could have a new job, although I don't know how well that translated. Please pray for Roon. Pray for Noi. Pray that God would be glorified through their lives, and that they would come out of the bars and no longer have to deal with men that are just asking for a literal gut check. And pray that God would give me His eyes for such men.

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