We arrived in Phuket after a 12 hour ride from Bangkok. Our host picked us up and took us to our housing – the SHE (Self Help and Empowerment) house. Currently there are 3 or 4 teams here with us which means it's a full house! (For more information about SHE you can click on this link http://www.shethailand.org/ )Lately, we have been helping out with SHE by serving in small ways such as helping with cooking, cleaning, construction and day care.
Next week we are going to go out to the bars in Bangla road to form relationships with the women working at the bars there. As for now, we are taking this time to be prayerful, spend time with the Lord and prepare for spiritual battle. Some of us have been battling with dreams that are trying to instill fear. We know that this is not from God and this is only the start considering that we haven't even gone out yet. We have prayer walked down Bangla road for the first time this week and some of us felt heavy in the spiritual sense. As I have talked with teams who have already gone out, they say it becomes more intense at night. This was not said to scare us, but to prepare us and make us aware. As some of the other teams have gone out, the rest of us have interceded with prayer and worship before and during the time that team is out at the bars.
Taking time to talk with others who have already been out there, it has been good to know that forming relationships with 
the women there is not going to be as hard as we think it is. Jeremy, one of the participants from the world race has gone out to the bars with his wife to talk with these girls. He has told me that it has been easy to form relationships because of the games provided at the bars which include connect four, jenga, and other games. Those teams who have gone out have said that the girls are very friendly and definitely notice a difference when someone is not there for their bodies, but to actually know them. Some of these girls come from poor places and have been promised jobs at hotels, but because most of them have not had any job training or schooling, they are rejected from the job and are then offered jobs at bars to be prostitutes instead. With no other way out and with no money, they take the job.
We are here to offer hope, instill value in them, give them a tangible way out and most importantly, to tell them of a God who brings freedom. Please keep all 24 of us in prayer as we prepare to go to the bars this coming week; specifically that we will be able to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and open and willing to what God wants us to do.
Greater is He that is in me than he who is in the world" – 1 John 4:4
