Bangla Road is such a tough place to walk down on. All up and down the streets you deal with such powerful forces from the enemy with intoxication, lust, sexual immorality, you name it, its there. Bangla Street is where the lost and broken come to specifically fill their voids. I heard a quote once that said,
“Every man that knocks on the door of a brothel is searching for God”.
It is so easy to build a hatred for the men going to places for prostitution but remember that they too are captives to lust and are in bondage also.
The second time to Bangla Road, I was ready. With three of our team members staying back at SHE to intercede for us, team A.R.K. (Autumn, Radha and Kendra) went out to show love to these girls at the bars. With one of the SHE staff with us, we walked Bangla road praying and asking the Lord to direct us to which bar He wanted us to go to. After two times of prayer walking down Bangla, God put it in my heart to go to Tiger Live.
Tiger Live bar is the biggest bar on Bangle Road; it’s about four stories. On the first floor there are several sections of bars where women dance on poles. They dance to try to get the men to pick them so that he will take them back to a hotel. The top three floors are for personal parties and Ping-Pong dancing (naked women dancing and one on ones). We are only allowed on the first floor.
As soon as I walked into the bar, many Thai women who were half clothed were grabbing me and pushing me towards their individual bars greeted me. My eyes focused on the next bar where there was a girl that looked like she was 21. I went up to her and asked her what her name was: “Khun chu arai ka?” Her name was Goy.
I sat down for 30 minutes talking to just this one girl! She has three jobs and she’s working in bars to go back to school. I found a similarity and asked her if she would like to go out to the movies next Wednesday so that we could hang out. She was very happy that I was talking to her, but wondered why, out of all bar girls, did I come up to her.
I told her that God sent me to her. She just smiled and thanked me for talking to her. When my thirty minutes was up and it was time for me to leave, I promised her that I would be back on Thursday and we would talk again.
I left Bangla Road that night feeling undefeated; the Lord has won the battle! Even though it was only one girl, I know that I planted a seed, and the best part was seeing HOPE in her eyes. I saw freedom in her, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
