I am sorry for not writing until now. I have been in Thailand for three weeks now. I have no excuse. It is so hard for me to write and describe what I have seen and been apart of. I wish I could take you all with me one night as we minister on Bangla Road in Patong (the bar ministry we are apart of). It would make all what I have seen these past few weeks make much more sense. So please bear with me.
We are working with an organization who gets girls out of the bars and helps them see their real worth in God and that they have other options besides selling themselves on Bangla road. It is an incredible organization- they have hotel management classes, jewelry classes, English classes, and even teach girls how to bake- to provide them with a way to be independent but in a different way than in the bars.
Honestly, it is hard. The spiritual atmosphere in Patong is dark. Very dark. Each
night I go down there, it is always different- I never know what to expect (something I think satan likes to throw at me). One night it will basically be dead with hardly any girls dancing on poles with no tourists in the bars and two days later when I come back everything has changed. There are so many girls dancing on poles and being more seductive than I have seen yet with girls standing outside of bars grabbing at men as we pass. And then some nights we basically get totally ignored as we pass by or go into some bars.
But one thing I can tell is that LIGHT is breaking into the darkness in Patong. Of course people stare at us when we are down there- because we drink sprite and are not dressed to go clubbing. Lust is a major thing down there and I wish I could put men's eyes back where they belong. But sometimes we get looks that are not any of what I have described- it is something different. It is like they can see God through us. Feel His presence. I know that some of these men down there have seen and felt God just by us being down there. LIGHT is shining in the darkness and the more time we spend down there the more into the darkness we see. You see, it is not getting darker, but we are digging deeper into the darkness. Some of my girls have seen little girls (maybe around 7 or 8 years old) being basically sold to men in the bars for the night. The more LIGHT that shines in the darkness the more the LIGHT exposes the darkness.
Thank you for your prayers during these past few weeks. Please keep praying for us and for the girls we run into down there and for the tourists that are there. God is doing some amazing things in Patong and friendships are being developed with the girls in the bars. It is rough and dark, but God always wins!
