Well, the other night (last Thursday) just wasn’t what I would call “good.”
I’ll just say it straight up without my usual metaphors or analogies. It was awful.
My group went out for ministry. We walked all the way down Bangla just looking around and trying to get a feel for the night. Some nights here are more crazy than others. Some nights, there are a lot of middle-aged men; other nights there are a lot of teenagers and a lot of families. That night, it was all of the above.
There isn’t really any way to explain the evening in words, which is definitely the most frustrating part about these blogs. I don’t know if I can quite get across the picture that I’m trying to portray, so I’m really going to trust my Junior year AP English education for this one.
At each bar on Bangla, there is at least one bar manager. Since SHE has been around for about 6 years and constantly sending girls out on the road, we’re pretty well known by our modesty and lack of alcohol in our drink orders. Since SHE’s goal is to invite girls off of the streets, bar managers often lose favor with us. They obviously don’t want their source of income to leave, so every night, we are given the task of gauging whether or not we have favor in the various bars we venture past. If the girls invite us to sit, we usually sit, because it may not happen again on that side street. That evening, we just didn’t have favor anywhere we went. We only ended up going to two bars instead of the usual three or four. Instead, we just walked up and down the streets praying.
We stopped at the glass boxes that hang above the street with European girls dancing inside of them. Although most tourists don’t acknowledge it, these young women are likely to have been forced into prostitution. That’s especially hard for our team, because we have to rely fully on prayer to help these girls. For safety reasons, we can’t go into those places. So we just stand under the boxes and smile until they make eye contact with us. Our hope is that these girls see something unique in our smiles and that it helps their night even just a small bit.
We then continued on throughout the street. We watched a street performer and thanked God that this man was a distraction from the lust going on everywhere else whether he realized that or not.
After walking back down the street for a second time, I couldn’t help but notice the young boys with their families on Bangla. I watched as two twelve year old boys pointed out different prostitutes and Ladyboys to one another. I had to clench my fists as I walked past a dad pushing his daughter in a stroller and posing with Ladyboys for photos while his baby began to bawl and scream. I officially couldn’t hold it in anymore when I saw a bar girl dancing on the bar with a two year old, which I’m assuming was her daughter.
I asked the girls in my group if we could go to the restroom really fast so I could cry, but the restrooms were closed.
So… there I ended my night on Bangla soaking a table with my tears.
I couldn’t think of anything but the Jon Foreman lyrics: “She’s somebody’s baby girl.”
We got back to the house. When we get back, we’re expected to debrief. This consists of telling everyone on our team how ministry went for our group. Two out of the three groups broke down in tears (ours being one of them). There was so much defeat reigning over that room…
Everyone grabbed the hand of another and right there in the upper room all tangled in a knot, we began to pray over one another. Autumn, the wonderfully quirky young woman who has been here at SHE for over a year told us that everything we prayed had been prayed by groups before us, and she explained how incredible it was to see all of these prayers coming together in one group. We then decided to have a worship session, and I heard something really cool from the Lord:
He basically told me that the night went as follows:
We felt defeated.
We claimed victory over it by committing it to the Lord.
And now we needed to have joy over it.
He said these words to me “Just you wait!” He just said, “Oh honey, if you only knew the plans I have for these children being exposed to Bangla. If you only knew the plans I have to redeem these men who buy girls on a nightly basis. If you only knew what I have for my daughters! Just you wait! You are only seeing so much of the canvas, but just you wait, because I have so much more to reveal to you!” This I shared with the group, and once again, Autumn basically did a flip off the wall and told us that this had been prophesied over the group several times since she had been there.
I just thought that was really great. God’s doing some awesome things. Even if the silver lining is thinner than paper, He still helps us see it! He’s so good, and He’s faithful to the end.
This week of ministry has been a complete 180 degree shift. Last night when we went out, bar managers were welcoming us, begging us even to come to their bars. I even got to form a relationship with the street performer (a cowboy magician believe it or not) that I had been praying over for the last few weeks. He knows past teams and talked to me about Jesus and he asked for me and Jesus to come back and visit him during the week. How cool is that?
God has His hand on Bangla Road. He intended that street to be something incredible, and it will be someday. I’m just so glad I get to stand beside Him and help push that process along.
