Imagine this:
You see a tall older man in an orange button-up shirt with a young Thai girl entwined in his figures leaving the red light district.
You see a Thai woman with her arms ending a couple inches below her elbows, a partial foot, and a leg ending at the knee trying to sell gum to those walking down the road. Imagine the man watching her making sure she does her job and doesn’t leave ‘til her items are gone.
You see bar girls dancing on poles on the bar with numerous lustful men watching.
You see an empty bar fill with grey haired men after you sit down to talk with the girls working there.
You have men and women block your way and shove ping-pong show posters in your face and tell you “Watch the ping-pong show.” (FYI: a ping-pong show is a strip show)
You have an old bent over, wrinkled, grey/white haired woman try to sell you something, but you can’t see the itmes because you are instantly in love with her and drawn to her weary, pain filled eyes. You have to tell her “No.” a million times because you made eye contact with her, and she thinks you’re interested.
You see a skimpy dressed Thai woman waiting on the road, and you desperately want to make eye contact with her, but she refuses to look at you because she thinks you’re looking at her body.
You see Russian girls dancing on a pole in a glass box above the road, they make intentional eye contact with you every time she comes around the pole and you see no life or hope in her eyes.
As you see all this happening, multiple emotions bubble up: sadness, love, confusion, anger, frustration, overwhelmed. Then to top it all off a man with a ping-pong poster comes up to you and says: “Come watch the meat show.”
Boom, you break, all you want to do is growl and thrash your arms around, but know you can’t because you don’t want to and it’s culturally rude. How do you deal with that? What do you do when your mixed emotions are all bubbled up and all you can express is anger?
You tell your teammates and pray. We finished praying, and our leader, Kristen, said we needed to leave. I decided I couldn’t trust my eyes to guard my heart and emotions, so I asked Gloriel to guide me out of the road as I covered my eyes.
It’s been 4 days since that night. As I’ve prayed and processed I’ve come to realize that God began to give me His heart and eyes for the people on the road and I at the time didn’t realize it. Last night was my first night out since Tuesday, and I was able to control my emotions so they didn’t get in the way of ministry. Praise the Lord.
