Bar Outreach

During our trip we had the opportunity to participate in what is called a bar outreach. Teams go out to the bars and try to engage the women in conversation and befriend them. This is actually a pretty powerful and effective way to build relationships. The teams head out early before the bars are full of customers so the women have time to talk.

All over the open outside bar areas next to the beach, the women pull out their mirrors and start putting on their make up to get ready for the night. I think this is actually a marketing scheme. The team I was with has been returning to this city for years, and they have made it a custom to collect gifts for the women all year and then they hand out the bag of goodies. Great ice breakers! The women absolutely love it. They opened their small gift bag which included lip stick, nail polish, hair clips, candy etc. The women we were with put on EVERYTHING in their bag. They were really very sweet about it.

They love to talk about their families. Many of them have several children and elderly parents they are providing for back in their home villages, far from the city they are now living in. If the conversation is flowing we tell them about career and training opportunities and arrange future meetings. The women we were with were very receptive, but we did not see them again. The teams that remain will continue to visit the ladies. There are so many bars and so many ladies to reach.

Here is a picture of the women with their gift bag. They loved getting their picture taken!

Pattaya, home to 20,000 prostitutes

I have wrestled with how to blog about our time in Pattaya. Home to 20,000 prostitutes. Where families raise their children with hopes to send them to the city to make the family’s fortune and hopefully remove them from the utter destitution that many of them are facing. All by means of prostitution. This is the background of the city we visited. And yet, hope springs.

How? I don’t know, but it does. We all have a sense of what is right and wrong. But, what will it take for human kind to admit together what that is. Sometimes, you find yourself in circumstances that politics, religion, philosophy etc. can’t explain or justify the utter depravity that some have slipped into. And then comes the hardest question of all. Have I played a part in this? Do I have any responsibility here? Have I not also prostituted myself out in one form or another?

And then there you have it. It comes down to getting honest with you and your God. Who am I? Why am I so convicted against this background? Can I really return to the Promised Land and forget what I saw here?

Sadly, I know that some will read this blog and be happy to know there is a place where prostitution is prolific. So they can easily participate. How do I know? Because I have followed where some of my blog posts are shared. It made me sick to my stomach. To the point I didn’t want to blog any more. But, I am not going to stay quiet for that reason.

I sat with men and women where not only money was traded for their services, but unwanted pregnancy, STDs, AIDS, bruises, strangle marks, tears, fears etc. And ironically, never enough money. Hoping to make just $10 a day to help support their children and family members back in faraway villages, many don’t even get that.

Grace Grace Grace. For the customer, for the prostitute, for the bosses, for the pimps, for the children, for me, for you, for Thailand, for America. Grace for all. This is where hope rises. Will it really make a difference for us to waste our time blaming someone or explaining how we got here? Once we start there, we just waste our time justifying. We need grace. I need grace. To move forward and start again. Try again.

I have so much respect for these beautiful strong women and men starting over. Stepping out and saying “no” to the darkness and reaching for the Light. How can it be, that the most joyful of all was a sex slave, sex changed, AIDS ridden victim? Because that was the old identity. New identity. Light identity. Free, neither male or female, Spirit filled, not of this world.

I have so much to learn from these Overcomers. To overcome. To receive the Grace waiting for me, and to offer grace to others. This is what moves me. Try it on. 

Grace: the free and unmerited favor of God