bar hopping in bangkok...

He was probably in his mid-60's. It was obvious that he had money...he flaunted it - literally. He kept tucking cash down the bar girl's shirt. That was his way of overcoming the language barrier to tell her that he was ready for another drink and was expecting a cold one in front of him immediately. When he wasn't dropping bills down her shirt, he would demand her to give him a back massage while he sat on a bar stool looking out onto all of the other girls working at the bar - never allowing eye contact to be made with them, but only gazing at them with his stone cold, empty, lusting eyes. 

On the other side of the bar was a group of rowdy drunk men - each with a Thai girl sitting on his lap, rubbing his shoulders or kissing his neck. Every single man at that table was wearing a wedding ring. 

I was sitting at a table in the middle of this large, outdoor bar area sipping on a Diet Coke as a couple of us shared the Gospel with a prostitute that was working at one of the bars. There was darkness all around me - and I could feel it closing in on me. 

There were ten or twelve different bars that made up this large courtyard. And this was only level one. This large area is a 3 story rectangle of bars and nightclubs. It could easily be compared to a shopping mall - both in the way that it is set up and the way that customers go there looking to buy. Only there are no shopping bags or carts or receipts. Customers go there to buy a different kind of souvenier. One that they don't care to keep. They're looking to buy Thai women - maybe they just want company while they sit at the bar...or they can pay to take the women away from the bar for an hour or two. Some customers pay to take the women for an entire evening. 

This is the downtown Bangkok area called "Nana Plaza," which is well known for prostitution. I brought the 5 girls on our Cambodia/Thailand outreach team to this area for 7 nights that opened my eyes to some of the most inhumane objectification of people that I have ever seen. 

It began with a last minute answer to prayer. The girls had wanted to do prostitution ministry since our team was formed nearly five months earlier. We'd been praying about it for just as long - looking for a ministry opportunity in Thailand. I contacted countless organizations and kept getting closed doors. We had a flight to Bangkok from our ministry location in southern Thailand for us girls that was a week earlier than the boys' flight. On the day of our flight, I was literally preparing to take 5 girls to Bangkok with no ministry for 7 days. When our car came to take us to the airport, I decided to check my email one last time. Through my screams, the team could tell that the news was good, though I don't know why we were so surprised - God pulled through, of course. We would be working with The Well beginning the following morning...

The Well, which was started by a couple named the Larson's that came to Bangkok from the Chicago suburbs, works to change the lives of Thai bar girls and sex workers through rescuing them from their lonely lives working in bars, gogo bars, brothels and massage parlors. Some of them are sold by their families as slaves, some are sent to work in the tourist sex trade to earn money for their families or children and some are just attracted to the quick money that can be made. If the bar girls or sex workers agree to leave their job and want to seek a new life with The Well, they are offered housing, counseling, an education (with a stipend to attend classes), Bible studies, a job (making jewelry) and other services to them and their family members. The Well got their name from John 4 - a chapter that became one we read aloud nightly throughout the amazing, exhausting, intense week we spent with them.

Our days were long - beginning around 7am and not ending until we got home from the bars between midnight and 2am. We would begin by teaching English, Bible and life skills, such as budgeting, to the women (and men) at The Well in the morning. In the afternoons, we would help to organize the business side of things with their jewelry company. This is their main form of income, and they were in desperate need of some organization with all of their stock. From there, we would head downtown to Nana to eat dinner before heading to the bars around 7pm. We would stay at the bars every night, just talking to the girls...being there to get to know them and to spend time with them and love them...just for who they are. Many of them have worked in this industry for years and have never met someone that has come in just to TALK to them and get to know them. We just wanted to show them some genuine love and they welcomed it with open arms. 

The first night was hard for us. When I saw all of the men in these bars - men that looked like people I knew and grew up with...they looked like my neighbors, my teachers, my bosses...they were white Westerners ranging in their early twenties to around their seventies. The first night I was sitting on a bar stool trying to have a conversation with one of the bar girls, and my knuckles were literally turning white because I was gripping the bottom of the bar stool so hard...holding on to it as tightly as I 

could to keep myself from getting up and marching right up to the men there and screaming at them before possibly decking them in the face. Yes. It was THAT bad. 

That night, when the girls and I got back to our room, it was late and we were beyond exhausted, but I knew we had just spent several hours in the middle of the devil's playground. After entering the darkness that was Nana Plaza, we had to have a time of prayer and worship before going to bed. So the six of us got in a circle, put some music on and spent hours in prayer. There were many tears from the shocking and overwhelming things we were exposed to - things we never thought we'd see. Things we wished we didn't see. Things that millions of people turn a blind eye to. After a while, we found that we were each struggling with the same thing: judging the men for their presence and behavior in the bars. So we began praying for the men we saw there...not knowing their name, of course, but lifting up in prayer each face we could remember seeing. It was not easy, but it was so freeing once we finally did it. We needed to be reminded that God sees all of our sins on the same level. It is sin. It is wrong. And whether you're paying for a prostitute to come to your hotel room for an hour or you tell a little white lie or you judge someone for doing either - it is sin. 

God knew I needed to not only acknowledge that my judgement of these men was wrong, but He went on to challenge me by specifically placing me in the path of several men during our last night at the bars in Bangkok. It was something I continued to struggle with throughout the week - feeling so much anger towards every white man I saw with a Thai woman. Just on our walk from the train to Nana Plaza, you pass countless older men walking hand in hand with a young Thai girl, so, just on my walk to the bars I had a constant cycle of anger and repentance...over and over and over. I did see that many of the American men that serve at The Well are married to Thai woman, which boldly reminded me that not ALL white men with Thai women have hired them. 

But, on our last night I was able to have actual conversations with the men that I had spent so much time trying not to judge. It is something that I am really grateful for. Through these conversations, I really got a heart for the men that I had spent the entire week trying not to hate. 

It was the last night of our two month long outreach, and we were determined to make a lasting impact on the bar girls in Nana. We spent the afternoon with Tom, a young girl we had met that works at the bars. We were able to take her out for coffee, which was an amazing time of fellowship OUTSIDE of the bar area. She had 

to work that evening, so we went with her and sat at the bar to talk with her and Mai, another bar girl we had grown close with during the week. Three of us were sitting at the bar with Tom and Mai, playing games and laughing when I noticed a man approaching Susanna, the youngest girl on my team. I was on high alert this week - not only since we were without any guys in our group as we were traveling around downtown Bangkok, but also because the behavior of the drunk men in the bars was always unpredictable. Susanna was eager to step out of the conversation, so I took her seat next to the man and his full beer. He immediately asked what we were doing here - a valid question (Nana doesn't get many groups of 6 blondes drinking Diet Cokes on a nightly basis). I told him that we were Christians - simply there to hang out with and get to know the girls working at the bars. 

You can imagine my surprise when he responded instantly, telling me that he, too, is a Christian. 

He's from England, in his mid-40's and visits Bangkok occasionally with a group of friends just "for fun." He told me he wasn't at these bars to hire any girls - just to drink with his buddies. I know he knew that it was wrong for him to be there because he didn't even give me the chance to tell him that. For the next 15 or 20 minutes he spoke so continually that I couldn't even get one word in. He told me about his church, he quoted the Bible more specifically than anyone I had ever heard before, and ended up, somehow, preaching to me. For the first few minutes, I tried to respond...tried to say something. But, he would just talk over me, unwilling to hear anything I had to say. So, I shut up. At one point, one of his drunken friends walked over, urging him to come back to them with language so colorful it would make anybody cringe. My beer-drinking preacher waved him away, promising to return to their table full of Thai women soon. And so he continued. He continued preaching, continued sharing scriptures and Bible stories with me, continued talking over me. Until, finally, he was finished. His beer was still sitting in front of him as his fingers nervously tapped on the bar. He then stood up, preparing to go back to his friends and their Thai "companions" for the evening. Before he left, he had one more thing to say...

"Do me a favor," he said. "Don't judge the men you see here. You know that sin is all the same in God's eyes. Your judgements are sins, too." 

It was like God Himself was using this man to speak to me the words that I kept needing to hear all week. God was using this man that, like the hundreds that surrounded me in that moment, I had wanted to physically hurt because of their actions. And I knew that God wanted to use me in this man's life, as well. So, in a moment of unexplained boldness, I responded. 

"I know that. Thank you for reminding me," I told him. "Now can you do me a favor?" 

I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking. 

"GO HOME." I said confidently. 

For the very first time in the entire 30 minutes we had been talking, he looked me right in the eyes. 

"Excuse me?" He said. 

My confidence, which was clearly coming from up above, did not waver. 

"Go home," I repeated. "You don't need to be here. You say that you're a Christian. You clearly know the Bible inside and out. But none of that matters if you don't LIVE IT. You could recite to me every verse in the Bible, but if you can't live what it says, then it doesn't really matter what you know. Even if you're not here to take a girl home with you, your presence isn't right. You're feeding into this darkness and you're lusting over these women  - so even if you don't so much as touch one of them tonight, your eyes are on them and you have no problem with your friends' touching them. Your presence is enough."

I'm pretty sure I didn't breathe once during the 20 seconds that he just stared at me as I waited for his response. 

And then...he spoke. 

"I thank God that I met you tonight," he said softly. "I needed to hear that. I'm going to go back to my hotel room and I'm going to pray for you and your group tonight. God bless you, Mallory." 

And with that, he set down his beer and walked, in the opposite direction of his friends, out of the bar and away from Nana Plaza. I got up off my barstool and followed him with my eyes until he was so far away that I couldn't see him anymore. And then...I jumped up and down in the middle of the bar and thanked God for the conviction that was brought upon this man and his obedience in leaving the bar. There was one less man in Nana that night. I can't tell you how much that conversation changed me. 

Shortly after that, another man sat down next to me. In his early fifties from New York, he was in Bangkok on business. He, too, told me he is a Christian. His sons are both spending the summer volunteering with various missions organizations. He told me he was at the bar because he simply wanted to get out of his hotel room and have a beer. He probably could have gone down to the hotel bar, but, regardless, I believed him. I had seen him denying the Thai bar girls' offers to sit with him earlier and so I decided to just be a friend to him that night. I sat and talked with him for over an hour as he told me about his wife and kids, his job and his travels. I, in turn, shared with him about my experiences in Australia, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. We talked about politics and the economy and things that I normally wouldn't be able to carry much of a conversation about, but I believe God wanted me there to just be a genuine friend to him, so I was able to have this ridiculously intellectual conversation about various world issues. It was incredible! 

It was a very powerful night of meeting some of the men that visit Nana Plaza. It was so interesting to meet men that declare they are Christians but just got lost in the influence and loneliness of the darkness. 

I have many stories to share from our final days in Thailand but I think this is long enough for now! Thanks for reading all of this and I will continue to update it with the stories of some of the incredible women we met and relationships we built in Bangkok. Thank you so much for your prayers! 

Love,

Mallory