No, really... what would Jesus do?

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

My parents had originally planned to make a short side trip to Thailand after visiting a nearby Asian country.  But, when they had visa difficulties, they began to wonder if they should come to this part of the world at all.  The LORD eventually revealed that He didn't intend for Thailand to be the side trip but to be the main focus of their journey.  They will arrive here in just a few weeks and have made plans to spend time with me and to do lots of praying over this nation.  I'm so excited for them join me, both in spending time together and in ministry!

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Pray that I would be able to build some new friendships in a red-light district not far from my new home.

2.  Pray for my language evaluation this month.  Ask that there would be significant improvement in both my speaking and my understanding.

3.  Begin to pray for the city of Pattaya, a city about two hours southeast of Bangkok which is a world-renowned haven for prostitution.  Pray that God would begin to shine His light into that darkness and that many would turn to Him.

4.  Continue to pray for Fon.  She really wants to enter a new line of work, but the attraction of the money in her current job is enormous.  Pray that the Lord would burden her with so much conviction that the money is not worth it and that she will seek not only a new job but a new life and the One Who gives it.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

When I first began to sense the Spirit's calling into ministry to those in the sex trade, I did quite a bit of research.  Of course, the first thing I found was lots of information on human trafficking, and my heart went out to teenagers who find themselves enslaved as sex workers against their will.  It still does.  I can't imagine what it must be like to be 13, terrified, and forced to sell your body to multiple clients every night.  Those who perpetuate this activity - the traffickers AND the clients - should receive significant prison time, and those who even look at pornography should know that they are part of the problem because that is where the demand for these girls' "services" is created.

That being said, I began to notice a change in my own attitude as I learned more.  I found that I didn't care just about those who were brought into this lifestyle against their will but that I increasingly wanted to help those who had made the choice to enter prostitution.  And that surprised me because I had grown up thinking that those who would make such a choice had really made their own bed and should just lie in it.  I'd always just figured that , somehow, those who were trafficked were worthy of saving but those who had voluntarily entered the sex trade weren't.  I suspect many of you might have felt (or still feel) the same.  It's pretty easy to cast judgment upon those with sins different than our own, isn't it?

Now I want you to see some factors that might change your thinking, just as mine has.  I want to tell you the story of a real sex worker, a friend of mine.  I'll call her C.

C is from the northern region of Thailand.  She was abandoned by her biological mother when she was just a few months old and doesn't know anything about her father.  She was adopted by a childless couple who took her in and sent her to live with her grandmother.  It is common practice among poor Thai families for the grandparents to care for the children while both parents work to make enough money to survive.

C went to school, but the fees were a hardship on the family.  Public education is theoretically provided by the government of Thailand, but there is a lot of corruption, resulting in hidden fees that make it particularly difficult for poor families to educate their children.  To help support the family, C's grandmother sent her daily with many items to sell to the other children, the teachers, and those she met on her way to and from school.  She often spent so much time selling that she didn't get to hear the lessons.

By the sixth grade, C's family could no longer afford to continue sending her to school, so she had to drop out.  At age 13, she made her way to Bangkok (about 12 hours away) to find work.  In Thai culture, it is the oldest daughter's responsibility to support the rest of the family, so she needed to take whatever work she could find.  In this case, she was the only daughter, so being able to provide for the family was especially important.

She took a job in a clothing factory, a sweatshop, where she worked 12 hours a day from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. Because Thailand does not permit employment for those under 14, she had to hide anytime a government worker came to the factory.

Eventually, needing to make more money, C took a second job in a karaoke bar from 7:00 pm until 4:00 the next morning.  She would use the few hours when she wasn't working to squeeze in some sleep.  She worked like this for only a few months before finding a job as a maid.  This was an especially good deal for her because it not only paid a small salary, but her meals and lodging were provided by her employer.

Life continued similar to this until C was 17 and began dating a young Thai man.  He lived at home with his parents, and she had her own rented room nearby.  When things got serious, he moved into the room with C.  Everything seemed great until she became pregnant.

C was a few months along in the pregnancy and excited about the baby.  She called her parents to tell them and was shocked to find that they were angry with her and demanded that she abort the baby.  When she tried to argue that she wanted to keep the baby, her dad told her that she needed to get rid of it, or he would "come there and stomp it out."  She went through with the abortion.

But she was emotionally devastated.  She went to the Buddhist temple and spent several days meditating and trying to earn merit because she felt so guilty, but nothing seemed to help.  Eventually, she tried to jump off a bridge to kill herself, but she was saved by several passersby.

She returned to the room she shared with her boyfriend and, within a few months, she was pregnant again.  But the new pregnancy couldn't erase the overwhelming guilt, so she tried to kill herself with pills.  Thankfully, she was once again unsuccessful, and the baby was also unharmed.  She began to get excited about the new baby and decided that she wouldn't tell her parents until it was too late to have another abortion.

In the meantime, C's boyfriend moved another woman into the room that he shared with C.  I'm sure it was an awkward situation to share a room with your boyfriend and his new girlfriend while you are pregnant with his child, especially when you're the one paying for the room!  When the baby, a girl, was born, C promptly kicked out her boyfriend and the other woman and swore that she would never be with another Thai man.  She had seen how Western men treated women - opening doors for them, financially responsible, not expecting the woman to wait on them hand and foot - and she decided that she wanted a Western man or no man at all.

Being a single mom and needing to make more money to support her new baby, C began to work in a massage parlor.  She quickly learned just how much money you can make, not from the massages themselves but from the "extra" services that could be offered.  Her tips for those services could easily earn her upwards of $300 a day, an unheard-of amount for a girl with no education.

After a few years, C moved to another massage parlor, where she met an Australian man who said he was separated from his wife.  They began a relationship, and she became pregnant again.  He moved her to Australia, and she went, leaving her young daughter with her parents in northern Thailand.  When she arrived in Australia, she found that her boyfriend was actually not separated from his wife, but he did provide for her during that time.  Her second daughter was born in Australia.

When the relationship with the Australian went south, C and her baby daughter moved back to Thailand, and she brought her older daughter back to Bangkok so that they could live together as a family.  They have been here ever since.  

Now in her 30s, C continues to work in massage parlors and now has enough money to own a house and to send both daughters to school.  She frequently makes appointments outside the massage parlor to have sex with clients.  Some of those clients get violent, and she has walked away from their interactions with bruises and pain.  She lives with the constant threat of sexually-transmitted diseases, especially HIV.  She once asked me if I would still be her friend if she got AIDS and heaved a sigh of relief when I said yes with no hesitation.  Physical abuse, disease, abandonment by others.  Such are the dangers of the life she leads.

C is constantly looking for the "right" man and, in many ways, she has a fairy-tale fantasy that her life will be a real version of "Pretty Woman."  Mr. Right will eventually walk into her shop, sweep her off her feet, and take her away into a perfect life.  She gets her hopes up with each new client, only to have them dashed when he proves to be yet another person telling her lies.  Her life is built on a facade and, as an outsider, these are fascinating but terribly sad interactions for me to watch.  He lies to her, she lies to him, they each try to get what they want from each other, and both leave feeling unsatisfied with it all.  This Hollywood fairy tale, after all, is just make-believe.

And C can't get over the guilt.  She still thinks about the abortion, even more than a decade later.  Buddhism says it is a sin to kill, and she knows that she has sinned in killing her baby.  Buddhism also prohibits adultery, and she knows that most of her clients are married men.  She knows that she is adding sin upon sin daily, and she worries that she will never get out from under the load of bad things that she has done, that she'll never be able to do enough good to make up for all the bad.  Yet she loves the money.  She loves what it can buy.  She wants a car and nice clothes, and she wants to send her kids to the university so that they don't have to live the life that she's lived.  Her oldest wants to be a doctor, her youngest an artist.  So what choice does she have?

She has heard the Gospel but doesn't believe... yet.  Buddhism has a hold on her.  She has been taught its tenets from birth, and there is a saying in Thailand:  "To be Thai is to be Buddhist."  How does one overcome that kind of deeply ingrained cultural belief?  Only the Spirit can draw her, and only she can decide whether following Him is worth it.  But, oh, the freedom from guilt she could have if she only knew Jesus enough to trust Him with her life.  If only she knew the extravagant, prodigal love that would exchange a perfect Son for a wretched worm of a sinner like me or like you or like her.  If only she understood that He alone can transform her wasted, guilt-ridden life into one overflowing with purpose and meaning and... well, LIFE.

I tell you that story to let you see a real person who has "voluntarily" chosen to enter the life of prostitution (or a variant thereof).  But, in her situation and apart from Christ, I'm not so sure that I wouldn't have made the same choices she has.  Who am I to judge what she has done?  She doesn't know Jesus.  How could she do anything else but live a life of sin?

I hope this will help you to see these women differently.  Maybe God will grant you a heart of compassion for them.  Maybe you will want to know their stories.  Maybe you will want to serve them in some small (or big) way.  Maybe you will want to show them Who Jesus is through your actions and, once you have done that, through your words.

C once told me that she loves her parents because they have always been there for her.  Then she added, "Same as you."  Jesus is ever faithful, and I am so blessed to get to show her a little of His faithfulness in the way I treat her.

I know that Jesus loves women like C.  He loves call girls and exotic dancers and streetwalkers and women who offer extra services in massage parlors.  In the Bible, He kept one from being stoned and asked another for water at Samaritan well.  Then He told one of them to "go and sin no more" and the other to ask Him for living water so that He could give it to her.

I hope that, someday soon, C will be filled with the living water so that she will go and sin no more.