Walking the streets at night I feel like I a deer caught in the headlights. Every night we walk down more streets with more bars and more girls. Each bar has about 25 girls and there are about 9000 bars in Pattaya. Thats about 225,000 women who are forcesd into prostitution. This city sees about a million different people each day traveling to the city for sex. This is so hard to wrap my mind around… how can there be so many women caught in the sex industry here? And how can there be some many people that visit for the tourism aspect of sex? How can evil survive and multiply at such an alarming rate? I am overwhelmed with the magnitude of what is happening here: the slavery, the oppression, the darkness, the look of hopelessness on the faces of those caught in the darkness, the level of depravity...
I awaken in the mornings with tears in my eyes and fall asleep the same way. My world has been rattled and turned upside down with this new awareness of life outside of the bubble that I live in. I am blessed to be serving with and learning from an incredible team of dedicated and compassionate people… people that are motivated to change Pattaya and make a difference in the lives of the women here through the strength of Christ… people that have experience Pattaya before and understand the emotional rollercoaster that I am on.
Tonight is the last night of training people who we hope will become trainers at this “Building Center of Hope” for women who will come through this program in the future. The next couple of nights we will be teaching again to a new set up students. However we will be teaching alongside the future trainers of this program, empowering them to be the type of teacher they have the potential to be and providing feedback on the process. We continue to pray that the material we are teaching will be understood and implemented. The women who are partnering with us and helping grow this program from the ground up are incredible.... they have a passion and drive for their country that I can not relate to. These women who have an unfaltering faith and determination that change will happen are the reason that this program has seen the success it has. I am inspired!
Again tonight we are headed to the streets…. But tonight we are headed to the beach where there is a homeless camp of retired sex workers that have HIV/AIDS. I Thailand once you contract Aids you have about 6 months to live as there is no available health care. Most of the girls in the industry contract aids or another disease by the time they are 25.
Thank you all for your continued prayers and words of encouragement….
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