In the last three weeks I have seen darkness like never before. Bangla Road, as I described in an earlier blog, is as twisted and broken as twisted and broken gets. However, there is also beautiful potential for this place! I took a map of Patong the other day and crossed out Bangla Road, replacing it with, "Redemption Road." That's the story of the ministry here, and our little chapter has been evidence that with prayer and boldness, God's love really shines in dark places.

 

I remember one of the first church services The Gathering Place held in the Lackner Woods school gym for Easter. I was about eleven years old, but was entrusted with making a powerpoint for the sermon featuring a couple dozen definitions of redeem. I remember thinking that it was a tad repetitive, but I am learning now the power behind that presentation. Redemption isn't a one time thing. It doesn't happen in one way. It can't be confined to one definition because it is the essence of our Savoir. Let me share with you a couple of stories of redemption in Phuket over the course of time that my team has been here. 

 

While praying, Julie was told to walk towards the Star Bar during one of our nightly trips to the bars on Bangla Road. On her team's way they felt like they should stop at a bar on the way to Star Bar instead. When Buj first pulled Hannah, Angela and Julie into the bar she worked at, she mentioned that she knew that they came with information about an english class. The comment got pushed aside as a friendship was built. A week later, after a couple more visits, the four were out to lunch together and Hannah remembered that peculiar comment from a week before. She asked Buj about it and Buj responded excitedly, explaining that a week earlier a drunk man had mentioned that he was an english teacher. The man told Buj that he was leaving soon but that in a week three American girls would come to tell them about an english class. That man was not from our ministry, but that is exactly what happened! And what an amazing way to begin to share the gospel... with a miracle. Julie and Angela shared their testimonies, and Buj listened, interested. If her plans pan out, Buj's last night working at the bar will be Monday! She hopes to tattoo, 'miracle of life,' on her wrist one day.

 

The Dirty Devil Bar lets customers write a message on a piece of paper and they post it along their wall. There are hundreds of obscenely derogatory, hurtful messages. Many of them use the girls' names. It's disgusting... but amoung them, at the very top, in fact, there are a few notes that shine amidst the darkness. "Beloved." "You are truly beautiful." "Jesus cares for you..."

A similiar story prevails on some Jenga blocks a couple streets over... :)

 

Ney and Toene fled from the Bangkok during the severe flooding last year, leaving jobs at a massage parlour. Now they work amoung 40 other girls at a larger bar at the end of a strip. I talk with them in the bar and a long-haired, crazy-eyed man motions for Ney to come over. She gives him a seductive smile and gets up from out joy-filled corner. Before she sits next to him wearing a mile-wide fake smile, she looks back at me with a broken look that pleads for help. Later that week, I walked along the beach with her after a pizza lunch. She tells me how much she hates the men and the whiskey, how she drinks only so that she won't be shy. She told me about her favourite place to take a customer, to a hotel on the next beach over. 

 

"It is so beautiful when the sun goes... when it falls down... like this," she explained using her hands to describe the sunset over the Indian Ocean. "I just watch it," she lamented. "I just watch it and try to forget." I got to look into this beautiful girl's eyes, as her friend, and tell her that she was so valuable and intelligent. It was no lie. Ney and Toene have connected with a redemptive ministry and their ambitions for the future will soon be in reach. :)

 

So, I hope you caught a glimpse of the power of the testimonies that will come from this place. Thank God that His mercy is falling here!

 

 

Redeem: revive, make good, to set free, to rescue, to ransom, to restore worth, to save from sinfulness, when God pursues and pursues and pursues and the forgives, dusts off and sets the girls on Bangla Road in His direction