What If?

What if God had decided that you would be born into a family living in Northeast Thailand? What if you were female, always a step below your brothers - - sometimes a huge step. What if your family existed in the midst of absolute poverty subsisting on minimal income and the food you could scratch out of the parched earth? What if your parents were beginning to age as a result of the rugged village life? It could have been that way. God could have made such a choice for each of us.

Had this been your lot in life, who you are would have been significantly impacted by your culture. Your brother, or brothers, would receive great favor from your parents. He would represent the future for your family, you would not. Most likely, he would spend some time earning merit as a Monk, bringing honor to your parents, and insuring their life beyond - you would not. You, instead, would assume your rightful place to care for your aging parents. You would do this out of great gratitude, inborn in a culture which has significant reverence for parental structure and authority. Brothers care for their parent’s afterlife through the merit they earn. Daughters are cast, or predestined by society, to care for the needs of their parent’s in the current age. One path leads to an extreme pressure and oppression of responsibility – the other – the male, a seemingly total abdication of responsibility for family – here on earth.

Half of the young girls in your village would abandon their village life to travel into the cities of Northern Thailand or even south to Bangkok. A “job broker” might visit your village and convince you and your parents that you would earn a good wage in the city and would be able to send home a sizable percentage. You would dream of the things you could buy, and believe that many of your friends are now living in luxury and pleasure. Your parents might be paid seven thousand baht ($210) as a finders fee, but you are indentured to pay it back to the “broker.”

Soon, you might find yourself doing jobs that many other Thai girls are unwilling to perform, earning only enough for one bowl of noodle soup at the end of the day. You could end up with little to send home. You are crushed in spirit. Eventually, men come by with money – they are willing to purchase your body. Why not - you ask. “I will have money for food and maybe some to send home to mother and father” you say. The cycle of sexual slavery begins – and continues until you have little self worth, not much money, and very possibly HIV/AIDS. You are only 17 years old.

Some girls are sold into the brothels by their parents, others tricked into employment that was not what they expected. Still, others voluntarily enter the trade having lost all hope to fulfill their obligation to their parents, and in desperation falling victim to evil men who will satisfy their own desires without a thought to how you are being broken. Oppression, injustice, abuse of power. Evil prowls like a lion, waiting to devour it’s prey – a young girl, or possibly a young boy.

You might end up in one of the bars in Patpong or the Nana District of Bangkok. You might hate it – but you find yourself pole dancing in scanty outfits, alternatively performing before the men in the bar and setting at their tables encouraging them to buy you and themselves more drinks. You find a friendly customer, one who is willing to rent you out for the night. That is good as you need to be rented out at least 8 times a month just to pay the bar owner back for the opportunity. What you can get your client to pay is up to you. The Bar owner gets his cut off the top -- you get whatever else you convince the customer to pay. As you leave the bar – you pray that this customer will be kind, that there will not be several other men waiting in his room to use you over and over. You pray that he is not perverted, but instead has a kind heart. You know that if something bad happens to you, if he tends to be violent, if he drinks too much – that you have been bought by him, you are at his disposal, you have no defense, the police will not help you. Yet you go – just the same – as you need the money to care for your mother. You love her, and she is caring for the children that you have birthed along the way.

Today we visited NightLight Ministries as they reach out to girls and young women trapped in the Night Club- Entertainment Business.

NightLight provides an alternative. Nightlight – provides light – in the middle of pitch black darkness. NightLight provides love, they provide hope in a Savior, they provide counseling, they provide spiritual nourishment, and they provide employment. Today 80 girls are employed in the jewelry business. 80 girls who no longer need to rely on selling their bodies, and too often their emotional soul, to men seeking to use them up.

NightLight produces beautiful jewelry with many different shapes, colors and sizes of beads. It also produces beautiful and infinitely valued women – who are now able to earn a respectable living, make contributions to their society, and care for their families. Many of them can now also Worship the one true God as they are brought into a loving relationship with their heavenly father – having been loved by His children in Bangkok.