The day Taylor and I woke up for our dates with Dari and Tup, everything seemed to be against us.
I felt so sick. But we got ready and walked down to Pub Street. We got to Dari’s bar, five minutes early, and sat down on the step.
Ten minutes went by.
She’s probably just late.
20 minutes.
God, please. We know she wouldn’t miss this. What’s keeping her?
40 minutes.
At 45 minutes, we knew. Today wasn’t the day. But God had still sent us here.
God, you see her. You know her. Keep coming for her. Get her out of here.
God, He’s funny, ya know?
Right before we say amen, we hear a bone-cracking split: a car ten feet in front of us had just backed up right over a pigeon.
We cringed, and then immediately burst into laughter. Yes, we felt really bad for that pigeon, but God allowed that particular moment to bring to mind one of His Truths. God says that not one sparrow will fall from the sky without His knowing (Matthew 10:29).
I felt God telling me not to worry. There’s not a moment in this girl’s precious life that I have not been there for. I have always seen her. I see her now. I care even about the sparrows–the pigeons–and isn’t she, My daughter, so much more special to me than a pigeon? You don’t know where she is now. But I do. Just pray.
So we prayed. And we left with peace. We knew there was a YWAM team back at Zion, and a few nights earlier they had met Dari and would be going back to the bar to see her.
1 o’clock came around and we waited for Tup.
10 minutes. 20 minutes. 40 minutes.
Father, we are so disappointed. But we trust You.
I went upstairs, and went to sleep. An hour later, someone comes in and wakes me up: “Katy, Tup’s downstairs!”
And sure enough, there she is.
Jesus! Thank you.
That afternoon would become one of my most memorable moments on the entire World Race.
We treated her to coffee and desserts, and all of a sudden, a door just swung wide open: Tup began telling us, openly without any prompting, all about her life. She talked about her past and how she ended up at the bar. She talked about working at a restaurant, but it flooded and she lost her job. Her kids live in another city, and she didn’t have any money to send them. She couldn’t provide them with food for two months, she said.
So she found an available job. At a bar.
But I no like. I no like, she said. Bar is sad, she said pantomiming little balled up fists rubbing tears off her cheeks.
The truth kept flooding out. She’s scared. She doesn’t like the men. She doesn’t want to sleep with the men. But if she doesn’t, she goes home with no money. She needs the money. Do the men have HIV? She’s afraid of getting diseases from them. It’s scary. She doesn’t want to do this.
She started crying.
We started crying.
I reached for her hand, and she put her hands on Taylor and I’s cheeks. I told her, “Tup, you don’t have to work at the bar. I know someone who can help you.”
It’s for moments like this that Zion Café exists.
Zion Café builds relationships with the girls, the women, and the lady boys at the bars to show them the love of Jesus through their actions and so when they discover someone that wants to leave the sex industry, they can help get them out. And that means finding alternate employment: Zion Café, a coffee shop, café, and hostel, provides that, along with a safe house, training, and discipleship. I had prepped Emmi, the Thai woman who founded Zion Cafe, about Tup. The time was right, so Emmi came over and introduced herself.
Emmi and Tup starting chattering back and forth in Thai, and I felt so at peace. This moment. I had been waiting for this moment. I met Tup on my first night out, and now on my last day here, I was watching her interact with the one person five minutes away from her bar who could help her. God had been leading me to this moment the entire month. They exchanged phone numbers. It wasn’t time for this story to end, yet I know in this moment, it was on exactly the page God planned for it to be.
It was getting close to 4 o’clock and Tup had to go get ready for work that night. Before she left, she did something I will never forget.
She put her hands over her heart, she pointed to Taylor, she pointed to me, and she said, “You, and you, are my family.”
Tup’s met Emmi. Tup’s set foot now in a place where God’s presence dwells. She’s tasted love and felt freedom. Pray God draws her back, and draws her back, and draws her back, and draws her back.
“Long ago the LORD said to Israel: ‘I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.’” – Jeremiah 31:3
Tup is one of 20,000 prostitutes in the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Often single moms, many of these women work in the bars because they feel they have no other option to provide for themselves or their families. Their socio-economic vulnerability has been exploited by an industry that forces them to sell their bodies for money. Other times, in Dari’s case, they have been exploited by traffickers and pimps who lure them into the industry under false pretense. These women have not only been exploited, they’ve been tricked. In other cases, it’s even scarier. Women are kidnapped. Taken to places referred to as “the breaking grounds,” where their traffickers beat and rape them into submission, and them send them into the streets, and behind closed door bars where they truly have no way out.
Something major has happened, and you can be praying. The Police of Chiang Mai stepped it up this week and are trying to locate those that have been trafficked into the sex industry—those who are there against their will. There is an investigation going on now. Please pray that the police receive the leads they will need to locate these girls trapped in a dark and shrouded system. Pray for freedom.
And, if you want to watch a compelling and convicting documentary on the topic of sex trafficking, I would highly recommend you check out one called Nefarious: Merchant of Souls. There are scenes in this documentary from Chiang Mai, in the same Red Light district I just spent this past month in. I promise you won’t regret watching it.
Thank you so much for praying, updates from Cambodia are on the way! We made it safely to the city of Battambang, and are loving our time working with street children at a ministry called Crossing Cambodia.
Until next time,
Katy
