Day 41.
After two weeks at the Ywam base in Olangapo we took a two hour van ride to Angeles, the second worst city in the world for prostituion. We had heard God tell us to go there when we were praying about where to go while still in Hawaii. At the time we had no idea there was even an Angeles city in the Philippines and looked it up online only to get bombarded with stories and ads for the night scene there. We proceeded to look for a contact or ministry to work with in the city but to no avail. The search for ministries in Angeles lead us to Olangapo so it was cool how that worked out By the end of our time in Olangapo nothing seemed to be opening up for us in Angeles but we wanted to be faithful to what God had said and decided to go there for our last three nights anyways. We stayed at a hotel like a 5 minute drive from the red light district. |The second night we were super lucky to get to meet up with a guy who is working for the one and only organization in the whole city ( faith based or secular) that focuses on getting these girls out. Sam and I just sat there in the food court of this beautiful mall, munching on some donuts and listened to this man talk about the statistics in this city. For example there are 15,000 registered (19+) girls working the the night clubs in Angeles. This doesnt include underage, street or brothel girls! And there are 17 workers in his organization, something doesnt add up here! That means there are 911 prostitutes to 1 social worker! We found the stats completely unacceptable and so spent time just praying the workers into this city. We finished off our ministry in the Philippines prayer walking the the main street of clubs. Walking Feilds street was like walking through a sex Disneyland, i dont know how else to describe it. We ended the night by going into the biggest club in the city, Atlantis.This club is three stories high and employs 3000 women, which is 1/5th of the registered bar workers in the city. In just the short time we spent in Angeles my eyes were opened wide to a new kind of unreached people group. I dont think i will ever get the images from that last night out of my mind. And i hope not, i hope i never go back to ignorance, as blissful as it is.
(Inside Club Atlantis. You can tell the class/price of the girls by the colour boots they wear.)
Now onto Thailand.
Day 56
Sawatdee Ka!
Greetings from Chiang Mai. It has been a 180 degree switch from ministering to children, villagers, and prostitutes in the Philippines to working at a high class coffee shop in Thailand.
Our main focus here is reaching out to the university students, simply by building friendships with them. Mon- Sat we work 3 hour shifts helping in the Kafe and ,as long as were not on the morning shift, we head over to one of two universities to sit down and eat lunch in the cafeteria with the students. We are always in luck when we happen to sit by students majoring in English as it makes communication much easier. We invite the students to come hang out and once we make a few friends they keep us pretty busy taking us out to night markets, the zoo, and local sights. Its definetly different from what I am used to on outreach, but its good!
Next Saturday i m super stoked to cross off one item from my “Things to do before i die” list. Stay tuned!