It’s been such an intense journey, and I have a few things on my heart upon coming home, but before I act, I need this time to be quiet before the Lord and really seek Him out in the solitude of home and nature. I have heard it said that the greatest posture of hearing the voice of God is rest and trust. I think there is such truth to that.
From day one of the Discipleship Training School lecture phase, way back on October 1¸ and all through the succeeding months, God has been doing some serious work in my heart. As I read through my old journal entries, I find myself in tears as I realize how faithful God has been in answering my prayers for healing and wholeness. I was so angry upon arriving in Kona…angry at people, at God, at myself…for disappointments, for pain, for times of loss in my past. I found myself in tears most days, and I would have to leave lecture to gather myself in the restroom. Even just sharing my testimony with my school was such a hard thing, and I was barely thirty seconds into it before I was a snotty, teary-eyed mess in front of everyone.
I fell apart in Kona, although I thought I had formed a hard enough exterior to keep that from happening. But no, walls in my heart had to come down in order for healing to really take root. Unforgiveness. Bitterness. Anger. Disappointment. They all reared their ugly heads during my time in Hawai’i specifically, and many days I could hardly appreciate the beauty and people that surrounded me because of my inner turmoil and uprooting.
Most days, I would say to myself and God ‘I’m done...this is not what I expected...all this pain...I am going home!’ But as I started to open up to trustworthy people about my struggles, through God’s grace, I began to see that these things had to be dealt with. And as my wise Kazak friend Aliya shared with me one especially bitter evening, it wouldn’t matter whether I went home, or if I stayed, these issues would still be within me. So true. That same friend encouraged me multiple times to stay in Kona, in the supportive environment that it is, with the loving people that are there, so that I could work through my struggles, since I had come running from home in the hopes of finding something new anyways. I guess I realized at that point that these issues would follow me wherever I went, if I didn’t address them at their root.
So, heart surgery it was! And what a terrorizing, thrilling, and hope-cultivating journey it has been. And the true friendships I have now! Oh the change I can see in myself…in the way I view others, God, the world, and myself.
At the start of things, I was so scared and insecure. Unbeknownst to me, my arrival in Kona would be the catalyst that would continue a painful, new leg of my journey called healing. Some of that healing was sparked before I arrived in Hawai’i, but much of it really began to take root there and in Thailand. I learned more of who God really was, His heart for me and His desire to see me whole and free, both of which I was not. I began to recognize Satan’s lies for what they were, and I continued with what I knew how to do at that point…honestly talk to God with all my fears, insecurities, uncertainties, buried dreams, sadness, and disappointments.
As I began to really pour into His word (especially Ephesians) and realize the victory and life Christ had won for me, I was astounded at how I had lived in such ignorance of it all. Satan really had blinded me to so much, and when my eyes were opened, I saw such beauty in life again, in my walk with God, and in my relationships. I was able to let people love me sincerely, without putting up walls and putting on a mask. I shared my pain with God more and with others as well, and through those trustworthy relationships with Him and them, the wounds that had hurt so much began to truly heal. I could trust again, love again, if I ever really had in my life.
I needed to experience that healing for myself before I could reach out to others in Thailand...I couldn’t give out of what I did not have. Not that I was completely whole upon boarding that plane for Bangkok, but definitely moreso than when I first landed in Kona. And more healing came as my team and I traveled from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, from Chiang Mai to Phuket, and then Bangkok to Kona again.
In Chiang Mai, my all-girls team, made up of eight beautiful women and myself, lived and worked at a place called Abba House. It is a ministry with a two-fold purpose of providing a safehouse for young Thai girls who have come from abusive homes and broken or non-existent families AS WELL AS discipling men, young and old alike, who have come out of prison, drug rehabs, prostitution, or off the streets. We taught the men English and led Bible studies with them, which to our surprise (seeing how we were a group of young women ministering to men who had come from rough backgrounds), turned out to be such a great time of spiritual encouragement and edification to both us and the men. By the end of our month there, they had become our brothers. We also taught the girls English in the evenings when they came home from school.
One of my favorite memories is of Christmas Eve, when we all went Christmas caroling around Chiang Mai, singing joyfully and skipping our way to each house, arm-in-arm. A taste of Heaven, I think. : )
From Chiang Mai, we traveled by bus all the way to the opposite end of the country, to the island of Phuket off the southern coast of Thailand. There, we lived and worked at a ministry called SHE (Self Help & Empowerment). What a place it is! Although its beauty lies in its tropical paradise landscape, it is has an equally dark side, as it’s very well known for its prostitution. SHE offers alternative employment to the girls who work in the bars, training in hotel/restaurant work, and English lessons, all in the hope of leading them to the Lord and discipling them, which is no easy task in the culture there.
Our job was to go into the bars a few times a week to form friendships with the girls, as we played pool, Connect-4, jenga or just talked. My team, nine of us in all, broke up into groups of three to cover different areas of town, so we didn’t run the risk of visiting the same bars and girls. The first night out, we just sort of mapped out the place, writing down street and bar names, to get a feel for the place and to know how many (and what type of) bars we were dealing with. The hierarchy of bar owners and bosses makes it a seedy place, not to mention some of the bars being owned and run by mafia. We had to keep our wits about us and our eyes open to anything that didn’t seem safe or normal for the nature of the place. If we felt we were being watched or we could see that the bar owner specifically had their eye on us, we would be careful how often and for how long we visited that bar. Seeing young women walk around that area and just talking with the bar girls is a strange thing in the first place. I mean, c’mon, the area is known for sex and alcohol…not exactly a place young women go to have fun for vacation. The place is mostly frequented by older European men.
But what an opportunity it was! Not only did we get to make some good friendships and connections with the bar girls and owners, but we also got to talk abit with some of the men who visited the bars. It was good to meet them and just talk so that later we could pray for them by name.
After we had gotten to know the girls, many of them would begin to open up about their lives and admit how much they disliked working in the bars. See, most of them come from the poorer, more rural parts of Thailand up north and are expected by their families to be the breadwinners, no matter the cost, really. Usually, it’s the oldest daughter who goes to get a job first, and with very limited schooling and lack of money/opportunity for more education, so many end up resorting to selling themselves for money. It’s sad, but that is the nature of their situation…and for so many girls in Thailand.
But anyways, if the girls were really not interested in working in their bar anymore and were looking for another job, we could tell them about SHE (‘a friend’, we would say) who could help them with employment and training. Some of them were interested, others just weren’t willing to trust that it could be true or feasible for them to leave. I can understand their lack of trust, as many have been used and deceived for so many years. If they were willing to look into SHE, we could invite them to the base for lunch, and they could have a chance to see the organization, that it was legit, and to talk with staff and the founders about details and the reality of changing their current situation.
Honestly, it’s a difficult ministry, and SO MUCH of our work (and SHE’s work) was prayer and worship, as it should be. I learned just how powerful and crucial prayer really is in tearing down strongholds and defeating the work of the Devil. Satan is at work in Phuket, but when one focuses on the Light of Christ and how strong and real His love is, the darkness is minimized to such an extent. It was amazing working in there, where you really can feel the depth of the spiritual battle between Light and Dark and at many times, it can be felt physically. Being there was such a reminder of how much of a need there is to be grounded in Christ and strong in the Lord. There is such a need there with how desperate the women are for a way out and, most importantly, a relationship with and freedom in Christ.
So, from the men who came out of prison, drugs, and prostitution...to the little girls whose homes were too broken to grow up in…to the beautiful women who called the Phuket bars their homes, I saw God at work, transforming hearts and opening eyes to things unseen...glimpses of what could be…those things that are not to be as though they were, as that verse in Romans 4:17 so eloquently says. I have seen such hope in the world, and yet such darkness alongside it.
‘If you travel here, you will see it all, the brightest and the darkest…and if you travel here, listen to your heart and take with you what lasts forever.’
Those lyrics speak to me about my time abroad in Thailand. But by God’s amazing love and grace, His bright Hope outshines the darkness. Like in Phuket…I remember arriving back at SHE so discouraged some nights and yet knowing that it wasn’t the end…that His Light would prevail in the end if only we kept praying, kept persevering, kept pushing back the darkness in Jesus’ name. Was I hyped up on YWAM outreach excitement? I don’t think so..i believe God was filling me with more faith. Faith to believe that His love is going to change things…that’s it’s strong and true. That He is renewing all things.
That very faith still wavers in me at times as I have traveled home and am acclimating myself to life here again, but it’s a precious lesson I am still learning. It’s a journey I am choosing to take because I have known what the way is like when you almost lose your faith…the hopelessness, deceit and fear is too much to bear. I am not going back. I know that much.
One of the main things I have been learning over this past while is that we are all broken in our own ways, from different hurts in both the past and present. And I’ve seen in not just my own life, but others as well, how Satan uses our brokenness to make us believe there is no hope, even if we believe in Christ. But that is just not true. God really does want wholeness and life for each of us in His love, but it’s the nature of the world we live in that Satan does not want us to really see who we are and can be in Christ or who God really is. He works so hard to deceive us and blind us to the truth of it. I’ve heard it said that Satan’s worst fear is for us to realize who we are in Christ and to walk in it. It makes sense! Why would Satan want us to walk in life and wholeness when he hates Christ, and thus hates us because we belong to Him? Satan only comes to kill, steal, and destroy, and there is no good in him.
God has put it on my heart to expose Satan’s lies for what they are in people’s lives, but most importantly, to focus on the Light and Life of Christ and how we wants an intimate relationship with each of us. He is found by those who seek Him in truth. And when we do allow our hearts to open to His love and grace, He transforms us in radical ways.
