Saturday, March 6, 2010

Thailand March 6- Prison Visit

We are ending another busy day in Pattaya. Mikki, Sarah, and I had a great day ministering today. We began the day by visiting in two prisons at the police stations, passing out food, water, and fruit, handing it through the bars to the inmates.
They fed them food. You have to have someone come and bring you food.
Usually all the cells are full and there are lots of children in them but today there were only half full and we found no children. I for one was happy that no children were sitting in cells, so we can thank God that that was the case on this particular day.
One of the ladies from the Tamar Center has been ministering in these prisons three times a week for quite some time. We were able to pray for a couple of the women and pass out tracks to those who wanted them. We learned to say "Swadeeka" in Thai which means, hello and prayed for them as each one took the food from us. It was so sad to see these men and women, I could feel nothing but love and compassion for them.
I felt no fear, only love. This is totally amazing to me as all of this is totally out of my comfort zone, but it is a testimony to myself that God is doing a work in my life and teaching me how to walk in Jesus' shoes. This is what I have been praying for in my own life for sometime. Please continue to pray for me that I will keep my eyes on Jesus so I can walk in the power of His might daily. It is such an awesome thing to walk in.

It is not unusual for the girls to be arrested for prostitution if the bar owners haven't paid their bribes to officials. The owners don't get arrested but the girls do. Prostitution is illegal here but there are literally thousands of prostitutes on the streets here and bars are an endless sight so bribes are a part of life. The way it works is that the bars only sell drinks. If you buy a drink, the girls must entertain you and talk to you. If you choose to take a girl out of the bar, you have to pay a bar fee, then the girl is yours for however long. If you take her to a hotel, you pay a service hotel fee to the hotel for your extra guest and then you pay the girl for her services.

The guys in the jail cell looked pretty rough but they were all grateful for the food and readily accepted it with a smile.



Outside of the Police Station number 1. We brought Peanut Butter sandwhiches, oranges, water and candy.
Police Station number 1
These girls were sitting outside of the police station and the older one was mom to the baby and the younger one was her sister.
Mikki put a braclet on the little girl's ankle
Sarah, Jason and Marg who worked in the prisons, talked a little while to the girls and found out that she had been to one of the Thai churches before
Mikki praying over the baby. For some reason Marg (God) had some very good diapers the perfect size in her car. We gave the girls food, water, coloring books and some things for the baby
The chances of these girls ending up on the streets is very high, Tamar Center also has prevention programs in place to help girls not end up in the jobs in the bars.
These were beautiful girls
Police Station number 2. We did not get pictures inside or around this prison
Out side of the this police station, This guy was professionally having his photo taken and so I said, "hey that would be a good place to take a picture." So Jason pulls over, and asks the other policeman if we can get a photo. He said, "Sure just a few minutes. You can get a photo with the NO. 1 Guy. " They kept saying, " He's the no. 1 ". We got out and he told us , "We are taking photo for poster for people to wear helmets. I am no. 1 guy. Don't sit on my motorcycle!" So we thanked him for the photo op. and joked that we might be on the billboards, with the quote, "American women like helmets".




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