(I will be in Bangkok Nov. 12-19 working with nightlightinternational.com. Six men from my church are going with me, along with 5 others from other churches around the states. 450,000 Thai men purchase prostitutes daily. 5.4 million tourists arrive in Bangkok for sex tours each year. My research includes reading Siddharth Kara's Sex Trafficking Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. All quote are from Kara unless otherwise indicated.)
When I land in Bangkok this Thursday the temperature will be 98 degrees. And humid. I remember when Linda and I brought Dan and Josh to Singapore in 1990. When we exited Changi airport a wall of humidity was there to greet us. 98 degrees and saturating humidity. You really have to be there to understand it.
It's 53.8 degrees here in Monroe. The window to my home upstairs office is open. It's cool and fresh and dark. I'm up early and in my study. I awoke thinking about Bangkok and the coming trip. In Bangkok it's hot and humid and spiritually dark. "The enormity and pervasiveness of sex trafficking is a direct result of the immense profits to be derived from selling inexpensive sex around the world." (4) Sex trafficking is about "slavery." (4)
Now I'm thinking about Liam Neeson going to Paris with guns and torture blazing to rescue his sex-slave daughter. "Acquisition of sex slaves primarily occurs in one of five ways: deceit, sale by family, abduction, seduction or romance, or recruitment by former slaves." (6) Some families actually sell their little daughters to slave traders. "Such sales are almost always heartbreaking decisions that parents are forced to make due to extremes of destitution few Westerners can imagine." (8)
I will see some of these daughters in a few days. Linda, can I bring them all home to live with us? Can I fly them all out of the dark heat and bring them to the land of 53.8 degrees where it is cool and fresh? How would they fare in sex-saturated, porn-saturated, adultery-saturated, amoral and shallow America, where even large parts of "the Church" exist?
"Sex slaves employ numerous adaptive mechanisms to survie their ordeals, including drug and alcohol abuse and the morose acceptance that the life of a slave is the best life they deserve." (9)
I'll be staying in a hotel in Bangkok's red light district. Around me "torture, rape, and humiliation await slaves as their owners do everything possible to ensure they will service clients submissively and never try to escape." (12) "Brothels in Thailand typically hold between twenty and fifty slaves, each awaiting selection behind a pane of glass in a room called an "aquarium."
"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." There are Jesus-followers who have followed Jesus to Bangkok. We're going there to help the fishing industry.
