Two Worlds & A Name

Last night may have been one of the most intense nights for our team.  Our eyes were opened to the reality of the night life here in Bangkok. Bangkok is a COMPLETELY different world at night and the things that we saw brought us to an inevitable amount of emotions and our hearts absolutely broke for every person we saw.  We walked through a few streets that were filled with one bar after another and as we walked through we prayer walked to bring hope to the " dark world" at night.  As we walked through I had made eye contact with one of the girls standing outside of the bar & I could see in her eyes exhaustion, pain, weariness, and a desire to escape the life that she wants to leave so desperately but is entrapped in fear of what might happen if she does try to leave.  My heart broke as I sensed all of this from her & I began to think about her life & when she was first born...what was she named? What is the meaning of her name? Why was she given this name? As I began to think about how each individual has a name & how valuable each persons  name is, I turned around & on the other side of the street I saw about 7 girls with numbers on them. Were they no longer known by their name, but instead by a number? It broke my heart because each individual is unique & incredibly special & I know that God made each person that we saw that night for a reason & a purpose. He values every soul & has given each of them a name that is uniquely different from any other person in this world.  I felt like that night God gave me eyes to see each individual as a special & unique person. All of the crap that we saw was only the surface, but deep down each person is made unique & valuable in the eyes of God. Our job is to go out to these people that are special, allow God to gear our eyes from what we see on the surface of the person to deep down in their hearts & know that they ARE special & worth being known & loved.  We are to build relationships with them & love as Christ loves us.  However, for me personally, the very thing that I know I should be doing ( loving them) is perhaps the hardest thing for me to do. It was so difficult to not judge the people & what we see on the outside; it's so hard to not make a general assumption about the things that we saw that night; it's hard to not judge the girls because of what they were wearing and it's even harder to allow our eyes to look past all of these things and see the person for who God created them to be.  That night I felt like God helped a lot of us to look past the surface of the person & see them as an individual that has a life & that their life is worth being cared about. God has done so much on our team & changed us in ways words can't describe. Thank you all for your prayers & continue to pray for the team as they are about to head back to the states tomorrow!

Brittany :)