Praying for a brothel owner and a trafficker

Well after our 3 day holiday its back to life in Svay Pak. Today the students were sharing how they have more 'power'---they mean 'energy' after this mini holiday break. Bunthan seems to have a permanent grin on her face. Its as if God has given her fresh energy and power from our trip to Sihanoukville. I am a bit sore myself as we rented 10 water tire tubes and formed a human train when we were swimming in the ocean and the aches have suddenly appeared. It's not fun getting old! Nonetheless, we were reminiscing a bit about all the fun times we had and all the crab we ate.

With no short term teams for the next few weeks, its back to 'normal' with the usual sounds of kids repeating their Khmer or English words during the summer school classes. My voice is now about 85% back so I resumed the guitar lessons with Pastor Chantha's students this morning as they were learning a new song called 'God is so good.' In the afternoon I was back on duty at the medical clinic. One of the patients was a brothel owner---an old looking Vietnamese crew cut short haired chubby old lady around the age of 60. She certainly fits the stereotype of what a cruel looking brothel owner would look like. She pops in now and then to the medical clinic to get medicines but they are not really for her. They are for the girls who she sells but she pretends to describe all the ailments she has and even showed that she had a rash on her stomach trying to convince us that she needed a variety of drugs. However, the staff here know her well and they have learned that she has set up a new brothel in Kampong Chnang province. Anyway I decided this was a good reason to pray with her---perhaps she thought I was praying for her 'physical' healing even though she wasn't sick. Instead, I began to pray that all her plans for that new brothel would be frustrated, that God who is sovereign would shut down her business, convict her of what she was doing, open her eyes to the truth and that she would begin to see the girls she sells as human beings and not as product to profit from. No sooner we were finished the next patient I got was a 'trafficker'---I started laughing with Pastor Chantha and Siny my translator as I couldn't believe why I was getting these people as my patients. At first I was a bit confused when Siny was translating for me, I thought she said that this old Vietnamese grandmother had a lot of back pain from sex. I looked at the woman and I said 'Siny, she's old how can she be possibly having so much sex, she's like a grandmother that makes no sense unless she is a sex addict.' Siny laughed and she said 'no, its not her, the drugs are for the girls she sell.' Did I not say, its fun working in the medical clinic! At any rate, this trafficker became quite agitated as we were only giving her some multivitamins and Ibprofen but she was asking for some other type of drugs which we refused to give her. Pastor Chantha was telling her that Jesus was better than the drugs and that He would heal her of her condition but she was not too happy.....after all, the medicines were not for her anyway and she seemed quite frustrated and annoyed that she was not making any headway with us, shaking her head in disgust. So again I felt led by the Holy Spirit to pray for this woman. I took her hands and laid my hands upon them and instead of closing my eyes, I decided to look into her eyes and pray but she was looking every where instead of at me. My mentor once said that people who are controlled by the demonic will never look you in the eye and so I began to pray several warfare prayers over this woman, binding any demons and asking them to go to the foot of the cross. I prayed that she and they would submit to the Lordship and authority of Jesus and that He would open her eyes and heart so that she would know that He is the way, the truth and the life. I asked that He would break down the ancient gates that have held her in bondage so that she would be set free, that she would step believing the lies of the enemy and would see children as precious treasures to be cherished and not to be sold. When I finished, she thanked us all very calmly and left.

So that was my afternoon in Svay Pak---another normal day when you never know who you might run into or meet. I am looking forward to the next medical clinic day. I'm beginning to enjoy these unexpected encounters with some of the most unscrupulous characters in Svay Pak. They certainly make life interesting in this dusty little town and challenge me/(us) to pray big and bold prayers to our God that He will do the impossible in the hearts of these men and women who are being used by the forces of darkness to perpetuate evil. They challenge us to not look at the visible reality but to have faith in the invisible reality that God is working even in the hearts of these people. We know He is because He has already transformed some women who used to traffic girls and they are now part of the church at The Sanctuary and so let us all be encouraged to continue to pray with confidence that there is no life nor person that the Lord cannot redeem and that includes even these brothel owners and traffickers!