We've enjoyed our second day in Bangkok. We walked through a huge weekend outdoor market this morning. You could furnish a house, decorate it, get clothes for your closet, paper products to put in your desk, fancy toiletries for the bathroom, exotic food in the kitchen, AND buy many different pets for the place as well---all in one place! (Have YOU ever seen baby bunnies for sale wearing cute little dresses before?) Talk about one stop shopping!
Tonight was a bit more disturbing, however. We went on a walk after dinner and the seedier, darker side of the city reared it's head. Steve doesn't like it here and I can understand why. As a foreign man it's like he has a big target painted on his chest. He got offered any and every kind of diversion you can think of even though he was walking along with his wife and children!!! Right beside nice shops or restaurants are open doorways into a girly clubs (quickly diverting the boys' eyes!) as you walk down the street. Grandmothers selling trinkets and playing with their grandchildren right outside are not disturbed, that's just life in Bangkok.
It makes me so sad.
But it's also a reminder that that part of the world is very real all of the time, even though most of us don't often get to see it. Women and children are degraded, used, and abused. And men are enticed into things that end up trapping, controlling, and destroying them.
The district that we're moving to is different in ways but has the same rot at the core. It's disturbing and heartbreaking. We're going knowing that we don't have the strength in ourselves to cope with it every day. We'll have to find that in Him. But we know what breaks His heart needs to break ours and move us to compassion to be His hands in this world!
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