Steamboat teachers Janna Hoza and Rebecca McNamara never thought they’d be “picking up” prostitutes in Thailand, but when they decided to be part of a church mission, they ended up doing exactly that.
The two women were part of a group from the Steamboat Christian Center who spent a week in Chiang Mai, Thailand, mingling in the bars where girls and women sell their bodies.
“The first night was really hard walking through the bars,” said graphic designer Jessica Wagner during an interview with fellow church members Hoza and McNamara.
“We worked with the children in the slums … worked with the orphanage and talked with monks. But our main focus was to minister to prostitutes in the bars,” Wagner said.
The church members paired up, and each night walked through noisy, neon-lighted bars where sex workers tried to lure in visitors.
“The prostitutes work for the bars,” Hoza explained. “They’re not on the streets with a pimp. There’s probably 25 to 30 bars in that area. Each of those bars would have three to 10 women working.”
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