Today is a continuation of yesterday‘s post. If you missed yesterday, start by reading that here.
In this post, I’ll be giving an over view of the ins and outs of our ministry. To start with, we are focused on the women working in the strip clubs in Williston, ND. Technically, the Dakota Pearls mission statement is to:
Love women and help them discover their full potential.
Basically that means that we love all women. All of them. We have left ourselves room to grow, but for now the focus is on the two clubs in the center of the oil boom. And speaking of the clubs…they look like this. Side by side on Main Street in Williston. Tiny. Hole-in-the-wall. But we like it.
We went to visit the clubs last weekend to see if management would even be okay with us starting to come with gifts and such. Thankfully, that visit went well. The staff was welcoming, and we learned a lot. Things like there are about 20 girls working in each club and a set of male bar tenders, bouncers and DJ’s. One manager told us that every single person working there was from out of state or out of country. Every single one. What better opportunity to show these folks, who are away from their families, love and kindness? I can’t think of a group of people more vulnerable to the power of raw, no-strings-attached love.
Okay. Next question. What exactly are we planning on doing? As I told you yesterday, this is a gifting ministry. Again, that was explained in the other post…you can read it here. So the plan is to go once per month with gift bags for the ladies and gentlemen working in the clubs. We are hoping to distribute the gifts to the ladies in the dressing room as they come in to start their shifts. Because the clubs are small we are also offering free makeup services to the clubs when we visit. Heartbreakers told us they were too small to allow for extra people milling around the dressing room. Whispers looked hopeful on that front.
Why makeup? That’s easy. The job inside a club is to look pretty. Makeup brings out a woman’s natural beauty, makes them feel beautiful, and shows the clubs that we have no intention of shutting down their business by offering a service that helps business instead of hurting it. Offering makeup services also give us a little one-on-one time with each woman. And that’s the biggest bonus of all, because we genuinely care about each of them and are interested in their lives and developing a relationship with them.
Let’s see…what’s in the bag? This is what our bags look like. For our ladies we’ll be bringing girly goodies like nail polish, lotion, lip gloss, good candies. We also want to be sure our gifts have a personal touch that demonstrates that time and care have been put into making them…so we’ll also include things like homemade baked goods and hand written notes. For the men, we’ll pack up manly things…like venison jerky and sweets from our church ladies.
Why Williston? Aren’t we in Minot? Great question. Yes, Dakota Pearls is based in Minot while the clubs we are working with are in Williston. Williston is about 2 hours straight west of Minot. A few years ago Minot’s very own strip clubs got shut down. Now city ordinances don’t allow them in the town. So we are going where the business is booming.
The clubs in Williston have gotten a reputation for being the busiest and highest grossing in the country, due to all the men flocking to the Williston area for jobs in the oil fields and construction sites. This has tapered off a bit, some of the reputation may have been only myth all along. But the clubs are still busy and women are coming to work in them from all over the country.
Tomorrow night we’ll be having our first “packing party.” It should be fun. I’ll be sure to take some photos and let you know how it all goes. We are excited to love on these men and women who are away from family, living in a {very} small Practically Canadian town. Again, the objective is unbiased friendship. We are in no way looking to upset business or close down these establishments. We are only hoping that these acts of kindness will let them know that they are valued and leave them wanting to know the One who inspired us to go there in the first place.
On a totally different note, it’s snowing hard enough here that my Wednesday night church-tivities have been cancelled. Have a lovely evening. And stay cozy.
Amy
