Summer has kicked off in IbizaTheresa Stone - 11 Jun 2013
Sixteen people were helped home, taken to the medical centre or into an ambulance tonight. Think the whole team got covered in vomit. Back just in time for sunrise. What a night!"
The summer season has kicked off in Ibiza, where vomit, partying and Jesus are the name of the game for 24-7 Prayer's mission teams. The Vision Course students are there right now and wrote the above Facebook message at 5:41am as well as blogging about their experiences.
23 year old Chloe Allan writes:
Zoe and I were on-call last night with Charlie (who heads up 24-7 Ibiza with his wife Abby), we got our first one at 12.30am and didn’t get back in until 4.30am.
First one: unresponsive so called an ambulance.
Second one: on a couple of E and some kind of hallucinogen. Realising getting the name of his hotel would be a slow process we split up so Zoe and I could go to the next call leaving the guy in his boxers complimenting Charlie’s hair.
The next guy was alone and sat on the floor. Thankfully two big guys lifted him straight into the wheelchair and we got him out of the main bar area. The bars run on parallel roads that are hills, so there I was, sweating as I pushed this large guy up the hill to a quieter spot, with Zoe pulling his shoulders back to stop him falling out.
He had taken ketamine and had drunk heavily. It took a while to even get his name, and two and half hours later we were 80% sure of the name of his hotel. I don’t think I’ve ever asked someone so many times for the name of their hotel, we had to get creative.
We drove him back to his hotel at about 4am but our hearts dropped as the receptionist, after searching for his name, declared he was sure that he didn’t stay there. I shot up a quick ‘please help me jesus’ kind of prayer and then his friends, who had long deserted him, chose that precise moment to return to the hotel, gave his room number and confirmed that he was staying there."
19 year old Zoe Moass says dealing with the vomit (and sometimes faeces) of intoxicated tourists is really only a small aspect of the work of 24-7 Ibiza:
"01:00 arrived and Matt caught the eye of a guy who looked a bit worse for wear. We asked him if he was okay and just started talking. His name was Lewis, he was on a stag-do with friends, and he was amazed at what 24-7 Ibiza did when we explained who we were. The conversation began to wrap up, so we asked if we could pray for him and did so outside a bar before moving on. We’d walked about 10 metres before I felt a little tap on my shoulder: Lewis had returned.
He stopped us and said, 'Sorry guys, but can I walk with you? Talking to you just then was the best thing I’ve done all evening.'
We were blown away by that, and I immediately started praying in my head for this guy, who was obviously so hungry for anything meaningful that he’d leave a bar and follow us down the street. He kept apologising for keeping us, and was amazed when we told him that we loved talking to him, and that there was nowhere else we’d rather be."
Every year teams help troubled and ill party goers to safety after stints in the alcohol and drug fueled night clubs of San Antonio.
If you, or anyone you know would like to join 24-7 Prayer's radical discipleship 'Vision Course,' based in Guildford or Kansas City, find out more and send in your application form.