Celebrating an Incredible Season in IbizaCharlie and Abby Clayton - 13 Dec 2013
When we started the season we felt God speak to us about the story of a woman that Jesus met at a well. After a life changing conversation, she went home and spoke to her village and they too came out to see Jesus. After they had spoken to Jesus they said to the woman:
“It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (John 4)
Although many people have heard about their friends praying with 24-7, receiving Bibles though us or having encounters with God, our prayer was that people wouldn’t believe because their friends told them, but that they would personally experience God for themselves.
And God answered that prayer...
From day one was found ourselves in deep conversations. We prayed with many people, ran out of Bibles twice, had our apartments full of people coming over for dinner; exploring what it means to know Jesus and enjoying fun and laughter together.
We saw people physically healed, not only in our service on a Sunday but also on the streets. We had the privilege of spending hours in conversation with people who needed to get things off their chest, able to invite God into situations and see people walk away with a new sense of who God is.
We also had the incredible privilege of leading someone to know Jesus and even baptise them in the sea the next day.
This year, we welcomed almost 70 people from all over the world to come and serve for anything from 2 weeks to 6 months. It is incredible that people will pay to come and we are always blown away by their generosity of time, money and energy.
Our teams pray together, serve together, eat together, go out enjoying Ibiza together, talk and journey together. They experience some of the best clubs and DJ’s in the world, and have the most beautiful stories of meeting Jesus in the West End. They laugh when they are overtired, they cry at the injustice they see; they give up summer holidays, jobs, money, time, to come and bless the West End. And they pray a lot.
Our workers centre is the hub of what we do here and it was once again full of people who work in and around the West End; enjoying the facilities, chatting, praying and being able to offer free professional massage for female workers.
“Big thank you for my lovely massage today ... Well needed... Ye are so good x”
The night-time work continued to be the beautiful, unique, messy place that it always has been – living in the tension between seeing some troubling sights alongside seeing Jesus beautifully at work. There is no way to describe the feeling of being in the Prayer Room one minute and, the next, finding yourself holding someone's head as they vomit over your shoes. We live in a paradox, holding everything in tension.
“hey guys thanks for all your help and kind words and listening ears, don’t ever underestimate how much it means to the people.. keep up the good work”
“Hi, I would just like to thank you guys so much for helping my friend out…. You are amazing people and we are really grateful to the 2 girls who helped us all that night. Thank you.”
“not sure what the name of the guy who found me was but just want to say thanks for getting me home safe on my first night”
Stats for those that like them!
During the season we hosted approximately 3000 people in our workers centre!
We helped 755+ people safely to their hotel or medical centre
Across the season, between the prayer walks, street teams, workers centre, Sunday service, prison work and various outreaches we gave 1327 hours to the West End, which equates to 6,675 volunteer hours! Praise God!
ALL YEAR ROUND
The summer work here is very prominent but we are also very active all year round.
• We visit the local prison and offer support to those that have been arrested during the season, liaising with families, friends and loved ones outside of the prison.
• We have a wonderful community growing on the Island with local Spanish and English people.
• We are about to start some work in a local school
• Our permanent team is about to triple in early 2014!
• We are about to start a new community on the other side of the Island!
We see God at work on this island every single day. He has not gone away. After 12+ years of 24-7 Prayer investing here, God is doing His wonderful work of restoration as much as ever and continues to spur us on to dig deeper and go further.
God has a heart for this place, the people who visit and those that live here.
Jesus Loves Ibiza. We know He does.
2014 Team dates are now on our website, you can find them on the 24-7 Ibiza website.
You can keep up with all the incredible stories from 24-7 Ibiza on their blog.
All images are used by permission in accordance with commons copyright license terms:
Feature image is a derivative of the image 'Sunset in Ibiza' by Steven Straiton.