"Yesterday we left our lovely Danish apartment to pray for one of Copenhagen's alternative places: Christiania," Simone writes from  Central Europe, where she is travelling with a 7 member 24-7 mission mobile team : "In the 1970's homeless people and political activists decided to start their own 'country', in the middle of Denmark's capital city, creating Christiania, which has its own flag, is self-governing and in general tries to offer an alternative world, where people are free to live however they feel is best.

"Although we loved this place - its idealism and the hunger for spirituality and community it represents - we sat down and prayed that Jesus might redeem it...."

Colourful buildings are situated next to little huts with tiny gardens; people sit at the main road, drinking beer, smoking weed and chatting; mothers in colourful hippy clothes push buggies along leafy paths and traders sell clothes and jewellery, which have all kinds of spiritual symbols printed on them.

Although we loved this place - its idealism and the hunger for spirituality and community it represents - we sat down and prayed that Jesus might redeem it, that he might take all the obvious creativity and vision and let it be used for his glory. As in every 'alternative place you can find here seeds of God's goodness but also signs of drug abuse, pick 'n mix spirituality and disillusionment.

We prayerwalked through Christiania and decided that we would come back today and have communion in the centre of this 'country'. We rested, a homeless man came to chat to us and funnily enough gave one of our team members some money and finally we had some Turkish food.

 

In the evening we sat next to Copenhagen's canals, surrounded by boats, pubs, tourists and fire jugglers and played some Christian songs on our guitar.   While walking along the streets and playing the guitar other people joined us, starting to sing some Sting and U2 with more or less sober voices.

Some of our guys finally went to the pub with them, telling them that they were Christians on a mission to pray for Copenhagen, which our new found companions just did not want to believe. They probably did not think of Christians as fun people, who would sing songs at the top of their voices in the middle of the night and sit down to enjoy a little drink."

 

Read more about adventures of the 24-7 mobile mission team who are stopping off in Copenhagen, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade, on their blog 'so how is europe?'