Christmas summer report!!!

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while and now an epic!!!! This is an abbreviated version of our summer report, hope you enjoy it?

While statistics and numbers never fully tell a story, hopefully they do help to give an idea of the scale of our summer activities.

We have attempted to break down the different aspects of what we do, to help you understand a bit more of what happens and how we try to show love to the people where God has placed us.

The Centre

The centre was open for 24 weeks, from May 3^rd until October 22^nd , 5 days a week. Taking into consideration the quieter months of May and October we have on average 100 people a week dropping into the centre every week.

The introduction of Wednesday afternoon head, feet and hand massages for the girls was another popular addition. Dancers, female bar workers and prostitutes all received equal treatment. Some liked to chat but most liked to sit quietly, giving our girls the opportunity to pray quietly for the person they were treating.

The prayer room was renamed ‘The Chapel’ this year and was well used during centre hours. We talked and prayed with people in all sorts of different circumstances, including a lady working here as a prostitute who popped in weekly to sing and worship with a few of our girls.

Sunday night services and Prayer Meetings

Last year, we recognized the demand for a Sunday evening service, particularly from the Nigerian ladies that work here as prostitutes; we decided to offer this as another way to bless the people that we are developing relationships with. This was very well attended, not just by the Nigerian girls, but a whole variety of workers. The formula was simple and people seemed to gain real encouragement from this time. Our maximum number was 45 people, but on average we would say about 20 attended; most weeks at least 5 of these would be working girls. We have stopped the service for the winter months, but plan to recommence with the return of seasonal workers next May.

Street Work

The four main aspects of our streets work are prayer, rescue, bibles, and conversation.

Prayer

We cannot emphasise enough that everything else we do is founded and dependent on consistent and long term prayer.

Out on the street people will often share honestly and deeply about where they are at. We will always offer to pray for them; as many people decline as accept, but we have some beautiful moments to pray for those that accept. Some complete prayer request forms - over 300 people did this - but as much as we can, we try to pray with people then and there and those ones are not written down. This year we prayed with some people who gave their lives to Jesus, a guy’s knee was healed after prayer and many people took the opportunity to talk to God about their fears, worries, hopes and dreams.

While half of the team are out on the streets, the other half are praying back in the centre. On this split shift system, a group is praying for at least 4 hours – 5-6 in the busiest months - each night that we are in the West End. At a bare minimum, taking into consideration a minimum of 4 people praying at any time, this equates to at least 1600 hours of prayer

This prayer is the engine behind everything else; this continual talking to God is what drives us forward and keeps us safe. Many times, things are ‘unlocked’ in the prayer room – we are inspired to pray for specific situations or worries that people are in, and we walk out onto the street and encounter people in exactly those circumstances.

Rescue

On advice from the British consul in Ibiza we kept a log book of noting the people we took back to their hotel or hospital - those we drive and those we walk or take in a wheelchair.

These people are drunk, drugged, lost, disorientated, vulnerable, injured or distressed; sometimes alone, sometimes struggling to get home with friends. We find a lot as we walk around; others we respond to through a phone call from a worker or bar owner. We also receive calls from the local health centre phoning us to come and help; this could be to take someone home who has received treatment, help someone to get to the main hospital across the island or to help with communication problems.

This year with the van we recorded 235 of incidents involving 444 people. On foot/ wheelchair we recorded 124 incidencts involving 207 people.

In total we dealt with 359 separate incidents, helping 651 people. Each incident lasts for a minimum of 30 minutes up to 2 hours, occasionally longer where a trip to A & E is involved!

Bibles

This summer we had custom made version of The Message New Testament to give away; the front cover has a title “Jesus loves Ibiza”. We gave away 700 of these Bibles this summer, putting many of them into the hands of people who would not call themselves Christians. We had very positive feedback about the Bibles, people read them in the street, others took them home and then asked us about specific passages later on.

With every Bible we gave away we tried to write a personal message in the front to the recipient – a word of encouragement, a scripture to read - this also meant we were thoughtful in our approach to distribution.

We also gave away around 100 full copies of the Bible to the Nigerian ladies; they like to have a copy for themselves and some send them home to family in Nigeria. We probably could have given away even more than this; at the end of one service 4 girls were fighting over the last 2 Bibles.

None of us have ever before witnessed a fight for a copy of the Bible!

Conversations

One of the things we do the most is talk to people, often just about their work or their holiday. We have lots of these conversations, some brief, some longer, some intelligent conversations others through drunken slurred words. We believe that quantity time we put in on the streets leads to quality moments. It’s important for us to take the time to chat to and listen to people week after week - often being heard is what people need most, and only after they believe that you listen will they talk about the deeper things in their lives.

Teams

With a resident team of just 3 adults, our longer term summer volunteers were invaluable. Neil, Christine and Claire joined the resident team for the whole season; Poppy, Jud, Abby and Katie came for 2/3 months each. We could not have managed without them.

Seven other teams joined with us this year, beginning with a prayer team of 6 people who came for one week in April to pray and lay spiritual foundations. This team helps us to focus spiritually and remind us of why we do what we do before we launch into the hectic summer.

From June to September we had 6 two week teams, bringing us 47 volunteers from England, Ireland, America, Australia and Germany, who all helped and served admirably. These teams gave themselves to prayer and street work for 8 of their 12 nights here and also danced and prayed in clubs, hung out on beaches, got to know workers and worshipped and prayed in various spots around the island.

In total there were 60 people who came to serve the work in one way or another. Without them the work of 24-7 prayer in Ibiza would not have moved forward; we need these people.