Numbers

For safety reasons we keep two log books with regards to our work here, one is for people we help with the Vomit Van the other is for people we walk home or wheelchair home without the van.


Becky on our team compiled all these statistic for me yesterday.


The number of incidents involving the Vomit van over the previous 20 weeks has been 249 this has involved helping 409 people!


The total number of incident without the van has been 234 involving 287 people!

Total number of incidents 20 week period was 483 for the more statistically minded thats an average 24.2 incidents per week involving 696 people at an average of 34.8 people per week.


Someone once said you can make statistics say whatever you want, not sure how true that is. It does show us one thing that is San Antonio is a great place to come on holiday and there are far more people who don't end up in a mess than do.


It also shows me that we need to be there, we are not 24-7 vomit we are 24-7 prayer but we are still involved with a lot of vomit. 


One of the interesting things is we have prayed with more people this year than any previous year, our prayer wall is full, and the level  of conversation and connection on the street has been phenomenal.


All of this and we still have a month left.

Kind words

I am not showing off or being proud just thought you would like to see some feedback from a few of the people we have helped this year. It's cool when people remember to say thank you.

Hi 24-7,

I was out in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago with some friends and drank too much. The last thing I can remember is downing some shots at a dark bar. I left my friends to walk back to my hotel which was about an hour away. I must have fallen asleep on a bench because the first thing I can remember is a couple of girls helping me to get some water and offering to give me a lift home. Stupidly I didn’t accept the lift and continued to walk the rest of the way with one flip-flop but I was really touched by their kindness and want to say that I really appreciated their gesture and that my wife gave me a royal roasting when I finally staggered in at 6am. Keep up the good work.

Hi 24- 7

I very much appreciated being helped I didn’t realise I was in a vulnerable state and thought i would never in my life be walked home ever lol , Thanks for spending so much time with me and walking me back to my hotel room. You guys really made a diffrence and made me think twice about taking substances which i stopped taking from after that night, thanks guys.

Hi 24-7 Ibiza

I got far to carried away on my first night out in Ibiza and got to a stage of drunkenness I never been before and don't fancy again. This is what I remember, I wandered out of a club and away from my mates and then was lying in a street being sick and falling asleep then two amazing people came from nowhere and started helping me next thing I'm in a car (vomit van!) then wake up on my bathroom floor. Thank you so so much for what you done that night hate to think what could of happened. I would love to know what I was like that night and how you found were I was staying as I didn’t have a clue at the time. Thank for all you done and keep up the good work:)

Hello 24-7!

I’d like to thank all at 24-7, particularly a group of individuals who helped me out on the west end

I was massively intoxicated as it was my holiday i thought hey! lets go nuts, unfortunately before I knew it i was on the ground bleeding heavily from the hand. Members from 247 literally picked me up, strapped me up and walked my back to my hotel – Dread to think where i would be without them as i lost my friends that night!
 You only really appreciate what these people do when you need them most! Keep it up!

Thanks again! X

Hi 24-7

We had a messy few weeks, one night my friend had a few too many and fell and smashed his head open. While I was calling the ambulance my bag was robbed and it was a horrible night!! You took care of my friend who fell and gave him water and bandages and brought him home safe, thank you so much you also gave him a 24-7 lighter which he treasured! I have seen you care for others throughout the duration of my stay too, wow you do an amazing job keep it up xxxx

24-7

Just want to say thankyou to your team who helped me get back to my hotel the first night i went out in ibiza. Brilliant service your running as so many people lose control in ibiza and its a great thing your doing.

Intercession

Is intercession a specific ministry? I sometimes here people say "I am an intercessor" aren't we all called to be intercessors. A friend of mine had someone preaching at his church at the end of the preachers talk he asked for the intercessors to come forward, no one moved!! This was because the whole church had been taught that they were all intercessors and that intercession was not a specific specialist ministry.

Is there a biblical theological argument to support intercession as a gift or ministry?

The word intercessor can only be found in Job 16 and it is not a specific reference to something that is given to one individual.

Aren't we all called to be intercessors, to bring our petitions, to pray continually. The minute you make intercessory ministry a job for specialists you create levels. You make it difficult for other people and prayer becomes exclusive.

Now I understand that there are people who can pray with ease for hours, there are prayer warriors and there are those who can wait on the Lord with ease. This is more a discipline than a gift. Yes and I do believe in intercession groups and meetings, there's nothing better than gathering together and interceding for something. What we do in San Antonio is intercession, we gather regularly to pray for our area and the people who live in it, we intercede, we become intercessors for that period of time.

I wanted to go a bit more biblical with this but until summer is over I don't have the time. When Paul talks of gifts in the New Testament he never mentions prayer or intercession as gift.

Thats why I love 24-7 prayer it encourages prayer for everyone, you don't need a great musician, you don't need to have a specially dedicated full time building. You can have a prayer room anywhere and pray anywhere it is not for specialists, it's inclusive.

Check out All About Prayer for a little more on intercession.

Late Night Messiness

It's 3.03am we got a call from the police at 1.20am to come for a girl who was, in their words, "A little bit drunk" when we got to the hotel it was very clear that this was way more than a little bit drunk. We prayed as we drove to find her that we would have the grace and patience to deal with the situation.

She wasn't actually staying in the hotel where we found her lying, so the name of the game was to get her back to her own hotel. Thankfully the night porter had worked out where she was and printed off some directions for us, which were very helpful.

The girl herself was lying in her own vomit and had lost control of her bowels, this is a very embarrassing state to find yourself in. Emma and Jillian gallantly cleaned the vomit and pooh from her as best as they could. The night porter brought us some towel they were used to clean her up but it just kept coming. She had definitely been eating chinese food.

As we went to stand her up Emma gagged and nearly vomited so I stepped in to help manoeuvre and lift the girl into the van. Unfortunately I didn't have time to put gloves on.

I quickly realised I had pooh on my hands, I drove, whilst Emma who had recovered brilliantly, poured alcohol wipe onto my hands to remove the pooh. It took us a while to find the apartment where the girl was staying the van was the smelliest it has ever been and you couldn't escape it. It gets in your clothes and everything, you have to breath through your mouth as to not let the smell get in any further.

We got her back safely Emma and Jillian took her in to her friends and they got her in the shower, cleaned her up and put her in bed whilst I stayed outside to clean the pooh from the inside of the van. The girls did brilliantly; cleaning a conscious drunk is much harder than cleaning a van.

In the end she was home safe, it wasn't pretty but she is ok, I know you can ask yourself how can people get in such a state? Mostly it's just an under estimation of the strength of the drink and size of the measures here. They don't start the evening off thinking "tonight I want to get so drunk that I vomit and pooh myself " it creeps up on them.

Anyway we got back in the van, I realised my hands still smelt of pooh, because we hadn't cleaned the steering wheel!!!! We got it properly cleansed, and here I am sitting indoors waiting for the next call.

We are not saints, but surely having a faith is about active involvement, my faith isn't passive, it is not just something I adhere to mentally it affects my actions.

So when we help someone we often remember the words of Jesus which were "Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself"

Feminized Prayer

Sometimes I get worried that people think prayer is for girls! With our summer teams that join us here there are we have many more men than women. my accountant wife tells me 80% of our teams are women! I know this is always true of mission teams in general but it did get me thinking about the feminization of prayer.

There's an organisation called Lydia Fellowship  it's about women praying based on quite a weak link to a bible reference in Acts Chapter 16, their prayer meetings are exclusively for women, I know that prayer is good, that all types of people praying all types of prayers are necessary but I can't help wondering if the Lydia thing is a reflection of something that is wrong in Europe!

Over the last century prayer has been feminized, maybe because as the growth of christianity has happened men have worked and women have stayed at home and had more time to go to prayer groups during the day!! Maybe church leadership has not put enough emphasis on prayer, therefore making it a daytime activity available only to those without jobs. It could just be that with increased wealth and leisure women have chosen prayer and men haven't.


Perhaps it's down to the rise of one or two strong women prayer preachers and intercessor movements led by women. 


I know that times have changed but I even look at the  24-7 prayer international prayer team and I see that 6 are women and there is only one man, and this is quite a modern movement!!!!!!! In the end movements do reflect their leadership it concerns me that if the prayer side of 24-7prayer is all ladies bar one, then maybe we will only encourage ladies to pray.

Believe me praying women are better than no one praying at all. this isn't a chauvinistic post more a frustrated post. I don't want women to stop praying I just wish more men would get involved.

How does that happen?

The Call

Two nights a week rather than walking the streets we are just on call. This involves sitting at home waiting for someone to call and then popping out and dealing with the situation. We do this so that the team get a break and don't burn out throughout the summer.

Tonight I am on call with Gillian, we have just been out I am back now but can't switch the phone off until 4.30am, I have about one hour left so my prayer is for peace on the streets, which in turns means a calm night for us.

We had a call about 90 minutes ago from the health centre in San Antonio, they call us quite a bit, it's always a challenge for my Spanish!!

Our first guy was a drunk chap from Glasgow, who had fallen over and needed 5 stitches. He was easy enough to deal with, just very hard to understand. We popped him home to his hotel.

We the went back to the health centre as they had another guy asleep waiting for us, we woke him up, clean a large quantity of red bull scented vomit off him and found out where his hotel was. Whilst we were doing this I got called in to another room to help with translation!!!!!

It was a young lady with gynaecological problems, these are not words that flow easy and you don't really learn them in spanish class. We muddled through, she got the right diagnosis and I learnt a few words that I will probably never have to use again, unless I have a sex change.

The health centre people are so lovely and we have a great relationship with them, I enjoy going there on call. Mainly because it's a controlled calm environment. If you deal with a drunk on the west end it can be noisy, people take photo's you always have some drunk who has done first aid trying to tell you your job. The health centre is a tranquil place to deal with drunks.

I then went back to red bull vomit man, we got him in the van and soon had him back at his hotel.

This blog took 10 minutes it's 3.35 just got to sit here for 55 more and pray, we normally pray for peace, we pray that friends would stick together, we pray for safety, we pray for a lack of violence and generally that people would have fun without endangering themselves.

Police

The police in San Antonio have a hard job, they are understaffed and have to put up with quite a lot of nonsense. Occasionally they are a little heavy handed, but we like them.

In the summer of 2005 when we first arrived on the island the police threatened to arrest us for giving out fruit on the streets.

Then of course there was the false charge 3 years ago of being an illegal taxi, which was just a case of misunderstanding and has since been resolved.

A few weeks ago we had a phone call from the police to come and help them, tim who was driving the van thought he was being flagged down and arrested when it turned out that he was actually being escorted by the police to help some drunk russian girl.

Then this week I was out with Anna, we were in the van when we got another call to go help the police. We found two police men standing over a man who was absolutely covered head to toe in vomit, he was with a friend but I can honestly say I have never seen someone so covered, he must have been rolling around in it. The police asked us to take him home so I got him up draped all over me and we popped him in the vomit van. The stench was close to unbearable.

What was fantastic was that I needed to turn the van around in the road to get him home and the police just stopped all the traffic so I could turn. It's a long way from 2005 when they were threatening to arrest us, to actually stopping the traffic on our behalf.

We got sick boy home, I was covered, it was on my face and my legs and everything in between. Messiest night this summer, but he got home safe, and we were just so blessed to be working with the police in helping a vulnerable guy home.

We took a guy to purgatory

Tonight was the first night of our final team. We were in the prayer room praying when we got a call from a worker whose friend had taken too much liquid ecstasy he was in a pretty bad way. We used our new wheelchair to get him out of the west end, then we decided it would be best if we took him to the health centre so that they could check him out. He was unconscious the whole time! As we got him into the van he vomitted all down himself, we sort of cleaned him up and took him to the health centre, as he was completely "lights out" I had to hold him pretty tight to get him out of the van into the wheelchair, which meant I got covered in his vomit.

After a bit of a scene which involved leaving him sleeping in our new wheelchair, driving back to the wes tend for some documentation, losing his friend then finding her we finally returned and got the all clear from the medical staff to take him home.

At this point he was still asleep, I grabbed him and stood him up to swing him into a wheelchair as I did this he woke up!!

The doctor and two nurses along with Anna, myself and his friend were all so relieved that we all spontaneously cheered and clapped. The poor guy looked so freaked out, one minute he had been outside a bar in the westend the next thing he knows he's woken up in a white room with 3 women dressed in white cheering him and some big skinhead hanging onto him. I wonder if he thought he had died, and that I was God?

Or maybe that he was caught in the spirit world and was in some form of eternal struggle between dark and light, which involved a skinheaded demon in a black t-shirt and some white clad angels who where being cheered on by his friend and some american girl standing in what may have been purgatory fighting for his soul.

Whatever was going through his head it was hilarious to watch his face, he said nothing, just looked totally freaked out, especially as I pushed him into the wheelchair and wheeled him out of the bright room away from the angels into the darkness....

Opinions

I once heard someone say that we mustn't form "to close a relationship with our own opinions" I think I was more opinionated when I was younger, but then I think i still hold strong opinions.

So maybe I am not less opinionated just better at sharing my opinions. I think in the past I would try to be right and in being right I would try to make others wrong. There's nothing the matter with being right it's just how it comes across.

Although I have noticed that some christian leaders aren't so good at sharing their opinions these days, they are a little held back. I wonder if that is why Mark Driscoll does so well, he is pretty confident and vocal in the sharing of his opinions. I am not saying he is right but it's seems that some people are looking for leaders with strong opinions.

I guess it's ok to have opinions, probably just have to watch how you share them, and some opinions are better off just kept in your head.

I was preaching the other week and I said "don't follow a leader with a cause who never talks about Jesus" what I meant to say was "don't follow a christian leader with a cause who never mentions Jesus." There are loads of christians out there with opinions about all sorts of things but if you can't see Christ in their opinions I would worry.

I would say that a lot of middle class church opinion is more informed by The Daily Mail  than the Sermon on the Mount.

In general the teachings of Jesus are challenging, for instance how does our Lords phrase "I was a stranger and you invited me in" inform immigration policy?

We are more informed by the papers than the gospels our opinions are occasionally moulded by fear not by Christ.

Opinions are good to have however we need to filter them, we must look at our own opinions through a Christlike lens, apply some Corinthians 13  love to them and then see if they are still valid!