What next?

Season ended for us on Friday!

It's been an exciting week, starting with a baptism, followed by a prostitute we have been working with getting a job so she no longer has to sell herself. Weespent an evening at Sara's 40th birthday which was just another moment of being surrounded by spanish people and the small spanish community that we are part of and feeling like somehow after many years we were making positive inroads on more than one front.

Then on Saturday the workers of San Antonio donated 3 brand new computers for our centre which is fantastic as our other one were nearing there end! They have also made a 1000 euro financial contribution towards our work.

It felt like we ended well. All our team leave today and tomorrow and then for Tracy and myself we can clearly sit and have some time thinking and praying about what is next for us as a couple?

We have had to work really hard at living in the present this summer with many people asking us what next and to be honest at this point we would have to say we don't know. We are however excited about this next season in which we really feel God will reveal to us the next step.

So we begin to pray regularly asking God once again to guide us into new things.

Take a walk

If you have ever wondered what it's like for us as we wander through the west end at night this little video should give you an idea.

It wasn't filmed by anyone on our team, someone randomly found it on You Tube, but it does give you an idea of the environment we operate in. This is where we pray for people, talk to people and listen to people, for me this is a beautiful place.

Baptism

We met Danny at the beginning of the summer, he would come into the centre and just hang out. The team became really great friends with Danny, who worked at a little shop just up the way from where we are based. They invited him for meals, took him on little photography trips around the island, listened to him, laughed with him and generally did what normal people do and became friends.

In September time Danny left Ibiza for the UK and then towards the end of September, he messaged me to ask if he could come out and help us for a month. We said yes, Danny stayed with some of our team and got involved in the street work and centre work.

He wanted to be somewhere were he belonged! Then somewhere over the last month whilst living with our community and working as part of our team, he believed!

Danny heads back to the UK today, but yesterday upon the confession of his faith we baptised Danny.

This is Danny coming up out of the water, there was joy in the house.

What a great thing to happen on the final week of our season here?

As you can see by the expression on my face moments like these make life here so worthwhile.

God is following me!

I have talked on this blog before about how we pray during the summer that God would haunt people, that as we help people and pray with people it would start them on a journey of finding God.


On the back of this one of our two week team members sent me this encouragement from the UK it happened to her over this weekend:


"First night back on the streets as a street pastor since Ibiza and I met a guy in town...who Carolyn and I helped when we were in Ibiza!!! Thought I recognised him but not from Ibiza. He just happened to mention how he was in Ibiza and how two people helped his friend in a wheelchair and it all suddenly clicked! Both of us suddenly recognised each other! We helped his friend back in a wheel-chair to her room at their Hotel and gave him a Jesus Loves Ibiza Bible! The thing is he doesn't even come from our town-only God can plan things like that! In his own words he said 'God is following me!', 'I'm just mind blown', and how it was 'the highlight of his night'. Certainly no co-incidence! I'm just floored, only our God can do things like that- He's so awesome!"


This reminded me of something from a book by Vincent Donovan called Christianity Rediscovered about his time working with the Masai in Africa. 


A Masai elder comments that his people tried to approach God as if they were lions stalking their prey, but after coming to faith they realised they were not the ones doing the stalking.


He writes:  "We have not searched for Him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the Lion is God."