Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Charlie Clayton from 24/7 Prayer Ibiza

Jon: Tell us a little bit about the culture then. It's one thing if somebody's had a few too many drinks and they're being sick, but this is renowned as a drug capital isn't it?

Charlie: Yeah, there is huge amount of drugs on the Island. It goes hand in hand with the music culture and the clubs. We get phone calls like, "24/7 there's a guy running naked across the beach and he is on Ecstasy, can you come and help?" That's their question; they think we know how to deal with the situation. So we will go down and we will chase the guy and help him out and bring him round. I had one guy, who I put him in one of our wheelchairs and he thought he was still back on the plane. So I was talking to him and he was ordering drinks from the waitress that was walking down the aisle. That's the reality of the drugs. This season in the papers they were saying there was this cannibal drug. I am not sure how true it was, but certainly we had people when we're helping and they were trying to bite us and things like that. I think with drugs and all these legal highs that there's such a mixture and an experimentation of different drugs now which is incredible.

Jon: Is it easy to have compassion for the people? What's it like when you see so many people who are in a mess because of what they're taking?

Charlie: It is really difficult to see when you first encounter it. When I first was on the streets in Ibiza, the amount of it was just heart breaking. I think what we feel when we're doing this work is that it's about worship. We are worshipping in the streets, so if we're getting down next to someone and cleaning their sick and everything else and putting them back on their feet, Jesus came down and did that first didn't he? He gets us up, he cleans us down and puts us back on our feet. I think when we look at someone and we think, wow this is gonna be really messy, we have to look and go, if that was Jesus would I do that to him? And that helps us with the environment.

Jon: Can you think of any story off the top of your head that was an amazing moment?

Charlie: There are lots of them. Recently we were in one of the clubs we go in to - some of our girls go into the strip clubs and we pray with the girls and we give out gifts. She was praying with this one girl and then the dancer and then prayed over every other girl in the club. She didn't believe in Jesus and she wasn't a Christian, but she'd been enjoying having prayer so much and she'd be like, "Can I do this?" and she then started praying with the girls in the club. So we were seeing this example of someone learning how to pray and praying for others and it was absolutely incredible. We have seen people come to know Jesus and obviously we need to make sure they're in an understanding state, but then we baptize them the next day and we really just encounter God in the streets.

Jon: Cause that's the other aspect of it - one end is the clubbers, but the other is the people who work there, who live there, the bar owners, dancers and that kind of thing. I guess you're building relationships there too?

Charlie: And year after year it builds up, so we know all the bar owners and bouncers.

Jon: Do they like it?

Charlie: Yeah, they absolutely love us. I think at first they thought we were very strange, years back, but they love us and they just allow us to go in any bar we want. They make sure we've got enough water and keep seeing how they can serve us through the night. It's quite funny when you walk down the West End and you've got these big bouncers and they have got our little 'Jesus loves Ibiza' Bibles in their hands, as they kind of do in the night. It's a surreal moment.

Jon: That's amazing. Tell us a little bit about your base then, because this is what you do throughout the night, but you've also got your own...I was going to call it a shop, but it's not, it's like a base right in the heart of San Antonio, haven't you?

Charlie: Yeah, we'd refer to it as our worker's centre. In the daytime we open that up and workers will come in and use it. We've got Wi-Fi and computers and PlayStation, those sort of things. It is really a place to support, to chat, if people want to come in and just be around. We also offer a free massage service to the female workers, so we do beauty stuff as well, but about 2,500 people came through our centre last year. Some of those just came in to use computers and went, but others would spend most days there just getting to know us and walking with us to understand a little bit more about who we are.

Jon: Now something I'd not thought of before I met you earlier and we were just having a chat before we did the interview, was that from a UK culture point of view, in terms of engaging with young people in the UK, in some ways you're really effective because they all go out to Ibiza and they meet you out there. In terms of you investing into their lives, showing them something of the love of Jesus, is that something that you recognise?

Charlie: Yeah, it's been on our mind for ages. We might be in Spain, but we're dealing with our own culture. You know often when I was in the UK I would think, I can't ask someone if they want prayer and feeling that barrier. These are our people in Spain though and they are open to prayer, open to God and it's not just people coming on a lads' holiday, it's doctors, lawyers all types of society who are engaging with us there. What we really want to do is to be able to network with more people in the UK, then when people engage with us in Ibiza and then they come home, we can look at how they can be supported and encouraged back home.