When the prayer team reaches the Bull Bar, the rest of the 24-7 missionaries are milling around outside, looking dejected. They've just gotten some bad news: DJ Riley has been sacked, and the fruit handout is off. Business has been flagging, so the 25-year-old Czech woman who manages the bar has come up with a new marketing strategy: She'll be replacing Riley's house music with the kind of cheesy '80s hits that inspire inebriated people to dance. From now on, touts will offer a free drink to any woman who comes in and dances.

Ejected from their base of operations, the prayer team trudges down the West End's sticky cobblestone street to a fountain where a trio of musicians is playing jaunty Balearic folk music. They form a prayer huddle and ask God for some advice. Gardiner-Crehan wonders if they should just give up. "It's OK if that's what you want, Lord, it's really cool." Twenty-two-year-old Katie Crossley asks God to bind up the demons in the Bull Bar, to foil their plans to boost business by selling sex. Joslin tries to think positive: "I'm sure you're up to something cool behind the scenes, God, something that we just can't see." She seems less dismayed than the rest of the group. Dismayed isn't her style. She has a mercurial, "wildest girl at the party" energy about her, anchored in a rigorous morality. Her mother was a "Ban the Bomb" hippie. She was also a devout Christian who forbade Joslin to wear a bikini.

After about 20 minutes of pleading and questioning and praising, the prayer team is rejuvenated. They set out again, striding purposefully up the West End's main drag. At the top of the hill, where the herds of partyers begin to thin out, they run into Gary.

Before setting out that night, the team made lists of people they'd met previously in the West End whom they hoped to encounter: These are their salvation prospects, their unwitting partners in a sort of spiritual buddy system. At the top of Gardiner-Crehan's list was Gary. He's a tout for one of the trendy clubs in Ibiza Town, and he's handsome the way a Ken doll is: well-groomed hair, clean Aryan features. Gardiner-Crehan asks if there's anything he can pray about for him. Gary shakes his head, polite but reticent. "Don't think so. It's all good, thanks." But Gardiner-Crehan isn't giving up. "Anything I can get you to help your night go better? You need an ice cream, something, to keep up your energy?"

Gary looks surprised. "Sure, man, that'd be cool."

Heading back down the hill in search of ice cream, they spot another salvation prospect. Jonney Silvester, 22, is standing in front of Ground Zero, the rock club where he works as a promoter. His dark hair is scraped back in a ponytail, his nails are painted black, and he has a serious eyebrow piercing. Silvester's name cropped up on a couple of people's prayer rosters. Franklin had him on her list. So did a guy named Tom Godec, a soft-spoken 21-year-old with the icy good looks of a Calvin Klein model: shaved head, searing blue eyes, silver stud in his chin. "The first time I talked to Jonney, it was a bit intimidating," says Godec, "because he looks like quite a hard guy. But he's very open. We've had some good talks about religion."

Godec is relatively new to Christianity, and he still seems slightly self-conscious talking about it. He tends to use a lot of qualifiers. Godec found Jesus at age 17, after a girlfriend broke his heart. "This is kind of embarrassing," he says, "but I was so lonely I asked my mom to sleep in my room for three nights." Picking up on Godec's despair, a friend invited him to go to church with him. He said it might lift Godec's spirits. He was right. "People at the church nurtured me for who I am," he says. "It sounds cheesy, but it's the truth."

Franklin and Godec aren't sure Silvester is ready to be prayed for, so when they see him, they keep the conversation light and nonthreatening: They ask him how his night is going and what he's doing when he gets off work. "We don't want to do cold-calling evangelism," says Godec. "We try to meet people where they're at."

The missionaries know that proselytizing about damnation is no way to make friends and influence people -- particularly since their audience has come to Ibiza to indulge in carnal pleasures. Better, then, to ease people in by emphasizing the altruistic side of their work. When asked what they do, the 24-7 missionaries generally tell people that they're with a Christian charity that cleans beaches, that sort of thing. If the listener asks more questions, he or she will get more answers. Most don't. A lot of bar promoters in the West End think of 24-7 as a bunch of nice Christian kids who hand out fruit, nothing more.

Giving away prayer and refreshments may not be the fast track to winning converts, but it seems to move things along. By the end of the prayer walk, Gary has invited Gardiner-Crehan to go with him to a club promoters party later that week, and a tout named Simba has offered to help him clean the beach.

The other missionaries aren't quite as fortunate. They weave through the crowds in groups of two, asking to pray for one bar promoter after another, most of whom are already trashed by midnight. They talk to Simon, who says it's too late for prayers because he's already broken every one of the Ten Commandments; to Rupert, who forms a crucifix with his index fingers to ward them off; and to Claire, a diminutive blond in taxicab yellow pumps. One of the missionaries asks if she can pray for her, and Claire says, "What a nice question." For a moment, it seems as if Claire might cry. Then she says, "Can you pray that I find 1,000 pounds?"

Recent Stories