Evangelizing among the wasted can have its benefits, though. People who might otherwise tell you to piss off are a little more open, a little friendlier. Last week, Gardiner-Crehan had one of the biggest breakthroughs of the mission at the Bull Bar. At around 1 a.m., he tried to start a conversation with a trio of brooding guys hovering over their pints. Nothing.

Within an hour, one member of the trio, Matt, sought out Gardiner-Crehan on the dance floor and greeted him like they were old buddies. "They'd taken some Ecstasy and it must have kicked in, because he became incredibly friendly," says Gardiner-Crehan. Suddenly, no topic was off-limits: They talked about music, about school and finally, finally, about religion.

Matt must have gone back to his table raving about the second coming of Christ because the next thing Gardiner-Crehan knew, Matt's friend Brian approached him. He wanted to let Gardiner-Crehan know that he had a bum leg and couldn't walk properly. "I told him that I believe that Jesus can heal people," says Gardiner-Crehan, "and I asked if I could pray for him."

Ten minutes later, the third guy, John, took Gardiner-Crehan aside for a full-on spiritual counseling session. He told the missionary he was terrified of dying and that he couldn't sleep. He'd been seeing a counselor for two years, but nothing helped. "By then, I was going for it," says Gardiner-Crehan. "I said, 'Listen: I believe Jesus can touch your life if you let him. Can I pray for you?" John was happy to submit. Afterward, Gardiner-Crehan advised John to get himself to a church as soon as he got back home. "I said, 'You need to find some people you can talk to about Jesus.'" They all bear-hugged Gardiner-Crehan goodbye, and the next day, the three guys got on a plane back to England.

Among his peers, Gardiner-Crehan is known as a crack evangelist. His tremulous excitement about his faith seems to transcend any self-consciousness he might have about spreading the Word. Where some of the other missionaries are fettered by inhibition from time to time ("Hey, we like to look cool, too," says Franklin), Gardiner-Crehan is irrepressible: He doesn't seem to think twice about approaching the fiercest-looking person in the West End and offering up a prayer. Of course, he's hardly an amateur when it comes to evangelizing. Born into the charismatic church, and educated at Bible college, Gardiner-Crehan went on his first mission at age 16. Ibiza is his fifteenth.

Still, he feels a bit frustrated at having only two weeks in Ibiza. He'd like to move beyond a few powerful prayers. He'd like to have his own Andres Isea story.

Isea is 24-7's trophy boy, the mission's one bona fide convert. After four years of cleaning beaches and massaging strangers' feet and escorting drunken people to their hotels, the 24-7 missionaries finally reaped a little harvest this year.

Restless and itching to see the world, Isea left his native Venezuela at 18 and has been living in Spain ever since, scraping together a living, bouncing from one wretched apartment to the next, with intermittent periods living on the street. Isea is the kind of guy that backpacker chicks go crazy for. There is something raw and untamed about him: His hair is wild and full, his nose is pierced, and he wears a string of puka shells around his neck and the laces of his trainers untied. The church he attends is constantly harassing him to cut his hair and take out his piercings, but he refuses. "I'll do it when God tells me to," he says. "Not before."

When the 24-7 prayer team met Isea last summer, he was living in a squat, shilling for the Bull Bar and dealing drugs. He was doing a lot of drugs, too -- popping pills, smoking pot, and snorting coke. "I was really disappointed with myself," says Isea. "I'd left Venezuela because I wanted to avoid all that."

Isea was disarmed by the 24-7 missionaries. They weren't like the other Christians he'd met, who were quick to judge him. "The more bad stuff they saw me do, the closer they got to me," he says. "If I was drugged up, they would grab me, put their hands on my head and pray for me."

Before leaving Ibiza, three members of the prayer team invited Isea to a cafe to talk about God. One of them felt he was getting a prophetic word from God for Isea, and he passed it along: God wanted Isea to know that he was his son, and that he was pleased with him and loved him. "To be honest," Isea says, "I wasn't sure if it was God or that guy who was speaking, but it was stuff I needed to hear." Isea broke down crying and, to the surprise of the tourists sipping cappuccinos around him, yelled out, "I need you, God!"

For a couple of months after the 24-7 team left, Isea tried to hang out with churchgoing folks and stay straight, but life kept getting in the way. He lost his job at the Bull Bar. His roommate was shot to death while on holiday in Switzerland. He thought about giving up the whole Christian thing, about going to the Canary Islands and giving himself over to partying again. But he decided to give God one last chance. "I made a deal with God; I said: God, I'll stay in Ibiza, and do the best I can to seek you, but you've got to take care of me."

God came through. Within a couple of weeks, Isea got a job as a stripper one night a week. He earned about $50 a week, barely enough to live on, but it left him plenty of time to pray and read the Bible. He began going to church again, and a 24-7 missionary named Tim Hirst continued to e-mail him, encouraging him to stay the course.

When Hirst returned to Ibiza this summer and called Isea, the first thing Isea wanted to do was pray together. Hirst was thrilled. Now instead of hanging out at the Bull Bar, they hang out at the prayer room that 24-7 has established, sitting on the floor with their arms around each other and a Bible between them.

Recent Stories