4 Min Read
7 February 2025
How does a 24-7 Prayer Room play a role in mission work? We’ve been so inspired by some of the stories of prayer and mission from our friends at Altitude Mission – we had to share them!
Altitude Mission are based in the ski resort Méribel in France – their vision is to build a community in the mountains and beyond that draws people to the life-changing love of Jesus. Through Ski Angels – (“You’ve all heard of street pastors, now put two sticks on their feet and onto the snow and that’s who we are”), weekly open house nights and outreach events, regular church and worship meetings, a Prayer Room, and Refuge Beds for those in a rough spot, Altitude Mission teams are serving and showing Jesus’s love to ski resort guests, staff and seasonnaires alike.
And they’ve found that prayer is a crucial part of mission. The team there have some incredible stories about people meeting Jesus:
A few Altitude team members were out doing a Ski Angel shift – “We’re the welfare service on Skis, our aim is that no-one should be left stranded out on the mountain.” Part of that is spending time in après venues to make sure that partygoers can get safely home, and this evening was no different. A few of the Ski Angels started chatting with a bouncer working at the bar. His name was Nic*, and he explained that while he’d had a Catholic background, he was Muslim now.
The team invited him for dinner and offered him a space to rest between his shifts – in the Altitude Prayer Room. Soon enough, Nic was staying in the Prayer Room most evenings. “We’d often have worship sessions in the room next door,” the team explained. “He’d come out beaming saying he’d heard us worshipping and had seen a light in the prayer room and realised Jesus was the light!”
“Then he led us in a French version of Psalm 23 and The Lord’s Prayer which he’d known from his childhood as a Catholic!”
One day, Nic was attacked at work during a rowdy night at the après venue. Someone pushed him down some stairs, and he injured his knee.
“One evening we prayed for his knee,” a team member said. All the pain left, and he was able to walk completely normally!
André* attended one of the weekly “Beers and Burgers” free outreach events run by the Altitude team. At the time, he was pretty involved in New Age practices, and he even brought his “singing bowl” musical instruments along to the event, playing them in the middle of the burger line.
One team member remembers that “He reacted badly to the suggestion of reading the Bible and stormed off.” The team prayed for him, and, amazingly, about 20 minutes later, he returned. He’d heard the testimony of one of his friends who’d found Jesus, and he was curious!
“He then went into the Prayer Room and we found him in there reading the prayers on the prayer wall. We offered to pray for him, and you could see a peace descending on him,” said one of the team. He hadn’t been ready to start reading the Bible, but his heart had softened enough to accept prayer, and the Holy Spirit was drawing him.
“A week or two later,” said team member, André “came for a worship session, fell to his knees, repented and accepted Jesus into his life.”
In both of these stories, someone whose background might mean that they wouldn’t initially feel comfortable attending a church service, picking up a Bible, or going to a traditional prayer meeting was able to spend time in a prayer room. And out of the time in the prayer room, they encountered the love of Jesus.
Of course, so much is also down to the prayers, kindness, and boldness of the Altitude team, who are so full of the love of God themselves. But we loved how these stories show the prayer room as a crucial part of the journey: a comfortable place where people can explore prayer at their own pace, and encounter the presence of God.
You don’t have to be a mission team in the Alps to encounter the power of prayer in a 24-7 Prayer Room!
Altitude Mission is doing amazing work every year – and you can join in! Learn more about how to get involved on their website.
*Name changed to preserve privacy
