A Facebook album full of photographs and a great tan is what most of us would bring back from a Caribbean holiday. But when Alice Denyer visited Jamaica in 2000 she returned with something else: a calling. “I felt that the Lord had put it on my heart to go out and work there,” she says.

Ten years later, the call has become a reality: Alice, now aged 26, has been living and working on the Caribbean island for the past two years as part of a team of missionaries with the American-based organisation Youth With a Mission (YWAM).

While her contemporaries are, for the most part, working and playing hard in London, Alice’s daily life includes several hours of prayer, regular classes where she teaches the students who come to the YWAM base to learn about God and visits to the local town to take on street feeding missions or work with local schools.

There are also regular trips to other countries on “outreach” missions, where a group will live and work within a community for several months in an attempt to bring the gospel to these so-called “unreached” peoples – Alice has visited Cuba (where they had to live secretly in a Christian’s home, only venturing out at night) and Gambia, amongst others.

Not your usual nine to five job, then – although Denyer says that in some ways, the organisation functions as a business would, albeit with a religious slant. “You have areas – the different ministries we’re involved in and the different schools we work in, so we have a common goal as a ministry,” she explains. “Within that we each have different callings and different mission statements which define how we get involved.” Her personal mission statement, she says, is to release and restore truth and justice to the broken and oppressed.

We think we mustn’t depend on others, which we were made to do as human beings

Nevertheless there is a significant difference to the average business (other than the God angle), in that all members of YWAM live and work together, 24/7. “It’s almost like a little village of missionaries,” says Alice. “We function together, we live together, we eat our lunch together every day, we pray with each other. Your entire life is with these people.”

Of course that is also sometimes a source of stress – after all, most of us need a bit of personal space. “You do learn to know yourself pretty well,” admits Alice. “You come to know your limits and your boundaries and the things that make you tick and the things that drain you.”

But, she adds, “You become more effective as a person in a way. As westerners we really promote independence and doing things on our own which is great – but we overemphasise and think we mustn’t depend on others which we were made to do as human beings. Community allows for that stable support structure to be in place.”

It’s good to develop and challenge yourself and seek to understand more about who you are

And life can be pretty exciting – if a little unpredictable. “Learning flexibility is very important because things change all the time,” says Alice. “For example, the earthquake happens in Haiti and there’s an opportunity and people need support, so we find someone to cover our accounting job or whatever our role here is and we go – 10 days or two weeks or whatever and we do it.”

Will she carry on living like this forever? “I often long to go back and live in London,” Alice admits, “but unless I had a specific reason to live there I would not want to do it. I feel like, as humans it’s good to develop and challenge yourself and seek to understand more about who you are – and you find a spot where that’s happening and where your skills and talents are being used and established and growing – that’s good.

“Why would you leave that just for the sake of going back home? It’s like finding a job that you really enjoy rather than one you hate.”

Lucy Denyer