Please remember them on Sea Sunday – JULY 10
What have seafarers got to do with you? A great deal as it happens. If you had tea, coffee or orange juice for breakfast, if you eat bananas, drive a car, use a computer or wear clothes made outside the UK, then seafarers will have been involved. Their ships carry over 90 per cent of world trade, and many of the things we eat and use on a daily basis are brought across the oceans from other countries.
Because ships usually berth in isolated places, it is easy to forget the people who crew the world’s ships even though we depend upon them. Seafarers come from many different countries. To do their jobs they have to leave their homes and families and everything that is familiar to them for months at a time, and face isolation and danger.
Today’s ships can be loaded and discharged in just a few hours so seafarers’ time in port is brief before they sail on to their next destination. When they do get ashore they are faced with unfamiliar language and customs; in fact they can feel like unwanted strangers.
This is why the work of The Mission to Seafarers is so valued by seafarers of all nationalities and faiths. We have chaplains, staff and volunteers in ports around the world ready to make seafarers welcome, share their joys, listen to their difficulties, and to support them when they feel lonely, homesick, have a problem or suffer bereavement.
In over 100 ports worldwide the Mission has seafarers’ centres, some run jointly with maritime societies of other denominations, where crews can relax briefly away from their place of work, meet local people, enjoy some recreation and telephone or email their families.
All Mission centres have chapels where seafarers can join in worship with others or pray quietly away from noise and bustle of their ships. They also provide Bibles and Christian literature in many different languages for those who ask for them.
In fact The Mission to Seafarers is there to offer God’s love to seafarers by caring for their welfare in whatever way is needed.
Sea Sunday is an opportunity to remember this particular mission of the Church and the seafarers on whom we all depend. We especially ask for your prayers and support this year which is Sea Britain 2005, a year-long festival celebrating the many ways in which the sea touches the lives of everyone on our small island.
For more information visit our website at www.missiontoseafarers.org or contact Gillian Ennis on 020 7248 5202 or [email protected]
We all depend on seafarers