Father's Day Weekend

On Saturday afternoon I was invited by the Mjan-Mar (Burma) crew for lunch, aboard their ship MV CAPE UNITED. The menu was extremely spicy pork and vegetables. The cook noticed that the 'hot' food had an effect on my facial expressions! "Come for lunch on Sunday and I will serve you traditional Mjan-Mar food that isn't spicy at all'' he said. I believed him, and Sunday after church I joined the crew for lunch. The cook was right, it was tasty and not spicy at all.

After lunch I tried to explain to them that it was Father's Day in Canada. Unfortunately, a soccer game on television had their attention so they weren't all that interested in my conversation.

I did learn that most people in Mjan- Mar are Buddhists. There are very few Christians. However I did have an opportunity to meet two Christians on board this ship. A gift of two 'Jesus DVD's' made them very happy.

The (Burmese) seafarers are very friendly and hospitable people. They are very careful about discussing the living conditions in their country. A military dictatorship has ruled there for several decades and it has one of the worst human rights records in the world. There is apparently forced labor and other serious human abuses on a large scale and no freedom of association or democracy! Please pray for the Mjan-Mar people.

Last Sunday all of our children came home and in the evening we enjoyed a Father's Day dinner. It was a wonderful time of food and fellowship.

I thank God for my family, and I'm reminded of the thousands of fathers who missed this opportunity to spend time with their families because they are at sea.

The lament of a seafarer

Recently, I've had some interesting conversations with Filipino seafarers. One was with the chief engineer from the 'MV IKAN KADEWAS'. ( Ikan is the Indonesian word for fish). I had met this particular seafarer several times on previous visits to Roberts Bank. On this occasion he asked me if he could join me as I was going to Vancouver. He told me that he had to get off the ship to get some fresh air and see some different faces! While driving he begged me to help him immigrate to Canada. He and his wife have 5 children and he sees very little future for them in the Philippines.

I hear this is a request many times from seafarers who live in Third World countries, so it was no surprise to hear this again. What struck me was the comment he made about his life at sea and how for many years he hasn't been able to watch his children grow up. Always going back to sea, making sure there is enough money for living expenses and money to educate the children and at the end of the day he only sees them about two months out of the year. His lament that morning was that when he retires his children will have finished their education and will most likely move to another country for better employment! "When I finally come home, the children will be gone and I still won't see them", he said. As a father I can feel his pain, but I've never experienced what many sea going fathers have to experience!

I also had a conversation with the cook of the 'OOCL NEW YORK'. His fiancee is a domestic worker in Hong Kong, where she has to work very hard; from 7 AM till 11 PM, six days a week for $700.00 per month! We didn't discuss issues such as homesickness and loneliness, but he did mention abuses in the workplace. Apparently she has no other options because there is little or no work at home.

How blessed and, yes, how spoiled we are to be living in this part of the world!

A Victory in Vietnam

In my last blog I wrote about the MV YNA AUK. Before writing about Vietnam here is a quick update on this ship..... They left Roberts bank on May 21st. Today it is June 11! They still have one more long month to go!

This week there were two more bulk carriers with destinations to Rotterdam and a port in Turkey. Usually when a ship sails to a Mediterranean Sea port they will take a route via the Suez Canal. Because of the threat of piracy off the Somalian coast, companies won't take that route and instead teh ship will sail around Cape Horn (South America), which takes them eleven days longer before arrival.

And now to my Vietnam story! In one of my blogs I talked about meeting Mr. P. Commissar, the political commissar who is employed on every ship that is registered in communist China. What follows is a quote from Christianity Today (June 2009); "In what religious freedom advocates regard as a breakthrough, Vietnamese authorities granted rare permission to unregistered house churches to hold a large, public, Easter-related service April 21 in Ho Chi Minh City. More than 15,000 people gathered. The huge crowd sang with joy! "I never heard any singing like this, even in a Billy Graham Crusade," said one Christian leader. It was as if they offered God all the praise and worship stored up in their hearts during many years of oppression."

Vietnam is still a communist country and I meet Vietnamese seafarers several times a year. Most of them live in Haiphong, which is in the North of Vietnam. This article I quoted gives me hope! Hope and the assurance that God is also doing a great work in communist Vietnam. I wished I could have experienced the singing with these 15,000 Christians. If some one in the crowd would have asked me, "Do you have a hymn request?", it would have been, "Crowns and thorns may perish, kingdoms rise and wane, but the church of Jesus constant will remain. Gates of hell can never 'gainst that church prevail. we have Christ's own promise, and that cannot fail" (From the hymn 'Onward Christian Soldiers' )