For mariners sailing into a Florida port, simple gifts bring great joy
Christmas comes simply for mariners visiting Port Everglades: not with big parties or pageants or liturgies, but with a gift-wrapped shoe box stocked with soap, shaving cream, work gloves and other basics from a ministry known as Seafarers’ House.
The ministry’s Shoebox Christmas is in its fourth year. Volunteers have been handing out the brightly wrapped boxes since late November to two or three ships a day, seven days a week.
“It’s nice to get gifts; it makes us happy,” Cesar Ladesma of the Philippines said as students from a South Florida school brought gifts to his cargo ship. “And we’re happy just to see fresh faces.”
The personal touch is what makes the program so effective, says Lesley Warrick, Seafarers’ executive director.
“It’s not the cost; it’s that people in a foreign country were willing to offer them gifts,” Warrick said. “This is a ministry of presence. And a gift of friendship.”
By early January, about 100 volunteers will have boarded 125 ships to distribute 2,000 presents. It’s important for the mariners, some of whom don’t have time to get off their ships before they set sail again. Ships often stay just six or eight hours, and the U.S. Patriot Act prevents mariners without visas from disembarking.
South Floridians seldom see these mariners from Ukraine, Indonesia, the South Pacific and elsewhere, yet they depend on them for so much. The accoutrements of a typical Christmas — the flat-screen TV, the high-fashion boots, the gas to drive to Grandma’s house — probably were delivered via ship.
“The men we serve are invisible; the population never sees them,” says Cynthia Floria of Fort Lauderdale, who, with husband Jon, helps make up the shoe box gifts. “Yet we depend on them for everything.”
Three seventh-graders from Davie, Fla., delivered shoe boxes one recent day.
“I wanted a chance to make people feel good and happy to get presents,” said Sabrina Shamy, accompanied by Kyla Hermelyn and Dakota Alvarez.
Their first stop was a 458-foot container vessel run by 12 crew members.
By the time they climbed to the ship’s bridge, three smiling crewmen had stepped out to meet them. They accepted the boxes with thanks, promising not to open them until the ship’s party on Christmas Day.
Their favorite kind of gift? Doesn’t matter, said Renante Maghirang of the Philippines. “If they give anything to me, I appreciate it.”
The comments are heartfelt, Captain Steffen Meyer said. “Some of the men are away from their families 10 to 12 months. The gifts show that someone is thinking about them, that they are not alone.”
The girls can’t board the next ship, which is set to sail shortly. Instead, eight crew members flock to the van to fetch the gifts for their 16 fellow mariners.
The girls’ chaperone, Chaplain Ron Perkins, asks whether the eight are Christian. When they say yes, he offers a prayer:
“Lord, bless this ship and all who work upon her. And in the approaching Christmas season, may we all be mindful of the humble birth of Jesus.”
Cynthia Floria recalled her first shipboard delivery. One mariner opened his box and found shampoo.
“He cried,” Floria said. “He hadn’t been able to shampoo his hair in more than a month. That’s such a mundane thing for you and me.”
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