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Visiting Seafarers Are Able to Go to Mass

Ship visitor Pat Morrissey and his team from the port of Sharpness recently had the opportunity to take some Polish seafares who docked in port to a local Mass in Thornbury town.

Providing access to Mass and the sacrements is one of the services AoS provides for visiting seafarers, whether that be arranging for a priest to give Mass on board ship or taking seafarers to a Mass. This time the seafarers had the time whilst in dock to leave the ship - this is becoming an increasing rarity.

These lucky seafarers however had the pleasure of enjoying time away from ship. The seafarers were from the MV Eva Maria Muller, those pictured are Capt. Andrew, First Mate Jan and crew member Jan. They were very grateful to the team for helping them to celebrate their faith.

Cameron speaks up for AoS

Ten year old Cameron from Norwich has once again flown the flag for AoS. On the back of his joke machine and game to raise funds for AoS, he has been busy designing new ways to raise awareness and funds.

Just recently he created and gave a presentation to his Parish, Our Lady of the Annunciation, Poringland, which highlighted what seafarers do for us. Cameron was given inspiration for his presentation after he was invited by AoS chaplian Sr Marian Davies to visit the port of Felixstowe.

While at the port Cameron had the opportunity to look around at a working docks and to visit a ship and the seafarer' centre. He commented that 'Seafarer's Cabins were tiny, the freight trains were very long' and he decided 'seafarers were like Pringles!' in their tiny cabins.

If you would like to download a copy of Cameron's excellent presentation which described his thoughts on his visit, then you can click on this link for a pdf copy.

Cameron has his own website in which he links all the work he does for AoS, and you can see all his different ideas and creations if you go to
http://theoval.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~gcc/family/cameron/aos/

New Technology to Help Seafarers Stay In Touch

We are delighted to report that as a result of a report undertaken by the Merchant Navy Welfare Board (MNWB) regarding the use of laptop computers with 3G technology by ship visitors, that the MNWB has approved a grant of £600 per AoS chaplain for IT provision.

This report and investigation by the MNWB came about after Paul Atkinson proved how valuable having a laptop to take onto ships was in allowing seafareres to use the internet to contact their loved ones back home. In fact, if you remember, Paul and his team won a digital hero award for this a few months back. The grant from the MNWB, taken with Paul’s Digital Hero prize of £5,000, gives us full funding for the technology package that we had always envisaged for our chaplains and ship visiting teams.  This new technology and its use in ship visiting brings AoS to the forefront of ship visiting in GB.

If you would like to read the full report by the MNWB then please click here for a pdf download.

A New Arrival!

We at head office are thrilled to announce that Marina our Marketing Manager had a happy delivery of  healthy, beautiful baby girl, a little earlier than planned, on Christmas Day! She was born weighing 6.5lbs and they have named her Poppy.

Photo courtesy of Marianne Taylor Photography