Newsletter 2012
The Seafarers Center
Extending welcome, service, and friendship to mariners and their families in the twin ports of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin
THE HARBOR LIGHT
November 2012
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The Seafarers Center 2024 West Third Street in Duluth, MN
Since 1974 this Benedictine Rectory, of the former St. Clemens Catholic Parish, has served as a home away from home for visiting seafarers. These days, the guest rooms are occupied by visiting students and working men. Center for Validation and Change, a counseling agency, makes use of the front offices. Our Seafarers Clubroom is just inside the lower entrance on the alley side of this building. Ample parking is available next to our two vans. |
Services that we offer:
At our center we offer:
Everywhere
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The MV Heloise and her crews have been regular visitors to our Twin Ports over the last few years.
 Mess Room on The MV Heloise  September 2011 |
Contact information Address: 2024 West Third St. Duluth, MN 55806 |
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Guests living at the seafarers center. 
In August we bid farewell and Godspeed to James Kunz who had been living with us more than two years. A UMD graduate he now is a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Staffer in Southern Minnesota. 
Chong Myung and Sanghee Park from South Korea have been with us for more than a year. He is doing doctoral work in Engineering at UMD. Newly married before he came to Duluth, Sang Hee has joined him in the states and is working on her english and piano.  Volunteers and Residents at a Monthly Get Together |
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Center Volunteers and Occasional Ship Visitors
The Seafarers Center has been blessed with new volunteers over the past year. Teri and Joanne volunteer each week to organize our donations, Christmas gift items and free store inventory such as clothing and miscellaneous. They are able and willing and take on a variety of tasks. Linda has begun ship visiting and researched and created souvenir Seafarer Center Picture magnets. Toni has been involved with our prayer ministry and keeping the clubroom ready for company. Houcine (pictured with ship visitors), born in Morocco, his new role visiting ships and conversing in the four languages he speaks besides English. He is also very good with the tech aspects of our ministry. As a person of Muslim faith he enriches our offering and receiving of hospitality. In her sixth year of volunteering, Andrea has collaborated with a Duluth company to produce a souvenir cap with our logo which matches the nice jackets created by Chris Kerkes a year ago. |
 We’re getting ready for the 2011 Give to the Max Day. This online giving opportunity was launched in Minnesota two years ago. We were happy at the first year’s results and the outcome was nearly double for us last year in 2010. If you would like to help us with our regular ministry needs, please consider going online on November 16th to www.giveMN.org and type in “Twin Ports Ministry to Seafarers.” Your online gifts and any regular gifts are crucial in meeting our goals for the year. We again will be contacting our friends before Christmas as we again will be bringing handmade and thoughtfully gathered gifts for seafarers so that they are remembered at Christmas. New look to our website
Thanks to our board president, David Warner, our website has new capabilities such as picture and news sharing. Seafarers and friends if you would like to join in on the networking, please check out our updated website at TheSeafarersCenter.org |
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Getting Ready for Christmas  Faith United Methodist Church Women Women from Faith United Methodist Church in Superior were the first group to arrive this year and begin packing Christmas gift boxes for distribution to the vessels in November and December. Jessie Westman (left of center) has been wrapping gifts almost every year since the Seafarers Ministry operated out of a trailer house on Garfield Avenue. In each 9″x9″x4″ gift box they packed a ditty bag filled with
A hand knitted watchcap and seafarers scarf complete the package. Patterns for these and the 12″x16″ ditty bags are available on our website, TheSeafarersCenter.org, or by calling 218-727-2842 or emailing Director@TheSeafarersCenter.org. On top of each box is a handmade Christmas card created by youth of the church, Sunday School children, and this year even some from a women’s prison. Each card is “priceless”. For more information please contact the Seafarers Center. |
Guests from the American Steamship Company
 Leon Sulerud, safety educator, on the right is conferring with A.S.C. vice president, Tom Anderson from Chicago. Both Anderson and Sulerud offered ideas about security access requirements for visiting their "lakers". If captains or crew members desire any of our services in port, they may place our name/s on their visitors list. Leon Sulerud, from A.S.C.,contacted us about needing a room in Duluth-Superior to offer fire and first aid safety instruction for crew members of American Steamship vessels. From October 25-28, our club- room turned classroom was used mornings for a comprehensive safety course. Sulerud often teaches on a floating classroom as he boards A.S.C vessels and instructs as they sail to their next port a Great Lake or two away. Teaching each subject twice, so, off-duty, all crew can participate, he spreads out his resusci-Anne and other props in mess or rec rooms or hallways as needed. When the teaching is done he leaves the vessel at its next dock, Lake Michigan or Lake Erie, only to travel to his next assignment hopefully bound for Duluth where he and his wife, 
Robyn, have their home. The Seafarers Center is very active with the foreign flagged vessels, “salties”, and as volunteers and time permit, we will to be able to provide more service to the U.S. and Canadian “lakers.” Pictured are Thomas S. Anderson (left) with our director Thomas K Anderson. (what are the odds?) |
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Two Weeks before Christmas, 2010
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Board Members hosted an Open House On August 4, 2011, at the Seafarers Center, we recognized volunteers, board members, and the many congregations, organizations, and individuals who contribute to the operation of our Twin Ports Ministry to Seafarers. We are grateful to our board members for hosting a wonderful event on a warm summer afternoon. Everyone who attended had a good time and enjoyed some tasty refreshments. Thanks to Dianne Hilden for taking pictures and our many friends for attending.
 Board members: back row, l to r : Ron Johnson, David Warner, Jack Schilling, Rev. Robyn Weaver, Ed Hall, Rev. Sarah Kerkes, Carol Kelley, and Mike Jaros. Seated, l to r: Rev. Tom Anderson, Bob Davis, Rev. Doug Paulson, Jim Banks, and Fr. Robert Sipe. (not pictured - Carol Wolosz) Caps
Director’s Notes As we are nearing the completion of our 2011 season, I am thinking of some of the markers of the past year. We are very grateful for a number of new volunteers who have made it possible for us to coordinate our support from congregations with the needs of the seafarers we meet each week. Also, I want to thank all of the congregations, groups, and individuals who donate and share in this ministry with seafarers. This is a successful ministry because of God’s varying call to many. We have been provided with the essentials for being a home away from home for seafarers and a friendship ministry which helps connect mariners with their families and communities. We thank the many captains and crews who have welcomed us aboard their vessels and who are the “ministers” who every day of the year are able to encourage and support one another amidst their life and duties aboard ship.
May God guide and guard you on your voyages. |
A Seafarer’s Prayer O God, I ask you to take me into your care and protection along with all those who sail in ships. Make me alert and wise in my duties. Make me faithful in the time of routine and prompt to decide and courageous to act in any time of crisis. Protect me in the dangers and the perils of the sea; and even in the storm grant that there may be peace and calm within my heart. When I am far from home and far from loved ones and far from the country which I know, help me to be quite sure that, wherever I am, I can never drift beyond your love and care. Take care of my loved ones in the days and weeks and months when I am separated from them, sometimes with half the world between them and me. Keep me true to them and keep them true to me, and every time that we have to part, bring us together in safety and in loyalty again. This I ask for your love’s sake. Amen Mariner’s Prayer Dear Lord, be good to me, the sea is so wide and my boat is so small. Amen A Waking Prayer Gracious God, I thank you that you have kept us this watch from danger and harm, and I pray that today you would protect and keep us in your care. I offer myself to your service and the well-being of my shipmates and family. Amen Prayer before Sleeping Gracious God, I thank you that you have kept us today; and I pray that you would forgive my sins and wrong that I have done. I give my cares to you. I ask that you grant me a good rest and renewal of my body, soul, and mind. Amen |
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