Gary Roosma can attest to the challenges of organizing a worship service onboard a cargo ship.
It’s a complicated process, reaching out to the rotating cast of captains aboard the ships in the Port of Vancouver, for a congregation of sailors who may or may not even want to gather. But experience has taught him it’s a worthwhile effort.
He remembers one officer who accosted him with a question. “Where were you yesterday?” the man said. “We needed you yesterday.”
When Roosma asked why, the sailor explained there was a horrible storm at sea and the captain had sent him to do something on the deck as the waves crashed around them. As he held onto a rail, a massive wave hit the ship and carried the man overboard, out to the open sea.
“I knew I was dead,” the seafarer told Roosma. “All I could think of was ‘Lord, please watch over my family.’ And then I prayed, ‘It would be really nice if you would save me too.’”
At the instant he prayed, the man recalled, a rope brushed across his chest, and he grasped it and held on with every ounce of his strength. He dislocated his arm, but his life was spared.
“We need a service onboard this ship,” the man said, and Roosma, a chaplain at the Port of Vancouver with the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) Ministry to Seafarers agreed to lead them in prayer and worship that day.
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Source: Christianity Today
