Photo:  The packing crew for the 2016 Christmas Boxes for Seafarers.

Christmas Boxes for Port of Houston Seafarers 2017

We are looking forward to another generous and joyful year of preparing and sending the Christmas Boxes for the Seafarers at the Port of Houston.  A few years ago we revived this ministry and it has gone quite well.  The Men in Mission organization of MLLC organizes this each year.  They are thankful for the congregational partnership in this caring ministry.

Here is a link to our special page about this project.  It will have the information from this page, plus updates as these become available.

Here is a bit of history of our preparation and sending of boxes:

In 2014 there were 34 boxes assembled.

In 2015 there were 50 boxes assembled.

In 2016 there were 49 boxes assembled.

The Port of Houston Chaplains are our ambassadors to these seafarers. They visit the ships and bring the boxes to the crews. On their web site the chaplains tell us: “Crew sizes vary between 8 and 30, with an average number of 22 seafarers to gift per ship. In 2015, we placed 12,278 gifts on board 538 ships which had seafarers from 65 different countries! These gifts had been donated to the seafarers by 246 churches and organizations! The Christmas boxes are personally carried to each ship by your staff of Port Chaplains.” Their web site is: http://houstonseafarers.com/

With our work together at MLLC we can help reach even more with the love of Jesus Christ.

Here is the official notice about this program from the Port of Houston Chaplains.  Click this link.

For this year (2017), please gather items such as these for the men on the ships – you can buy things throughout the year and drop these off at any time.  There is a large blue storage bin for this purpose in the room directly across from the church office:
Empty shoe boxes or purchased plastic shoe boxes to pack the items.
Address books
Band-aids (fabric)
Baseball caps
2018 Calendars
Comb
Dental Floss
Antiperspirant/deodorant
Disposable razors
Flashlight and batteries
Kleenex – small packs
Lip balm
Lotion
Nail clippers
Gold Bond cream
Gold Bond powder
Hot Chocolate (individual serving size)
Needles and thread
Q-tips
Shaving cream
Soap
Shampoo
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Gum and hard candy
Key chains
Pocket-sized notebooks
Mechanical pencils
Pens
Playing cards
Microwave popcorn (individual packages)
Socks
Sudoku books
Texas souvenirs
T-shirts
USB flash drives
Word search books

Here are some of the crew working, and some photos from when our boxes were delivered to the Houston International Seafarers Center.