Ministry center in Mobile reaches out to seafarers

A touch of home is what Gregorio Baybay found when he arrived at the International Ministries Center in Mobile. 
  
The first thing the Filipino sailor did after his ship docked was to use the center’s phone to call his wife and two sons. The ensuing 45-minute call was precious to Baybay, who had been away from his family for more than a month and would be for several more, working on a coal ship from Colombia.
  
Thanks to phone cards available at the center, the call bringing assurances of everyone’s well-being was about $5, a fraction of the more than $60 Baybay would have paid had he made such a call from the coal ship.
  
To be able to call his family from the privacy of the center’s phone relaxed some of Baybay’s anxiety about his family. “It’s very relaxing,” he said. “You can feel like you were with them.”
  
A ministry of the Mobile Baptist Association, the center reaches out to the seafarers who pass through the port of Mobile. It provides Internet access, transportation to local stores and churches, recreational activities, worship services and free Bibles in a variety of languages. Sailors can also take advantage of services to wire money to their families from the center, as well as send letters to them.
  
By meeting their immediate practical needs, the center hopes to have an opportunity to share the gospel with the sailors, said Interim Director Bobby Morton.
  
“When we study the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, He saw needs and addressed those needs and provided opportunities to share His love with [others] in a personal way,” Morton said. 
  
He noted the center also works to encourage Christian sailors in their walk with Christ and to be missionaries wherever they go. It also provides them with an opportunity to come off the ships for fellowship with Christians at the center.
  
Morton, who is also director of the center’s International Language School, noted that the center also reaches out to local residents through language, student, hospital and prison ministries. 
  
“We (also) help international churches begin to minister to their people that are coming into the area,” Morton said, explaining that a Filipino church will cook a meal for Filipino sailors or Russian Christians will do outreach to their seafaring countrymen.
  
Baybay said the center’s services provide a welcome relief from the rigors of the ship. “[I]t’s very heartwarming,” he said.
  
And after the hurried phone calls from the ship, the lengthy call to his family from the center was a luxury for him. Baybay said those calls are essential to relieving the unbearable loneliness that can hit.
  
“Some night you can’t sleep, so what do you do? You call home,” he said. “Then you can sleep.” 
  
But it was also a phone call that brought him news of his youngest son’s illness just months after his birth. It wasn’t until Baybay returned home that he discovered 8-month-old Andrei had contracted encephalitis and had been in a coma for a week.
  
Now the phone calls are happier — school progress reports from his oldest son, Arni; news from his wife, Joycelyn; and more. The recent call at the center also brought a report from the neurologist treating Andrei. 
  
Now 5, he has the brain development of a 2-and-a-half year old and is attending physical therapy regularly.
  
Although the long separations are hard on Baybay and his family, the money he earns is three times what he would make if he was working in the Philippines, helping to pay for Andrei’s therapy and other treatments.
  
He’s also hopeful that God will heal Andrei. “I’m still asking God to make him a normal boy,” said Baybay, a member of a Roman Catholic church in the Philippines.
  
Hoping to speed his son’s healing, Baybay is saving money to fly him to see Santo Niño, a statue of the baby Jesus in Cebu, Philippines.
  
In the meantime, Baybay will keep sailing and relying on ministries like the International Ministries Center to keep him in touch with home.
  
For more information, visit the center’s Web site at www.mobilebaptists.org/IMC_WP.htm or call 251-433-7953.