British Adventist pastor Viv Llewellyn claims he's found the perfect pastime to occupy his retirement.
British Adventist pastor Viv Llewellyn claims he’s found the perfect pastime to occupy his retirement. Since retiring nearly 10 years ago, he has rekindled his love of the sea and now works with the Mission to Seafarers in Southampton, the busy port on the south coast of England.
After leaving school at the age of 15, Llewellyn served on training ships and attended college courses in preparation for life as an officer in the merchant navy.
“I didn’t really concentrate at my school in Wales,” Llewellyn explains. “I was always down at the docks watching the ships coming and going. During a parents evening at school my headmaster took my mother aside and told her I would never do any good until I went to sea. Mother got the message, let me leave school, and I started my sea training.”
After completing his apprenticeship, Llewellyn’s travels took him to areas of hardship and poverty, which, he said, changed his life. He decided his calling was in the ministry, and became pastor of the Adventist Church in Southampton.
“When I retired, I learned there was a vacancy to work with seafarers and I found my old love of the sea was still there,” Llewellyn says.
Even on cold, wet, winter evenings Llewellyn can be seen scurrying between the legs of massive container straddle carriers, scaling gangplanks and negotiating windswept decks on tankers, cargo vessels and liners. He leaves newspapers and spiritual magazines for the crew, and offers hospitality to visiting sailors who often take his minibus back to Southampton’s Mission Club.
In the past, Llewellyn says, many sailors headed for the nightclubs and bars, regularly got drunk and finished up in the red-light district. “That is a thing of the past,” he says. “Many sailors are from the Philippines. They are on low wages and send most of their money home to their families. Now they prefer to come to the mission and telephone home.”
Crew members from around the world now board Llewellyn’s “Flying Angel” bus and head for the well appointed seafarers club. The mission is also known as “The Flying Angel” or “Flying Angel Club” because of its logo—a white angel on a navy blue background.
This Welshman prefers to listen than to preach, and his seafaring friends have often opened their hearts to Llewellyn. “They know I am a chaplain and I leave them to raise religious matters first. They are all very respectful and most of them call me ‘Father!’”
Llewellyn adds, “I have talked with sailors whose wives have left them, helped a chief engineer whose parents had recently been murdered, and was instrumental in reuniting a mother with her sailor-son who she had not seen for 19 years.”
After an evening in port, the sailors are delivered back to their vessels. Llewellyn’s mission keeps him busy from the time the sun goes down until the midnight hour.
“The mission comes first,” he continues. “But I’ve never got the saltwater out of my system. It’s there for life and, through this work, I can satisfy both.”
The Mission to Seafarers, run by the Anglican Church, is active in 300 ports around the world. Begun in 1835, The Mission, made up of people from various faiths, looks after the spiritual welfare of seafarers of all races and creeds.
