Busy Busy Busy

Hello again - in my last post I talked about the new construction we completed at St. John Chrysostom. Well we are now using it big time as our ministry continues to grow.

Right now we have 60 children in CCD between the AUTEC base, St. John Chrysostom and Christ the King. CCD by far is the most time consuming part of our ministry. Lately, however, people seem to be coming out of the woodwork to have their children baptized! Praise God!

One woman had stopped coming to church when the Sisters who had been here left, and were not replaced. (4 years prior to our arrival, the Sisters who had been administering the parish left and were not replaced. Instead, the Archdiocese sent Deacons or Priests to cover weekend liturgies. No resident clergy has been here until we arrived). She hadn't been coming to church for over 5 years but word of mouth in the town finally reached her that things were moving at St. John's. So, she gave us a call. We met her and found that she is a single mom with 5 sons. The 3 older boys were baptized, now in their teens, but had never come to CCD and had never received 1st communion. The other 2 were not baptized. So we did some instruction and a few weeks ago I baptized her 8 year old and her 1 year old sons. Her 8 year old is now in 1st communion classes, they haven't missed a Sunday service, and yesterday the 3 teens showed up to begin their preparation for 1st communion. God is good.

Her situation, unfortunately, is not that rare. Women here can be pressured into showing their love for a man by having his baby - marriage may or may not come later. In her case is hasn't. Her 5 sons are the result of relationships with 3 different men over a 15 year period.

I had a conversation with another girl in a similar situation and asked her if she was considering marrying the father of her daughter and she told me "Oh no Faddah - marriage is a big responsibility, I not ready for dat!" It was an interesting conversation, but she felt that marriage was a commitment she wasn't ready to make, something on a higher level from having a child. We have alot of work to do on that front - she's not alone in that mindset.

But that is only one story. There is another family with 8 grandchildren to be baptized (I think I mentioned them in an earlier post). Well the grandfather of that family had a serious issue with high blood pressure that caused nose bleeds and ultimately they put him on a plane to Nassau to be hospitalized. We spent some time with the family and, thank God, he is back now. If anything happened to him Lord knows how the grandmother would cope with the 8 kids. Of the 4 are old enough to begin instruction for 1st communion, two are in high school and two in primary school. We see them in class now every week.

We have two other couples with children that have also approached us. One with 3 children, the other with 2 - none are baptized, but the recent births have prompted them to come forward as their friends and neighbors tell them to go see the Deacon.

We do have a few CCD classes now being taught in homes of parents. These classes take about a dozen children but we meet with them once a month to do one huge CCD night where I teach on a topic like The Saints (right after All Saints Day), or the Mass, or our next one that'll be on Lent.

Speaking of Lent, the Anglican's have a new priest on the island and we had him visit us for dinner. Hopefully we will actually do an Ecumenical Ash Wed service next week. Still a few practical issues to work out but, with the newly refurbished church, St. John's will host. My hope is that any Catholics that may have gone over to the Anglican church when the Sisters left may see what we are doing here and return. You can pray for us about that one.

So - bottom line, things are jumping and we are running full tilt once more. Keep us in your prayers, we sure need it.

Frank and Ginni