Thursday, May 27, 2010

Summer time Summer time Sum Sum Summer time

Well my friends, CCD is over for the summer and our ministry here now takes on a whole new look and feel. We have time to read, time to plan, time to visit parishioners, our T I M E is our own once again, Alleluia! For example, I just read Sydney Poiter's autobiography 'The Measure of a Man" (a native Bahamian by the way) a really great read with wonderful insights on growing up on Cat Island and how the values his Bahamian parents helped him in making some difficult life choices.
With that said, the list of things we want to do this summer is a long one.

Years ago a small church in Calabash Bay was closed and we'd like to restore that building as a Parish Center. St. Gabriels has been boarded up for years - it would be a big plus to the town if we could restore it AND a place we could set up to do all our CCD classes in next year, as well as hold parish meetings.


We took this pictures several years ago before we moved here permanently. Between then and now a homeless man broke into the church and smashed all 13 windows which are now covered with plywood. Termites are doing their thing and it will be a ton of work. BUT if we can pull it off we'd have tables and chairs for the kids (rather than them sitting on the church floor and using the pew seats as desks).

The building is on the bus route from the High School, so we could do 1 class for all our High School kids together, rather than 1 at Fresh Creek and another at Cargill Creek.

Throw in having a place for social gatherings, parish council meetings, etc. and you can see why this is a priority for us this summer.

Another possible summer job will be a new church up North in Mastic Point. Over 20 years ago the Catholic Church up north was closed when a major building effort was started on Grand Bahamas island and many North Andros Catholics left for work on Grand Bahamas. Well, they are moving back, and a large Haitian population has also sprung up on North Andros. Unfortunately there is no Catholic presence on North Andros so many have joined the Anglican, Methodist or Baptist Churches.


So we started making trips up north and have been "holding church" in the local primary school. After about 6 months of this, with attendance ranging from 3 to 15, we spoke with the Archbishop who gave us permission to investigate putting up 'a simple structure' to guage the demand. Clearly, while meeting in the primary school gives us some sense of the need, having our own place to meet will do alot to grow the Catholic community up there.

Well, since we still own the land I crawled through the bush to find the remains of St. Savior Catholic Church. You can't see any evidence it exists from the street, but once you plow through the vines, dodge the poison wood trees (yes, poison wood - imagine an entire tree where everything, bark, leaves, everything, acts like poison ivy), and keep going through all sorts of brush, eventually you come upon this:



Yup this is all that remains of St. Savior Catholic Church. So we start thinking about what our options are when we discover that the AUTEC Navy base here on Andros is upgrading some of the resident's homes from 60' trailers to permanent structures. The trailers have all seen better days and are destined for demolition - or were, until we had the bright idea that if we could get permission, we could probably convert one of them into a chapel. The Commander has given the idea his blessing, and so has the Director of Base Housing. Now the Navy has to bless it for this to become a reality. THEN we need to get the blessing of the Bahamian government, look into whether we pay duty on 'importing' the trailer from AUTEC soil to Bahamian soil, and figure out how we get it from AUTEC to Mastic Point. Not to mention all the other details like clearing the site, preparing it for a trailer, hooking up utilities, . . .

There is still alot to do on this one. How do you get a 60'x14' trailer from one end of the island to another? How do you get a 14' wide trialer over 2 bridges only 12' wide? Does ANYBODY have a 60' flatbed to move this thing? Not to mention that the roads are 'challenging' to say the least. There are a ton of issues we'd need to resolve so while the trailer idea is still in play, so is building a simple building (although no building is simple once you start thinking about septic systems on an island made of rock).

The summer should be interesting. It won't all be work however. One thing we're getting ready to look into is scuba diving. Think about it, we're living on the 3rd larges barrier reef in the world - why not? Well there is the shark issue, and drowning is another one, but exploring the reefs does have its appeal.

Throw in planning next year's CCD classes, soliciting our next class of RCIA candidates, and possibly putting together a weekend Marriage Seminar for the Bahamians - and we've filled up the summer 'free time' rather nicely, don't you think.

Keep us in your prayers - if we can get half of this done it'll be a great summer.
Till next time