Easter and beyond

Well I cannot believe I haven't posted since Palm Sunday.

Suffice it to say we had a very busy Holy Week and Easter. Last year, once Easter was finished, we didn't see a priest again for 4 months dramatically complicating our First Communion children who were looking forward to First Penance and First Communion. Consequently, this year we decided to do First Penance and First Communion during our Easter services, which were fantastic.

Fr. Bill Martin, once again, travelled from Vermont to be with us for Holy Week. Fr. Martin is a retired Air Force Chaplain who enjoys staying at the AUTEC base. He is also an avid fly fisherman so whenever he's not in church, he is wading in the surf looking for the elusive bonefish - and Andros is the bonefish capitol of the world!

We did 4 Palm Sunday services to kick things off, then I had a few days to prepare for Easter. This began with preparing for the footwashing on Holy Thursday (we only did one of those with all parishes coming together for that one). Then there were 3 Good Friday services (Fr. Martin did the one at AUTEC and did two, one at Cargill Creek and Fresh Creek. Then it was off to build the fire pit for the Vigil, prepare the candle that St. Timothy's in Norwood, MA had graciously donated, set up for an enlarged choir and prepare the oils for those who would be baptized and confirmed at the Easter Vigil. Oh, and don't let me forget that during the afternoon, we did a First Penance Service for the children.

When Fr. Martin saw the fire pit and the driftwood I had accumulated he commented that wood that has been saturated in salt water doesn't burn that well, creating a bit of anxiety for me, but when the fire was started it was the best we have had here. Literally, flames were 3'-4' high and it went off without a hitch. My singing the Exultet - not so much. Practicing that 5 minute solo was great, but real time my voice cracked once or twice, c'est la vis!

For me, the high point of the Vigil is conveying the sacraments on my RCIA candidates (yes I said MY RCIA candidates). We had 4 people in the program this year but 2 had missed so many classed due to the demands of their job we decided they should wait - but the other 2, a husband who was baptized and confirmed, and his wife, who was confirmed, were literally beaming! Then, 4 children joined them and all 6 recieved their first communion.

The Vigil took about 2 and a half hours and then on Sunday we were at AUTEC for an early morning Easter Day service, where another child recieved First Penance before the service, and then First Communion during Mass.

After AUTEC we headed south to Cargill Creek for another Easter Day service where, yet another child recieved First Penance before the service, and then First Communion during Mass.

This particular service had another great event for me, one of the children from the community at the northern end of Andros in Mastic Point was baptized and recieved First Communion. I was so thrilled to see the fruit of all those hour-long drives up north bearing fruit in this way.

So - Easter was a hit! He is risen, yes He is truly risen!

After Easter the Archdiocese has its annual Clergy Retreat, so I packed up for a week in Nassau and Ginni headed back to the US to get in some nursing time (late rent from our US tenants is creating a financial challenge for us). She should be back mid-May.

I can honestly say this was the best of my retreats here in Nassau. It is my 3rd Easter retreat and this one was quite good, focusing on the role of Clergy, our ministry, our call, how we work together (or not) - very real-world practical material from a Fr. Ron Knott from St. Meinrad's Seminary in Indiana.

Now that I am back on Andros (sans Ginni) it is CCD prep all morning, and CCD all afternoon. I do have a few marriage prep/baptism prep/RCIA sessions to fill my evenings - and then there is the ever-present need for homily prep, writing up the parish bulletin, Sundays' Prayers of the Faithful, and the financial reports - all those behind the scenes things that need to get done to keep the place running.

Well, enough for now - please keep us in your prayers - till next time.

Happy Holy Week!

Well I just came in from going out with my machete to chop palm branches for Palm Sunday and it made me realize I hadn't posted here for a few weeks, so here we go -

First off, you cannot imagine how much I appreciate the support staff at St. Timothy's during Holy Week. Music issues and liturgical planning issues are all screaming through my head while, back in Norwood, a team of dedicated folks deal with all these details. Not so here on Andros, let me tell you. Cutting my own palms is just one of many details.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me try to catch up on a few things that have happened over the last few weeks. First is Jr. Junkanoo. I may have mentioned this before but we finally got our cable back that allows us to download pics from our camera so I wanted to share these with you. Junkanoo is usually a Christmas Mardi-gras like celebration and it is huge here. In the sping the children all over the family islands have Jr Junkanoo competition with costumes, bands, floats -the whole nine yards. Here, for example, are the junknaoo drums that have been set out in the sun so the goatskin can stretch and create a better sound.

These are actually old garbage cans, and oil drums that have been decorated with actual real goatskin stretched over the top. We have 2 in our church as part of the music ministry!

Here is an example of one of the floats.

You cannot imagine the amount of time and energy it takes to make one of these. Put about 20 kids in home made costumes behind the float, with drums, horns, whistles, cowbells - all dancing up a storm and you begin to get an idea of what Jr Junkanoo can be. Add about 10 of these floats and the party can go on for hours.

Leaving Jr Junkanoo for a moment - I have told you that CCD pretty much dominates our mid-week workload. All the support we got from home helped us to restore St. Gabriel's church in Calabash Bay and we have been using our new Fr. Gabriel Roerig Parish Center for classes.

Here is a pic of the building mid-construction

Here is a pic of our first Marriage Prep class that we held at the Parish Center. We've come a long way baby!

Most family island parishes send their engaged couples to Nassau for Pre-Cana. Its a real feather in our cap that we were able to do our own class locally. Having done marriage prep for several years at St. Timothy's in Norwood gave Ginni and I a wealth of experience that we were able to put to good use in this class.

Most recently, the Archdiocese of Nassau just held its CHRISM MASS. This is the liturgy where the Archbishop consecrates all the holy oils that will be used over the next year. Here is a pic of the consecration that gives you a nice view of the sanctuary and the crowd of priests and deacons around the altar.

Here is a pic of the recessional with your's truly in procession. What was a treat for me at this liturgy was that I was selected as one of the Deacons to bring up one of the oils and present them to the Archbishop for consecration. It was a honor to be asked and I was thrilled to be involved in such a way at such a sacred moment.

Well, enough for now, this will be a crazy week for sure. We will welcome new Christians with baptisms during the Easter Vigil, and bring others into full communion with the Church through Confirmation. This year we will also do First Penance and First Communion during Easter so it will be a joyfilled day. (We learned to do First Communion early when, last year, we didn't see a priest on Andros for 4 months after Easter!)

Pray for us - we certainly need it! Till next time

Beyond Busy

Well my friends you cannot imagine how many times I have said, "Oh I gotta put this in the blog" and yet I haven't had a minute to blog - literally.

Lets see, where to begin - well, ever since Ginni returned (and she is already planning her next trip to MA), we have been booked solid, with not a day to ourselves. This is primarily due to our scheduling our first pre-Cana program. We have two couples who want to get married. One is a Bahamian couple, the other a couple from the AUTEC base where he works, while she is still finishing college in the US (FL). This complicates life since, he cannot attend the 10 week series in FL and for her to attend it here, she needs to fly to Andros.

After talking to both couples it was decided that the best thing to do to cover all the material was for us to do two all-day Saturday sessions. It would be a challenge, but she committed to flying back to back weekends from FL to Andros - so we had a plan. Now all we needed to do was build a pre-Cana program.

We spoke with the Archdiocese of Nassau and got a clear understanding of their requirements, then we talked to the parish in Florida and got a list of what they needed to satisfy the requirements of their diocese. Using material we had brought with us from the Marriage Prep program at St. Timothy's, and a six CD set provided by the Archdiocese of Nassau, Ginni and I put together six presentations, and we folded in the six CD's, to come up with a pretty comprehensive program. We were able to get another Bahamian couple to join us for discussion groups and we were good to go. It went off without a hitch and we got a wonderful picture of us all but now we cannot find the cable that goes from the digital camera to the PC so showing you those pics will have to wait.

Now, while all that sounds nifty, you cannot imagine the amount of work putting all that together was, plus keep doing our regular 4 CCD classes, RCIA, and 4 weekend liturgies. To say we did not have a minute is no joke.

Bottom line - we pulled it off, but it meant two, very full, 7 day weeks with no break BUT IT GETS BETTER. In the midst of all that we had a death in the parish. So, while preparing and presenting, we were dealing with a family in mourning and the planning of the funeral.

In past blogs I have mentioned the grandparents raising 7 grandchildren. It is a difficult situation and we are trying our best to help this family in so many ways - everything from food packages to proctoring exams when we learned one girl had been kept home to do chores so often she missed final exams. Well - a year ago Grampa died and it was a very emotional funeral. The death that surprised us all now was Grammie, who died of a sudden stroke.

So our plate runneth over. The funeral was this past Saturday and, after planning it all out with the family, coordinating the vigil and the funeral with the mortician (all morticians here are in Nassau so we had to plan details like shipping the body back to Andros on the ferry). And the elephant in the room that nobody is discussing is willing to discuss right now is what will happen to the grandchildren. Will their mothers take them back? Will the adult children of Grammie and Grampa who are here (all unemployed) suddenly become responsible. Pray.

To describe a Bahamian funeral is not something I think I can do in this blog. Suffice it to say there is emotion. Family members were crying, wailing, falling on the floor, and more. I had 3 surprises during this funeral. First, our representative in Parliament showed up. I think he was there because this family was a major supporter of his party, not because he was particulary close to Grammie. Second, well after the service had begun, the Anglican priest comes walking down the center aisle of the church, in his vestments and comes into the sanctuary and takes a seat. I was blown away! Unannounced, he just arrives. Suffice it to say he did not have a speaking role during the funeral but I MUST talk to other Bahamian clergy to see if this is the norm here - do clergy just show up at funerals of other denominations here? It was not something I would ever have guessed was possible but I guess it is.

The third thing was the most scary. I said Bahamian funerals can be emotional - well we are at the cemetary, the pall bearers have the casket over the hole. It is supported by three straps that are connected to a mechanical gear that, when cranked, will lower the casket. There are 2 pall bearers on each side and one at the head of the casket. Well, the cranking begins, the casket begins to descend, and the pall bearer at the head of the casket, her son, yells "Oh no mama don't leave me" and dives onto the casket - yep, right on top of it, spread eagle! Well the straps at his end of the casket give way and thank God the other pall bearers were still holding on otherwise it would have come crashing down. It took a good 15 minutes to pry him off the casket, all the while screaming and crying. Not an experience I look forward to repeating.

So Ginni and I are going into our 4th week without a break and we're a bit tired, but now Lent is upon us and Ash Wednesday is looming. I will do 3 Ash Wednesday liturgies, one at each church and the final one will be an Ecumenical service at the Anglican church, with me preaching. Last year we hosted, now its their turn. I actually just had a phone call from the Anglican priest wondering what I was doing for ashes. It turns out that, although he is hosting the service, he has neglected to do anything about actually having ashes to distribute - so he wondered if I could provide them. Fortunately I had asked parishioners to return last years' palms for burning to make ashes and I have an impressive pile. He wondered if he could have them by tomorrow! So tomorrow morning I will be burning palms.

Did I mention Jr Junkanoo in all this? Junkanoo is a Christmas festival where local groups make floats and costumes and have bands and dancers and all march down Bay St. on Nassau and are judged. It is a MAJOR BIG DEAL here. Well, the local Minister of Youth and Culture pulled together Jr Junkanoo competition for the primary schools of Andros and, somewhere in the midst of everything else I described, we had a Jr Junkanoo competition here in Fresh Creek. Again I got some great pics that I will post the day we find the lost cable. It really was quite impressive. All the children, the teachers, and adult volunteers did a fantastic job. We saw the start of the competition and 3 of the 7 groups, but had to leave to get back to the rectory to teach our RCIA class (you can only double book yourself so far).

So, right now Ginni is leading choir practice and instead of writing an Ash Wednesday homily I decided to take time out and get something onto this blog for you all. If you can believe it, there is more, but enough for now.

Pray for us. PULEEZE Pray for us.

Another death and our 1st Pre Cana Program

Hello All - well this week we flew to Nassau for our monthly clergy meeting and actually had a great time reconnecting with all the other Deacons and Priests in the Archdiocese.

Just prior to leaving we learned of the death of a parishioner. She had a stroke and was airlifted to Nassau, then later died in the hospital there. This ill be an emotional funeral with much wailing and crying but it will be awhile for this family to get themselves together. I'll share more about this in another post.

Right now Ginni and I are putting a ton of energy into putting a Pre-Cana program together for 2 couples preparing for marriage. Thank God we worked on the Marriage Prep program at St. Timothy's - without that experience we would be up a creek. We actually are creating a bit of a hybrid program combining alot of what we did at St. Tim's and using a 6 CD set recommended by the Archdiocese. It really is a very well done series of talks on human sexuality and marriage that, when combined with the practical components of marriage prep really results in a good program. So Ginni and I will deal with topics like Expectations, Adjustments, Communication, Finance, etc. and we'll let the DVD deal with sexuality then jump in to deal with all the questions that come up. We plan to fit all this into two very full Saturday's - starting the day after tomorrow!

While this is dominating our time right now we are still teaching 4 CCD classes and RCIA so it is run run run - hurry hurry hurry - Oh, did you look at the readings for Sunday yet? sigh.

We had a priest on New Years, but not since, so while we were in Nassau I picked up more consecrated hosts to hold us over until we know a priest is coming. Before you know it our kids will be ready for First Penance so we hope a priest will visit us within the next month or so.

Enough for now, I will stay in touch
Peace
F.

Snow, sleet, freezing rain (and other storms)

Well as I watch CNN from the rectory here on Andros I can see that the snow up north just keeps coming and coming. I really feel for all my friends and family dealing with 10-15" of new snow, plus sleet and freezing rain with temps soon to drop into single digits. All the while here it is mid 70s during the day and 60s at night.

With that said, in the summer they will enjoy 80 degree temps while we melt with temps over 100 and are forced to scan the horizon for hurricanes. Look at it this way - when you have a storm up north you shovel it and life goes on -- if we have a storm down here, we may have to rebuild our house.

Anyway - while I bask in the lovely Bahamian weather I am dealing with a variety of other storms. The violent crime here continues to escalate with 12 murders in January to start off the new year. At this rate we will clearly set another record in 2011. It is a concern for me because I have a few family situations that are beginning to become potential sites of domestic violence.

One woman has asked me to help her get her son out of her home. He is a drug user and has become increasingly more violent in his outbursts. I dropped by unexpectedly and we were having a chat under a mango tree when he returned yesterday. Not knowing I was there he came around the corner, clearly irritated about something but backed off when he saw me. What gave me pause was the 2' machete he was carrying. His mother and siblings saw him, their eyes got big and he began to say something to one of the kids when I stood up, stopping him mid-sentence. Seeing me and just nodded in my direction saying, "Faddah", then turned and left. It is clear that I need to do more here but the level of social services and police support is minimal so it will be a challenge.

On another front, one of my CCD kids has shown up with what look like cigarette burns on his scalp. I spoke with a nurse in town and she said that there is a scalp fungus they are seeing in school children and she has a free shampoo to address it if I could get the boy to the clinic. It would also be a way to evaluate if it is the fungus or abuse. After speaking with the mother about the fungus and the free shampoo she promised to take the boy in. I learned later, however, that the mom showed up at the clinic to get the shampoo, but didn't bring the boy. So that is still something I'm concerned about.

Ginni remains in the US getting in some nursing time (between the snow storms). One of our tenants have left and, lacking that rental income, we need the extra money to pay mortgage, insurance, taxes and water bills on our home up north. Clearly it would be better to sell them but the real estate market is still pretty poor so we are stuck in the landlord-tenant mode in order to pay the bills. We are hopeful she will be able to return in another week.

This week includes the feast of the Presentation (when the infant Jesus was brought to the Temple in compliance with Mosaic Law) and a tradition in our church is that on that day all the candles to be used in church over the next year are blessed (Christ is the light of the world so we use this feast of His presentation in the Temple to bless our candles). Since our parishioners can be on boats fishing, or off island, or working - rather than having a special liturgy I did a short Candlemas service at the beginning of all our liturgies on Sunday. It seemed to be well recieved and I was glad I could do something to make the liturgy a bit special.

Thursday is the feast of St. Blase, so while I blessed the candles at the beginning of our service, at the end I invited all who wanted, to come forward and have their throats blessed. It was quite the liturgy (all four of them).

Speaking of 4 liturgies, last Sunday after our 4th liturgy, I was driving the Haitian man home who has been attending services with us in Mastic Point. I asked him about the return from exile of ex-president Baby Doc Duvalier to Haiti. I was shocked to find out that he, and just about all Haitian people are thrilled he has returned. They're very happy he has returned from exile and are confident he will not go to jail but will be eventually elected President of Haiti once more. His english is poor so I couldn't really get much more out of him as to why he was so well recieved - other than the fact that when he arrived, and his limo was driving to Port a Prince, Baby Doc was tossing money from the limo windows - I guess that is one way to get a political following in a country ravished by poverty. Nobody is asking where that money came from in the first place. Time will tell where that goes.

Enough for now - please keep us in your prayers - especially for those family situations I'll be dealing with.

Peace

Back on Andros

In my last post I asked you to pray that the 2' of snow in Boston wouldn't impact my flights back to Andros and it clearly worked. All my flights were on time and today it was mid 70s all day long while I know Ginni was wrestling with sleet and freezing rain .

I have had a few experiences in my first week that I thought I would share with you. I arrived late Friday and found out about 3 deaths that took place while away. Yes, one was another murder in Nassau. A school teacher who is related to the owner of the local grocery store was shot and killed while away. Our parishioner was clearly upset and called from Nassau to tell me she wouldn't be in church Sunday since she was going to be dealing with this. While we live in an 'island paradise', crime and violence in Nassau is out of control.

One of the local addicts is someone that frequently visits the Church looking for a sandwich or a soda. We have some history with this man, not all of it good. He has a history of committing robberies in town and most people have shunned him. On occasion he has taken advantage of our generosity and I've had to cut ties with him more than once. It has not been a good relationship, but eventually we reconcile (until the next time). There is clearly a pattern.

Anyway - his mother is one of the 3 deaths I mentioned earlier. She died in the hospital in Nassau and, since the family doesn't have the money to ship the body back to Andros for a funeral, the funeral and burial were in Nassau - which meant our friend had to go to Nassau. Coincidentally, the church where they held the funeral was the Cathedral - a rather impressive venue to say the least.

So, this morning I am praying my Morning Prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament and from behind me I hear "Deacon, can I come into the Church?" Well I wasn't expecting that in the midst of the dead silence of my Morning Prayer so I jumped about 3 feet, but then told him that, certainly he could come in. (You must realize that in the 2 years we have been here he has come to our front door to ask for food almost daily - but he has never set foot inside the church).

So he comes into Church and sits in the back and I continue Morning Prayer and I hear the pages of a missalette being turned. It struck me that here we are, together in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Me, the Deacon, with my prejudices about this man, and he, the addict, having just lost his mother, sits in silence just a few pews behind me. Ahh, the unifying presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

After about 5 minutes I hear the phone ring in my office and, since I was actually expecting a call, I went out and left him alone in Church while I took the call. When I came back he stood up and we talked a little. His experience in the Cathedral was moving and he knows he does bad things, but asked if I thought it was OK for him to come back to church. He knows some of the members might give him a hard time, but he wants to try. He also asked if I thought it would be OK for him to go to confession the next time we have a priest. Well, this was like a wave crashing down upon me. I am thrilled he has had the experience he has had and I really do hope he shows up on Sunday. I do know that some of the local folks will ask me if I know what I am doing since 'clearly he is only here to case the joint' (I've heard that before). But if there is a glimmer of hope that he is serious, it is worth the risk.

After we talked, he asked if he might have a sandwich and, since all I had was peanut butter and jelly - he took it gladly and was on his way. Keep Herbie in your prayers.

Now then, let me tell you about that phone call. Arnie had called a few days earlier asking me if I could find the baptismal records of his father. He thought his Dad was born in the early 1920's in Small Hope, which would take some researching on my part so I took his number and promised to call him back. Well his number was a cell phone and calling cell phones on Andros can be an adventure. In the Bahamas you buy your cell phone and then buy phone cards. You enter the phone card number into your phone and you have that much credit for your phone. So you can get a $20 phone card and use $20 worth of phone calls - when you have used all your minutes your phone is busy if anyone calls. So, you guessed it, after I find Arnie's Dad I call his number and I get that rapid busy that says to me that he has no minutes and all I can do is hope he calls back - which he did when I was praying Morning Prayer with Herbie in the back row.

So I take the call and explain what I had found and he was thrilled and asked if he could come get a Baptismal Certificate of his father's baptism and I said "Sure, why don't you come over around 10AM" Fine, all set - I figure Small Hope is the next town he shouldn't have any problem getting here by 10. Well 10 comes and goes, 10:30, 11, around 11:30 there's a knock on the door and its him. We talk a bit, I give him the Certificate, and he explains that he is trying to prove his Bahamian Citizenship. There is no record of his birth (the keeping of Birth Certificates is better now, but 40 years ago if an island midwife didn't bother to send a notice to Nassau, the birth may or may not ever get on the books and, in his case it didn't). So he was able to get a legal Affadavit that he was the son of Alton and, if he could prove Alton was a Bahamian, then he could prove he was a Bahamian - except, there is no Birth Certificate for Alton either! The fact that the Church maintains Baptismal Certificates however, would prove to be his salvation. With Alton's Baptismal Cert he could show Alton was born in the Bahamas and, with his Affadavit he could prove he was Alton's son and he would be home free. Of course if Alton had ever bothered to get Arnie baptized it would have been much easier, but that's another story.

What impressed me about Arnie however, was not this story. It was what he went through to get to me and pick up the Certificate. It turns out that while his Dad was born in Small Hope, the next town to Fresh Creek. The reason it took him so long to get to me was that Arnie lives in Lowe Sound - at the very northern end of the island and has no car. Arnie hitch-hiked for 60 miles to see me and when he left he was going to do it all over again to get home. What an amazing testimony to his perserverance to straighten all this out and prove he is a legal Bahamian.

And finally, there is Jane. Jane is 89, blind in one eye, and since her recent stroke she is homebound. In her house there are 4 daughters, all with several children, all unmarried and the fathers of these children are nowhere to be seen. Anyway, we know this family pretty well and I have been bringing her communion for several months on Sunday afternoon. For the past two weeks one of the boys in the house, about 10 years old, has been coming to church on Sunday, all by himself. This week when I brought her communion she started by asking 'Did you see my boy in Church today?' I said I did and she said, that's my grandson and I want him to be Catholic just like me. She has been evangelizing her grandchildren! The daughters consider themselves Catholic, although they don't come to church and none of their children are baptized. I have spoken to them about it but hadn't gotten anywhere - but Jane has!

When she told me she wanted this boy baptized I said, "Well that is nice Jane, but we need his mother to give permission for that to happen". At which point Jane turns to the door and yells, "Theresa, come in here, Deac wants to talk to you!" In comes Theresa and in a few short minutes she agreed to have her son baptized - and his little brother! I explained she needed to find God-parents that were Catholic and we planned to do a Baptism Prep session, then schedule the Baptism. THEN, she tells me to come in the next room to meet her cousin who just had a baby and wanted to have her baptized as well! So off I go and there's a young mom with a 2 month old sweetie in her arms, and the Daddy - so I give them the same little talk about God-parents and planning a Baptism Prep session and it feels like we are on our way to 3 new members of our Church - all because Jane was doing her job, without pressure, without guilt, just simply witnessing to the importance of being a Christian and, in God's time, people heard her.

So, as you can see it has been quite a week. Ginni is still in the US so I am flying solo with CCD and RCIA and the choir misses her terribly (actually everyone misses her terribly). So please keep me in your prayers.

Till next time

Travelling up North

Well we finally got to fly up to NY to see our new grandson - and what a joy! He is a precious little Christmas present that we totally enjoyed holding and hugging and kissing and cuddling for hours on end. Joe and Liza are doing great with little Leo and we enjoyed our time visiting with them and our other son Mike. Uncle Mike competed with us for 'Leo-time' but we managed to share him as best we could.

Mike has a 4-wheel drive jeep and, after the first snow storm of this trip he and I went '4-wheeling' through the forest on trails very few cars would dare attempt. We plowed through the white stuff with ease and I realized many of my Bahamian friends would get a kick out of seeing their Deacon in the snow so I had Mike pull up and we took this pic.

Now after seeing this pic once again I must tell you that Ginni has about had it with the beard. I had let it grow for Christmas because so many people asked me to play Santa with the Bahamian Children. Ginni has been asking me to cut it back for weeks and, now that we were with Joe (who has a nicely trimmed beard) I gave Ginni a Christmas present and used Joe's trimmer to create a whole different look. Here is a pic of the new me, watching the Boston College - Nevada bowl game with my grandson (the newest Boston College fan).

As I write this we have already left NY and are now with friends in Walpole MA and right now we are getting 18-24" of the white stuff. I am scheduled to fly back to Andros on Friday and I am hoping that the airport will use Wed night and all day Thurs to clean up so I can still get out on time. If I'm not back by Saturday the Archdiocese will have to scramble to provide coverage for the weekend liturgies. This storm is supposed to go all day Wed and end around 8PM tonight, after having started around midnight. Something about 20 hours of straight snow that tells me travel might be an issue.

This trip was a thrill for Ginni and I - to get to play with our grandson, and to re-experience snow (which I haven't seen for a few years) has been wonderful - but its time to get back to my 80 degree home on Andros.

Pray for a safe flight - until next time, Peace.