Mea Culpa

Mea Culpa (Through my fault) my blog is not getting the attention it deserves BY ME.
My last entry was Palm Sunday and here we are at the 6th Sunday of Easter

Suffice it to say that with Ginni leaving for a month after Easter, my time is limited and the blog has suffered, sorry about that.  On top of that Blogger tells me my browser is no longer supported so we will  see if this gets published.

Easter was great - we accepted 4 people into the Church on the Vigil and I sang the new updated Exultet that the new edition of the Roman Missal provides - I will get no awards for my singing but I was pleased with it.

Since Easter my energies have been focused on CCD, and getting ready for Confirmation (THIS Sunday).  I actually just picked up the Archbishop and it looks like we are in good shape.  Sunday we will host our first combined service, where all four churches will come together for Confirmation (each church has a candidate for Confirmation).  We will still do Saturday evening at the Navy Base for those military personnel that can not come off the base, but then SUN we will only have the 1 service here in Fresh Creek.  We have never  tried this before so it will be interesting to see who makes the trek here.

Hopefully we will have pictures to post in my next entry (if I can do that with an unsupported Browser).

As I reflect on what has been happening here, I guess the most exciting thing I could share was the knife fight.  Picture this, I am doing communion calls to the sick of the parish and, after I walk in, two brothers, grandchildren of the sick woman, get into a fight.  An older grand daughter tries to break it up, the sick woman is yelling, 'Out, out of my house, Deac's here to pray', smash, crash, yelling - all from the kitchen where I go to try to break it up, only to find its spilled out of the kitchen into the back yard.  When I get there one of them, upon leaving the kitchen, has grabbed a knife, the other has picked up a 2x4 that was on the ground.  The grand daughter is screaming, the grand mother is calling the boys father, yelling into' the phone, "out, I want dem out a my house', then to me 'Deac, come, leave dem, let's pray'.  Meanwhile one is swinging the 2x4, cracking the other on the arm, while the other is swinging the knife, trying to strike a more leathal blow.

Well they finally separate, I get the knife and pull that kid into the house while the other, still clutching the 2x4 backs away and hides in the bush across the street.  I help clean the dirt and blood off of the one I had, calm him down, and we have a chat about the repercusions of him actually murdering his brother.  Lots of sobbing, crying, and eventually the situation calmed down and he and I could take a deep breath and say a prayer together.  Then the grand daughter takes him into the bathroom to clean him up and I return to grandma.  So we too pray for peace, then have our communion service.  With relative calm restored I eventually leave.  All week I worry about what would happen when the other brother returned. 

I called during the week to have grandma say it was all OK.  The father came to pick them up and beat dem with a hose.  WHAT?  Oh yes Deac, they learned to behave, everything is OK now.

Till next time.

Heading into Palm Sunday

Hello my friends - well it looks like this blog is becoming a monthly blog - but blog I will.

In my last entry I mentioned we have a visiting priest who had been creating issue after issue.  Well, over the last five weeks he has stopped using the laptop computer on the altar and has transcribed what he had on the computer into a notebook.  This eliminates the computer blocking everyone's view of the altar, defusing what was a major crisis for awhile.  So he still has the Sacramentary, and now his private notebook, but we're muddling through.  I do find it amazing that a priest finds the new Roman Missal 'too difficult to navigate'.  I thought using the Sacramentary was part of Liturgy 101 - but enough said.

Our Lent here is a busy one.  In addition to the CCD and RCIA classes that fill up our week, having a priest lets us do penance services - so we are doing THREE, one for each parish.  We have also added Teen Movie Nights on Friday's.  This priest worked in campus ministry and brought audio visual equipment to show movies for the teens.  To pull  this off we go to our Parish Center Friday afternoon and re-arrange the furniture, cover up the windows with blankets and set up his equipment.  When the kids get off the bus from the high school we are ready for them and start the movie around 4.  Around 6 we slip out and go over to the Navy Base and pick up 3 or 4 pizzas and get back just as the movie ends for a short discussion.  It is a challenge to add these extra activities to our already rather full schedule but we've been able to get it done.

Meanwhile - our work to grow the Church in North Andros continues.  The Archbishop has given permission to build and the locals have given about $7000 so far towards a total of $30,000 for a 30x30 building.  We already own land there and, with the Archbishops approval, we've cleared the land to get ready for putting in the foundation.  The rest will have to wait until we get more funds.

This is a pic of the site after the dozer has done its work, the old building in the background is what is left of the original church building.  On the other side of the road the land slopes down toward the sea.  With the site cleared we're only a few thousand dollars away from being able to begin work on the foundation and septic.

One interesting development with this community is that there is a large Haitian community here but the numbers of our little faith community fluctuates in direct proportion to the raids on the Haitian shanty-town by Bahamian immigration.  Right now they have been raided twice in the same week and we haven't seen anyone dare to come out of the bush to go to church.  It really is scary, one week we'll have a half dozen Haitian men, the next week they're gone - poof!

The past few weeks have been stressful on a few other fronts as well - two flat tires in two weeks, for example; followed by a bathroom sink that decided this would be the time to have the drain pipe rust out.  We lived for a few days with a bucket under the sink that, after using the sink, we would pour into the toilet.  I was able to get parts and replace the plumbing with only one small drip remaining.  I know how to fix that but it requires a part not on this island so it'll wait a week.

Next week, by the way, we go to Nassau for the Chrism Mass to recieve the holy oils for the next year (and parts for the bathroom sink).  This is always a special liturgy for me because, unlike Boston, Deacons are invited to join the priests for the renewal of their vows.  After the priest and deacon clergy, the women religious are also invited to do the same.  How inclusive is that!  It really is a powerful moment.

Well, between CCD, RCIA, Penance Services and Teen Movie Night I am a bit bushed so I am going to sign off.  This Lent is certainly living up to what Lent should be.  I just can't wait for Easter!
Till next time

Happy Lent!!!

Hello again my friends -

Well, since my last post Ginni has returned and so has Lent (totally unrelated I assure you).  Our surprise this Lent was a call from the Archbishop telling us he was sending us a priest - arriving on Tues before Ash Wed.  He will stay with us throughout the entire season of Lent and thru Easter.  To say we were surprised is an understatement.  We usually see a priest once every 6 weeks or so, now we'll have a resident priest every day for 7 weeks!

We got the news while we were in Nassau. Prior to going to Nassua we had two major events on our radar screen.  First, Ash Wed is an annual ecumenical service with the Anglicans on Andros and this year it is our turn to host.  Prior to going to Nassau I had put together the program and sent it off to the Anglican minister.  With a priest arriving the day before Ash Wed I would have to scramble to change the program (of which 60 copies had already been made), in order to add a role for the new priest.  Second, the Saturday after Ash Wed we were going to have a huge funeral, and those programs have already been printed by the funeral  home.  A funeral in the Bahamas is a BIG deal.  The deceased was in his 40s and died a tragic unexpected death in a car accident so the turnout was going to be more than the church could hold.  Since we did not plan on having a priest the program did not include Eucharist, but was a Service.  Who does what and how would need to change.

So we return to Andros and I crank out a new Ash Wed program for the Anglican priest, myself, & the visiting priest that modified who said and did what during the service.  The people followed along and the night was a huge success.  What was unfortunate was that the visiting priest wanted to wear a Cope for an ecumenical service like this (a Cope is a cape-like liturgical vestment) and, surprise surprise, we don't have that type of vestment.  It was upsetting for him and not the best way to start off our relationship especially when complicated by the added stress of the Anglican invasion filling the church at the same time.

Once we got thru Ash Wed we sat down with the program from the funeral home and marked it up so we agreed on my roles and his roles, both at the church and the cemetary.  Despite the hysterics of a Bahamian funeral this actually worked out pretty well and the funeral went off without a hitch.

Our new friend is a retired priest from Florida and clearly has his way of doing things, and we are adapting.  The biggest surprise for us was the weekend liturgy for the 1st Sunday of Lent.  It turns out that he finds the new Roman Missal difficult to navigate so - - he has transcribed the common parts of the liturgy onto a notebook computer and, for those parts of the liturgy, he scrolls through the liturgy using his notebook computer on the altar, complete with a wireless mouse.  Well, having a computer on the altar has set off a firestorm.  Comments from both people on the Navy Base & Bahamians have been fast and furious, critical of a computer on the altar that blocks the view of the people, the inappropriatness of it, the scandal, the sacrilidge, et. al.  (pray for me).

So on Monday, after having had an earful from people throughout the community, we asked if we could talk about a few things to plan the next 7 weeks of Lent and we tried to address the notebook.  It was a difficult conversation, but he agreed to consider the objection.  Clearly we need to reconcile this topic or, I am afraid, people may stop attending until he departs. 

The Archdiocese has always been very supportive of us here on Andros and, knowing that, I gave a call to the Vicar.  It was very helpful conversation for me and acted as a sort of relief valve for the stress I was feeling.  He was very supportive and, in the end, suggested we do our best and monitor the situation and see how it plays out, but to keep him informed.  We really do want to work well and be supportive of this man as we serve the people of Andros, but if this persists it will clearly be corrupting their Lenten season and will have a negative impact on our Easter celebration.  We pray that doesn't happen.

While this plays out, it is not all negative.  He has, in the past, hosted Teen Movie Nights and has brought several DVDs and the equipment to show them.  We want to plan a weekly viewing, followed by discussion and refreshments.  It sounds like he has had some success with this, and he has a plan, so we hope we can pull this off too - it really could be quite good.

So, all in all - despite a few bumps in the road we continue to work towards growing the Kingdom of God, and what kind of Lent would it be without a few bumps in the road.  Praise God for the bumps of Lent!
Keep us in your  prayers - we appreciate all your support.

February Already!!!

Well I couldn't believe the last post I had here was Merry Christmas and Jolly Junkanoo.  It is February already and so much has happened.

As I write this, Ginni is back home in the US being a nurse to earn the money we need to stay here.  Let me explain - we do have a plan on the money issue.  We have a 2 family home in Canton and a log home on a lake in NH ski country.  Rental income from those properties allow us to be serving here in the Bahamas while keeping the mortgage, taxes, water bills, and insurance paid up. (If we could sell either of these properties we certainly would, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards in this economy).  The problem is that not all tenants actually pay their rent - its created a financial burden we hadn't expected.  The bad tenants have left and we had a few months between tenants so we are 'financially challenged'.  Ginni should be able to get the hours to help fix this, but it means she'll miss about a month of Bahama time.

So Gin is gone and I am doing the 4 weekend liturgies, and the 4 CCD classes, and the RCIA classes and the cooking, cleaning, laundry, et. al.  Getting time to blog is a problem!

As I wrote those words it struck me that for decades, the missionary priests that came here did all that I just described day after day after day.  When I read about thier lives and what they accomplished I am amazed.  Throw in the fact that for many of them, there were no roads, no air conditioning, not even electricity.  Heros, every one of them.

I do have one anecdote those of you from Boston will get a kick out of.  When we came here we brought all the baggage of the sexual abuse crisis in Boston.  The Bahamas has been spared this scandal and so the sensitivity to 'protecting God's children', while present, is not as in-your-face as it was in Boston when I left.  Bahamian parents tell me if their child acts up during CCD classes the 'beat dem deacon - if  dey be bahd beat dem'.  A major difference from Boston where hugging a child is frowned upon.

So anyway, Ginni is gone and I am driving the kids home after CCD.  Three of these teenage girls live about a half hour away and as we drive one of them says, "Deacon, when we get out into the bush can you pull over so I can get out and pee?"  I say, "Excuse me?"  She says, "When we get out into the bush please pull over so I can get out and pee."  I was blown away - all 3 girls thought nothing of this request - it was a perfectly innocent request from their viewpoint and expected me to just say "sure, go ahead".

Well, fortunately, our route goes past the Andros Town airport and we hadn't reached it yet so I suggested we stop there and they can actually use a toilet and they thought that was a great idea, so we did.  But I gotta tell ya, if we had gone 10 minutes more we would have been driving in the bush and it would have been an interesting dilemma.  Thank God I remembered the airport up ahead.

Other items of interest - the tail pipe on the van's muffler disconnected and I had tied it up with a wire coathanger until I found a parishioner who does welding.  I took it to him and he welded it back on, no problem.  When I offered to pay he was insulted.  "Dis be da choich van Deacon, I do dis for da choich".  A week later the other end of the muffler has the same problem.  The pipe from the engine INTO to muffler disconnects.  Once again its back to the coat hanger solution until I can find my parishioner.  Turns out he is off the island seeing a dentist and won't be back for a week. (Island life dictates when you don't have something you make due until you get it).  So my wire coathanger works for awhile but comes loose so I crawl under the van and wire up another one (to discover I had parked near some fire ants).  Anyway this lasted until he returned and in 20 minutes this was fixed and, once again, he refused to even consider any payment.  Good people.

This weekend we will have a visiting priest - the Archbishop.  We are into our 4th year here and this is his 1st weekend visit to go to all the churches.  It is unfortunate he is coming while Ginni is away but that's life.  This past year the Archdiocese sent a surveyor to map out all the church-owned land on Andros.  He will fly in Saturday morning and we will spend the day viewing all these sites so the Archbishop gets a sense of the property here.  The surveyor found some land I wasn't aware of and determined some that I did know about were much larger than I had imagined.  I am hoping some will be land the Archbishop may be willing to sell to help us with the costs associated with building a chapel in North Andros where there hasn't been a Catholic Church in over 40 years.

On that front - it occured to me that the Knights of Columbus  might be a resource to help us with the new chapel.  Coincidentally, the Grand Knight has an annual dinner to honor the clergy throughout the Bahamas and I was invited.  Unfortuanely I could not attend but I sent him an email, thanking him, then telling him about the opportunity in No. Andros and asking if the Knights could help.  Well I got a very nice email back, it turns out he grew up on Andros and would love to present the need to his brother Knights at their next meeting.  Who knows - this could be a huge help in making this a reality.  Right now the local Bahamians up North, and a few US donors, have reached the $6,000 mark.  I have one builder who quoted me $50,000 and another for $30,000.  All we really need is four walls and a roof (and a bathroom).  I am hoping I can get the costs down but buying materials and getting them here is a significant addition to the price.

Shifting gears once more.  You may be aware that the Catholic Church has changed some of the responses  at Mass to be truer to the original Latin.  For example, for years the response to "The Lord be with you" has been, "and also with you".  Well now its "and with your spirit".  Some people have picked up the new wording throughout the Mass, for others its been harder.  I saw this poster the other day and fell in love with it.

One other area this has affected is music.  At St. John Chrysostom in Fresh Creek the only instrument we have is a drum, and Ginni's guitar.  All the new music that has been adapted to the new words are written for organ or piano.  So my lovely wife took it upon herself to create an arrangement for the Gloria on guitar that uses the new words (as I said earlier, in island life you either do without or make do - so Ginni took the bull by the horns and made do).  It is a wonderful version of the Gloria and we are now singing it at all of the Bahamian parishes.  AUTEC is using a version from the St. Benedict Mass in the missalette.  If I can ever figure out how to post audio here I'll try to record a version of us singing it.  Suffice it to say this was a huge undertaking for Ginni and she did a great job.

Well I really need to sign off - this is the 1st Friday of the month and we have a Holy Hour of Adoration at the AUTEC Chapel I need to prep for.  Please keep us in your prayers

 - Deacon Frank

Jolly Junkanoo

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a Jolly Junkanoo to you all!

Junkanoo is a uniquely Bahamian celebration with bands and dancers and floats and the parade goes for hours!  Literally, it starts at midnight on New Years and goes well into the morning hours.  To say the costumes and bands are dressed to the max is an understatement - incredible stuff.

Just as an example - here's a pic of just one Junkanoo dancer - imagine a couple hundred - and that would just be one of many, many bands marching in the parade.

Christmas here was wonderful.  We had our usual full complement of Sunday liturgies and with Christmas being on a Sunday this year it actually made things simpler.  Here is a pic of our altar at St. John Chrysostom, fully decorated for Christmas! 

New Years will be a lot busier than Christmas.  We will have our 6PM service at the AUTEC Base, then a midnight Mass at St. John Chrysostom in Fresh Creek, then we'll have our regular Sunday liturgies beginning with the 830AM for those at St. John who couldn't make midnight, then the 1115 in Cargill and the 4PM up north in Mastic Point.  Its the Midnight Mass followed by the 830 that'll be the killer.

Midnight on New Years here is called Watch Night Service.  Its a British thing where the people want to be in Church to pray in the New Year.  It will start at 11 with carols and the liturgy starting at 1130 and running through midnight.

All in all we continue to grow the Kingdom of God here on Andros and we pray 2012 will be even more fruitful than 2011.  May God bless you all as well

Till next time

An Andros to Kenya connection

Well its Christmas eve eve and we've wrapped up CCD and are preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus here on Andros.  Our last week of CCD was actually a unique one so I thought I would share that with you.

One of the new things we are trying this year has a Maryknoll connection.  Maryknoll is a missionary order of priests and Ginni and I have been getting Maryknoll Magazine for years.  This year they introduced the Maryknoll classroom.  What they offer is a program, at no charge, where they will send a copy of Maryknolll Magazine for every student in your CCD program AND a teachers guide with suggestions as to how to use the articles in a classroom setting.  Well, with the keyword being FREE I had to check it out and so, in DEC we got our first box of 50 magazines.

The DEC issue had a story about a special Children's liturgy held in Kenya.  Over 30,000 children attended from all over the nation and priests, deacons, and bishops joined in for a wonderful day-long celebration of the children of Kenya.  At one point the children were given baloons imprinted with the message 'Pray for the children of Kenya', which they released during the liturgy.  The article described songs and liturgical dance, an offetory procession that included not only bread and wine, but stalks of sugar cane, fruits and veggies from family gardens - even live chickens as children brought gifts from their home villages.

Using this to teach about the 'Church Universal' and expose our kids to the needs of other missionary countries is a new thing for our kids and it went over great.  After the lesson, our primary school students cut out paper baloons with the same message the children in Kenya had used.  Then we took pictures of the kids and emailed them to the bishop in Niarobi.

Here is a pic of our class in Cargill Creek with their ballons.

Here is a closeup of the ballons - hope you can see the message.

A few days later I recieved a response from Kenya and when CCD resumes I'll be sharing it with our kids.  What a hoot.

Ginni and I have a friend who is a Dominican priest now serving in Kenya so for kicks I sent him an email with the same pics, explaining how we came to do this.  He replied asking who that old guy with the white beard was sitting with all the kids?   Everyone here in Cargill Creek knows - its SANTA!!

A few days later our friends at the AUTEC Navy Base hosted their annual 'Winter Wonderland'.  Its always great to see Christmas lights decorating palm trees. 

I especially like the Live Nativity that is part of the evening.  I read the story of the shepherd and the angels from the Gospel of Luke and as each is introduced children dressed as shepherds and angels join Mary around the manger where a baby is lying.  This year we had a 6 month year old baby with his Mom and Dad.  Its not the best of pic of the live nativity, but you get the idea.   This pic of the palm trees gives you a better idea of our Bahamian Christmas on AUTEC.

Finally, in my last post I said I wasn't sure if we'd have a priest for Christmas - well we will.  A priest from Serbia is studying at Boston College and has offered his service to the Archdiocese of Nassau and we are the lucky recipients of his generous offer.  What is so cool about this is that he is living at St. Columbkille's in Brighton, MA.  That is the first parish Ginni and I lived in when we first got married!  Small world.

I hope to post some Christmas pics in my next post - until then.

Deacon F.

Home again

Well we are back on Andros! WE - get it? Ginni is here too!

Gin left for most of November so being back home TOGETHER is a treat.

Thanksgiving was wonderful and it was fantastic to see all my old friends at St. Timothy's once more. Being up on the altar at the 9:30 and 11:00 Masses once again was very special.

The trip started with Thanksgiving in the Hamptons where my sons Joe and Mike live. Our oldest, Matthew, flew in from Houston with his wife and son as well so it was the first time all three of them have been together for awhile.

This Thanksgiving was extra special in that we me Mike's 'special girl', Catherine, and her family invited our family to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. Once we all sat down there were 28 of us. We brought the turkey and some veggies, and they provided even more veggies and desserts and let's just say nobody left hungry and we all carried home leftovers!

I must say that, coming from the mission field in the Bahamas, spending a week in the Hamptons was a bit of a culture shock. Everything there was elegant - absolutely over the top. Even the trip I took with Mike to the hardware store made me shake my head. Absolutely everything you would ever need is right there - no waiting for the boat to bring it in at all! While Mike picked up what he needed I was able to get a masonary bit for my drill back on Andros. Now I can fix that hurricane shutter that was ripped loose by hurricane Irene. (Getting a masonary bit like this usually means a trip to Nassau).

The day after Thanksgiving Catherine's parents invited Ginni and I for dinner and it was great to finally have time for just the four of us sit and talk. We had a wonderful time and look forward to getting to know them better over time - if only via the internet and email.

After a week in NY we headed back to Canton, MA and every minute of out time was booked. We had lunch and dinner with friends almost every day and took an overnight trip to NH to meet with new tenants for the cabin up there. There was also the do-to list of things needing to be fixed that got done.

Coming back to Andros was not uneventful. We got in on Friday and we were scheduled to do an evening Benediction at the Navy base - only to find that the van's battery was dead. So I pushed it down the hill to try to start it by popping the clutch, but to no avail. So one of the people on the base came and picked us up, we did the Holy Hour, Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and Benediction then he took us home, promising to come back the next day to jump the battery, which he did.

That next day we learned our toilet was broken - and I didn't have the right tools - so off to my hardware store to learn they didn't have any wrenches right now, but they could be on the boat on Wednesday So - Saturday evening we start our weekend liturgies and by Sunday morning the tail pipe on the van disconnects from the muffler (don't ya love it). We still did all four weekend liturgies but the van was a bit louder than normal.

Suffice it to say, I am writing on Wed, the boat from Nassau is on the horizon - one of our parishioners welded the tail pipe back onto the muffler, and we're almost back to normal.

This is exam week for our students here, after which they have a 3 week Christmas break. We have had two CCD lessons already this week and two to go, then it'll slow down a bit. Christmas is huge here with Junkanoo being a major celebration. Marching Bands dress up to the hilt and the competition is fierce. Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnival in Rio has nothing on Junkanoo in the Bahamas. I will definitely try to post pics -- its a two day parade if you can believe it.

Next week we go to Nassau for our monthly clergy meeting and it couldn't be better timed. I am so low on consecrated hosts that I will be bringing a ciborium and tapping the Tabernacle at the Cathedral once again. I hope I can stretch what I have to get through this weekend. I know that I cannot count on having a priest for Christmas so I need to replenish on my own.

Well, enough for now, I gotta go meet the boat and see if the wrenches made the trip.

Till next time - please keep us in your prayers.

Deacon Frank