Big Breed

Well its been a bit longer than normal since my last post but with Ginni gone its been a tad busier for me than normal. She is due back today so I'm taken a moment to blog.

Every Sunday, after the last service in Cargill Creek we stop in Man O' War Sound and bring communion to Anna. Anna is a 94 year old Bahamian woman who had been a leader in this community. Over the years folks moved away from Man O' War Sound and eventually St. Joseph's church was merged with Christ the King in Cargill Creek, where we do the 11 AM liturgy.

Over the years Anna has lost her sight and now lives with her son's family. Stopping to see here is a treat in that she is full of stories about the Church, people in the community, and her family. She is also a faithful Catholic and will tell you over and over that she's been Catholic all her life and never worshipped anywhere else than the Catholic Church.

Well its been about 2 months now that we've been visiting with her on Sunday afternoon. Usually I sit next to her on the sofa and the rest of the family gathers round to watch. The also hear the gospel and a short reflection that I do prior to giving her communion. This past week however, Anna and I were laughing about something and she leaned forward and put her arms around my waist and gave me a hug. This was the first time she had ever done anything like that and it was the first time, as a blind woman, that she realized I am a bit 'portly'.

It was then that she said "Oh Faddah, you be a big man - yes you come from big breed Faddah". Well I just about fell over laughing at that one. I come from Big Breed. My father will love it!

Speaking of my father, I just heard from him that my mother and father will be visiting in March. Continental has a flight from Ft. Lauderdale on Saturday mornings and they have booked a flight for March 21 and will stay with us for a few days, experiencing life on Andros. Arriving on Saturday they'll experience the 3 liturgies we do and a few CCD classes as well, it should be an interesting visit for them - they might even get to meet Anna!

John's Visit and pics galore

Well hello again. A few weeks ago my son Joe's father-in-law was vacationing on Harbor Island and took a few days to join us on Andros. John is an adventurous sort and took two puddle jumper airplanes to get to us, and we are thrilled that he did. His layover in Nassau gave him an opportunity to get friendly with one of the employees of Glen Air, the small Charter service he was going to be flying. After chatting with this man for quite awhile he was surprised to see him tuck some of the baggage away on the plane, then climb up on the wing and get into the pilot seat.

This was John's view sitting behind the pilot on their way to Andros. Once he arrived we picked him up. John had started his journey around 7:30 in the morning and due to delays in Nassau he didn't arrive until almost 5PM (keep in mind these were two 15 minute flights, the rest was waiting in the Nassau airport). He is a trooper. On the way home we drove over the Fresh Creek bridge and John took this wonderful pic of the Creek looking out its mouth towards the ocean.

Eventually we arrived at our home and John settled right in. We told him that the next few days we were going to be occupied with CCD and he thought that was great. I said he was an adventurous guy and he is. He is a wonderful guitar player and had brought his harmonica so when Ginni began to practice for the next day's lesson he joined right in with the harmonica and I knew the kids were going to be in for a treat.

Well the next day I went to pick up the first class of kids at Fresh Creek Primary School and John helped Ginni set up the church. When I pulled in with a van loaded with kids Ginni and John had everything set up and ready to go. When John pulled out his digital camera however, the kids were more interesting in posing for John than CCD.

Eventually we all moved into the Church and we sang a few songs, taught a lesson, and did some classwork. John hit it off with all of the kids but made absolutely best friends with little Gabbrielle (the little girl in the far left in this pic above). What follows is a series of pics John took of the CCD class in action:

This is Gabbrielle singing O HOW I LOVE JESUS

THIS IS DESTINY TRYING TO FIND THE PAGE IN THE SONGBOOK

CCD CAN BE HARD WORK

After this first class of Primary School children they left and we set up for the High School kids and we did it all over again.

During the transition between the elementary school kids and the high school kids John said he was going to go for a walk and explore downtown Fresh Creek. There really isn't all that much to Fresh Creek but off he went and when we were finished John surprised us with a wonderful gift, our own bike! Bikes are very popular here, the roads are mostly flat and they are an economical way of getting to the Bank, the Post Office and the store without having to crank up our 15 passenger diesel van to go run errands.

THANK YOU JOHN!

All in all, John got a taste of island life and we were thrilled that he interrupted his vacation to come visit with us. It was great to have someone in our family make the trip over to Andros.

I want to thank John for taking all these pics and his wife Lindsey for sending them to us so we can share them with you.

Rubber Gloves and CCD

Just a short entry this time to let you know about this week's CCD experience. The Director's of Religious Ed (DREs) at St. Tim's back home will love this. CCD here is done in the church, in the pews, no desks, no tables, just the Church environs. Pews become desks when they need to be. Today we have CCD for the elementary kids and Ginni is playing the guitar, singing HIS BANNER OVER ME IS LOVE, with all the hand motions for each verse. We finish the song and I start the lesson (The theme being, 'We Gather Together' for our 1st communion-focused program). About 2 minutes into the lesson a little boy leans forward and vomits. Kids jump up, screaming, yelling, running - and he vomits some more. Absolute bedlam.

I take the boy to the rest room, our only volunteer takes the kids to the rear of the church, and Ginni dons rubber gloves and gets a bucket. After I clean him up I return to find Ginni with a bucket full of 'stuff' and Mrs H leading the kids in a chorus of song at the rear of the Church.

Ginni takes the gloves off and leads the poor kid to the van to take him home while I resume the lesson. We get threw the lesson, Ginni returns, the kids head home and we prep for the High School kids. They show up, one of the girls bringing her 3 year-old brother with her since she had nobody to leave him with.

We sing, we start the lesson, and about 2 minutes into the lesson the 3 year-old needs the bathroom. Off he goes, never to be seen again. She goes to see what's up and then she never returns. Ginni goes to see what's up and she never returns - actually she does but it takes awhile. It seems he is sick and has the mother of all diarreah (how do you spell that), most of which was in the toilet, but not all - and just to make it interesting, he dropped his crayon in the toilet. So for the second time Ginni had to put on the rubber gloves.

I wonder, are rubber gloves standard issue for CCD teachers or just for DREs?

Hogmeat

Well I have mentioned Herbie from time to time on this little blog and this week he has reappeared with a new request. First, here is a pic of me with Herbie from last November and a few others of Herbie showing our son Mike how to crack open a coconut when Mike was here in December.

Herbie is known throughout the town as being a big 'shady' and I've already shared about his visiting us, begging for food because he has no money, then showing up with 2 cases of Guiness asking Ginni to help him get it to the van he lives in with our Church van. Anyway this past week we had several days of rain. Herbie cooks outside and the rain made it impossible to cook. Consequently he showed up at our door asking if Ginni could cook his hogmeat.

Now let me explain. One of the animals that still runs wild in the swamps here are wild boar. Ginni and I actually saw three of them crossing the road one night about a month ago. Occasionally the locals will hunt one down, or hit it with their car, and a whole wild pig generates alot of meat. Clearly, somehow, Herbie had been given several chunks of 'hogmeat'. I say chunks because these were not pork chops but basically two large chunks of meat that had been hacked off the animal, probably with a machete.

When Herbie asked Ginni if she'd cook it for him she said "Sure", it was then Herbie said, "Thank you, and don't worry about the hair I'll cut that off later." Hair? Yup, these chunks of meat were from a black boar, and included bone, meat, skin and hair - all intact as it had been chopped of the dead animal. While not exactly what Ginni thought she was signing up for, she put the meat in a pot, added some potatoes, celery, carrots and spices and boiled it all up for him. He was a happy camper when he left and not only had his hogmeat cooked, but had potatoes, veggies, and a mayonaisse jar full of the broth as well!

What a weekend!

Well I gotta tell ya - weekends are nutz.
On Thursday we got a call that we would be having a priest with us this weekend. So I take the homily and put it in a drawer. This gave me more time to focus on CCD classes I'd be doing the following week. Saturday at 4, the priest is to catch a flight to Andros and we'd meet him then be off for dinner at the Navy base, followed by the 6PM evening liturgy. Well at 3:45 I get a call from the Vicar on Nassau telling me that the flight is cancelled (remember those earlier blogs about it being windy - it was so windy they closed the airport on our end of the island). Our priest will be on a flight to North Andros and will then take a cab to us in Fresh Creek. This has got to be almost a 2 hour ride so I'm thinking I'll be paying an $80 cab fare, if not more, and there is no assurance he'll be here for the 6PM service. So we wait, and I pull the homily out of the drawer and start pulling it together, just in case. At 5:40 I head off to the Navy Base alone and lead a Eucharistic Service. After the service I stop at the base and fill our 6 one-gallon water jugs with Navy water. (Our tap water is not drinkable so we get water at the base)

When I get home the priest is here, a wonderful Bahamian priest that was a great homilist. He had been to our parish 2 years ago but not recently. Ginni had stayed behind to play hostess and they were ready to go out to dinner. Hank's Place is the local restaurant and we had a nice meal, although the wind made it rather chilly since Hank's has no windows, only screens (Actually it was in the 60's so not that comfy).

The next day it was 8:30 at our home parish of St. John's and 11:15 at Christ the King in Cargill Creek. I had been planning on doing the throat blessing for Feast of St. Blaise as another means of bringing a Catholic tradition to a community of people that has been dominanted by the Protestant influences on the island, and Fr. Forbes went with the flow and didn't miss a beat.

After Mass at St. John's one couple asked if we could drop by this week and do a house blessing so we set up a Monday morning meeting. I'll come back to that.

After we got back from Cargill Creek we had lunch, Fr. Forbes packed, and we went off to the airport. While he waited for his plane I connected with Johnnie and he siphoned some diesel fuel for me to fill my tank for the next week's travels. I then bid Fr. Forbes farewell and went home to watch the Super Bowl.

Monday - today, we started preparing for CCD, then it was off for the house blessing. This was a very nice couple who were able to tell us a ton of history about our parish and the Church on Andros. When we began to start the prayer the husband says, "The reason we wanted to do the blessing after living here for 30 years is to try to get rid of the ghosts." I said, "excuse me?"

It seems he has been seeing ghosts and spirits and would like them to stop. So I explained the power we have with Jesus, that Jesus cast out demons and with the same authority Jesus had, we have power too. We did the house blessing and, using holy water we blessed each room of his house, all the doorways and windows, and prayed together. When we were finished they both seemed much more at peace.

After this little adventure we headed off to Cargill Creek to teach two CCD classes. So far this is the most frustrating part of ministry here. We have tons of experience working with adults, children are a whole other world. We don't have desks so we're doing this in the church pews with kids crawling under them to get their pencil, or leaning across two pews so one kid can whack another kid, or you look outside and you see one of them had gotten outside and is climbing the tree and making faces at the other kids. At one point I started to unbuckle my belt and Ginni gave me one of those looks - enough said. It does make it interesting to plan the next few week's plans as we plan Ginni's departure to help our son Mike with his broken leg.

Actually, I am writing this after just returning from that little CCD adventure so I am not in the best frame of mind. Tomorrow its CCD at the Navy base, then RCIA, then Wed CCD here; hopefully we'll be able to keep them in the church and out of the trees.
Keep us in your prayers.

My new screen saver

Its 80 degrees today, blue sky, puffy clouds and this is the one day of the week with no CCD or RCIA so we might do some errands and go to the beach! By the way, to stay cool I like ice cream. A half gallon of ice cream here is $10.

With that said I want everyone back home to know my new wallpaper for my desktop is a pic of St. Timothy's in Norwood. Don't ya just love it!

When we came to Andros I packed lots of things and left behind lots of things. Having taught RCIA for six years I bought copies of the Catechism and a book 'Believing in Jesus' that we use at St. Timothy's to teach people about Catholicism that are converting. Well I didn't bring enough. I looks like RCIA is off with a bang and it is so good to see people diligently taking notes and asking questions as we start the program this past week. So far 4 adults (1 needing to be baptized) and 2 teens that need baptism as well. As the class progresses other names of possible candidates continue to come out of the woodwork so we'll see where this goes.

Along that front, we met a Doctor from a community way up at the northern tip of the island who says there are Catholics there that would love to have me come lead services. They're Church closed down about 10 years ago when the Catholic community had gradually moved away and then the building was litterally eaten to the ground by termites. This Doctor is from Nigeria and he and his family, the janitor at his clinic and his family, and several of his patients and their families have all moved in and are Catholic. So we may be adding a new community to our family of Churches. I found a Baptismal Record book from his township and over 50 names of those baptized there so we shall see what happens.

Enough for now, the beach calls.

My haircut

Well after writing about my Obama haircut several people have been asking when I will post a pic so here you go - Enjoy.