Sad Farewell

 I know it can be a touchy subject, never talk about politics and religion as a topic of conversation at a dinner party, but what has come to annoy me me of late are those people that immediately put the shutters up at the merest mention of the word "church" or "religion".
Don' t get me wrong, I am not a firm believer one way or the other and I don't know the difference between a vicar, a father or a preacher, if indeed there is any, although I do know that the Pope is higher up the Stairway to Heaven than I, (allegedly), although we are all supposedly God's children.
Having said that, since coming to live in the Algarve, I have been to Church more times in the past 4 or 5 years than I have in the previous 50 odd and strangely enough, I have come to realise that normal people seem to go to church, they don't have two heads or have a secret handshake and they don't walk around thrusting a cross in your face, in fact I have met some very nice normal people who have become good friends and outside of Church have never mentioned the words God, Bible or Jesus.
I don't do Church religiously (if you'll pardon the pun) each week, unlike my wife who does. I mostly only go for the big occasions, Easter, Harvest Festival, Christmas etc. or when the local children or youth group are performing at the Sunday service.

The local Chaplain at St. Vincents is Father Haynes, well he is until the end of the month and he too is also a normal person.
He and his family arrived at St Vincent's Church in Praia da Luz, Portugal, five years ago last month, the very week that Madeline McCann disappeared when she was taken from the holiday villa in which the McCann family were staying.

I am certainly no "Born Again" christian, but one of the reasons I do go now and again, has to be due to Father Haynes, who I have come to see as a friend, someone who likes a laugh, who plays golf, sometimes badly, sometimes as a real bandit, so much so that one questions if he is getting help from other parts.
He also has an uncanny knack and built in radar for finding lost golf balls, mostly lost by others and he always goes home with at least a dozen or so golf balls than he arrived with.

Last Sunday was one of those special occasions that I went to Church, this time it was special for me for the wrong reasons, as this particular Sunday would be Father Haynes last service as he and his family have decided to return to their native country of Canada and will leave Portugal at the end of the week.

During those 5 years, Father Haynes has become more than the local messenger, he arrived in the middle of an international incident, he has taken a broken Church and built a community, a community who will sadly miss him and his family.

Good Luck, Father Haynes, Susan, Sebastien, Gabriella and Caspian.