The Leaving of Liverpool, Part 2

"The Leaving of Liverpool" is an old song (and a sad song) by The Dubliners and it has the lines:

It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me

But my darling when I think of thee.

For the last twenty years, I have been leaving different places: the UK, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Romania, the UAE, Qatar and now China. Sometime leaving is easy because we never put down any roots and we did not like the place that much anyway! When we left Qatar, it was that much harder because we were there for five years and we really got to know people in our church, Doha Fellowship.

Lunch at the cheapie noodlie place 

China, however, is a bit different because we have enjoyed it so much more than Qatar. Green Oasis has probably been the best international school I have worked at and for the last two years I have been one of the elders of Shenzhen International Fellowship, so we have been very much involved in the life of the church, in lots of different ways. It started when the church was at Jingtian Villas, in Shekou. (This was when we called ourselves “Shekou International Fellowship”.)

Mango fish and Tiger beer at the Redang with Owen and Tracy

After a few weeks, I started helping by putting out the chairs on Sunday mornings and then helping to put them away again after the service. After about a year, I started preaching and then we moved to the Nanyuo Theatre, where we were for the next three years. After that, the Nanyou Theatre management told us that we had to leave because the site was going to be "re-developed" as a nightclub. (This coincided with the latest official crackdown on unregistered churches in China. No surprises there.) Then Shenzhen International Fellowship (SIF, as we now were) moved to our new and present location, which I am not going to name.

Goodbyes always seem to lead to lots of enjoyable meals. It is one of the few good things that can be said about goodbyes. We had another nice lunch after church with Bill and Julia, in the cheapie noodlie place. We also had another lunch with Owen and Tracy, two old friends from our Qatar days who then moved on to China. In fact, it was really thanks to them that we first heard about Shenzhen! The mango fish at the Redang Island Cafe is always good, as is the Tiger beer.

Then we had another farewell bash courtesy of Heidi, who invited lots of our friends from SIF to her apartment. That was very enjoyable, though tinged with sadness. 

Goodbye party at Heidi's apartment

Today the freight company came and took away all of our bits and pieces, together with 17,000RMB. Ouch! The price has just seemed to keep creeping up as the days passed. We decided that seafreight was best, as it is cheaper than airfreight and we are not in a big hurry to get our stuff back. In fact, we are already wondering where we are going to put it all!