Sad Goodbyes and Warm Welcomes: Update 28 from Prague
- Josh Hayden
- Feb 8
- 3 min read
Dear family and friends,
It's a strange thing to be standing in our yard in Nashville saying a final prayer with friends and neighbors, and then less than 24 hours later be standing in our familiar small apartment in the center of Prague. Six months was enough time to make it all feel simultaneously new and familiar. We can’t begin to describe what a gift the past six months have been connecting in community with friends, worshipping in church, having fellowship with small groups and Bible studies, and receiving encouragement in what the Lord has called us to. Experiencing the sadness of leaving to us means we put our whole hearts into being back with family and friends. We are still feeling it as we turn to all that awaits us here.
“We’ve missed you so much,” carries more meaning when you consider the normally non-personally expressive nature of Czechs. The warm reception at the university, the kids school, and ballet community we do not take for granted. Hardly rested from the jetlag, Anna started teaching ballet and at CISP, Josh had meetings and started a semester, and the kids jumped back into school, parks and playdates. At St. C’s (St. Clement’s, our church in Prague), we were immediately noticed by our smiling Indian priest Nathanial during our first service back. We are glad to be back–in the deeper sense of “joy with sadness” as some friends have put it so well.
For the first time, Josh was able to gather a group of faculty members to meet for prayer on the first day of the semester at Anglo-American University. With three other professors, they prayed for the students, and to humbly be “a bearer of love and light and reconciliation” in how they relate with students and colleagues, in how they teach, and in what they teach. One of those faculty members had not met in this way before, but Josh has had increasing and regular faith-oriented conversations with him over the years. It was encouraging that he showed up and was “all in.” They discussed making this a regular meeting and reaching out to interested students. Pray with us that this fellowship will develop. Josh’s classes, Ethics and Leadership and Leadership and the Self, are off to a good start as well.
Anna is back teaching Bible and English at the Christian International School of Prague, and now has Joseph and Caleb in her classes. Her Bible class is doing a unit on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and her English classes are reading novels that deal with themes of courage, hope, and doing the right thing in the face of evil. She is also teaching at the First International School of Ballet where Abigail receives her ballet training. Work with the Ukrainian community will begin in the next several months.
Collier and Caleb are both cast in the school play Alice and Wonderland, they go to the park with friends most days, they go to basketball, they take swing dancing classes after school, and they go to Youth Praha (a youth group on Fridays). They are enjoying the independence they have moving around Prague on public transportation. Abigail and Joseph have been jumping back into playdates with friends and hope to both be taking piano lessons soon. We are looking for a soccer team for Joseph to join in the spring. They keep in touch with friends from the US and think often of them.
You can pray that patience, that challenging fruit of the spirit, will reside in us as we continue to reacclimate to life and ministry back in Prague. Prague is quite dreary most of the winter, and it is hard to transition back amidst the cold, dark, and grey. Pray that God will continue to open opportunities for us to share Christ’s love with students, faculty, and refugees.
To all the encouraging times with family and close friends, to those who gathered for desserts to hear what the Lord’s doing in Prague, to those who generously support us financially (we are nearly to the goal), to those who spoke encouraging words like “your being there blesses us here,” to those who have prayed over and for us, to those who’ve expressed their own sadness in seeing us go once again, we are incredibly thankful. We take you all with us in serving people here in Prague. May it be to God’s glory.
Grace and peace,
The Haydens
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