Farewell party at the Moodys

Stepanka and I spent almost seven years in the US. I am writing it to make sure it gets documented as I just can’t believe how fast the time flies. Seven years! The beginnings were tough, and at that time I wouldn’t surely guess we would stay here for so long. We came to St. Louis at the end of October 2001. Everything looked strange, we did not understand the people (and I am not talking just about the language), and we missed our families very much. I thought coming to America was the biggest mistake of my life. I remember Stepanka and me walking on the street holding hands and making plans for staying for the minimum time necessary to make back the money we spent on our flight tickets and trip preparations. The mental doctors call this a culture shock. Those of you who have ever moved to a foreign country probably know it very well. It has several phases. First you hate your new place. Then you love it, want to bring everybody from your home there, and do not understand how they can be so closed-minded not to come. Then, after another couple of months, everything comes to normal. And then you stay seven years. Seven years! We actually stayed in St. Louis five years and then moved to L.A. for another two years. L. A. – the Lower Arkansas [read Arkansaw:]. Well, it was actually to Little Rock, which is in the Central Arkansas, but that does not sound that great as the L.A. to people back home in Europe. The truth is that it does not probably sound so great to many, if not the most, of the people from the US either. They are wrong! Arkansas is great! I love it! You never met a person who would say that? No wonder. We do not want you to know. Hundreds of busses full of tourists are the last thing we need here to disrupt our hunting season! We have a proverb back in the Czech Republic: “V nejlepsim je treba prestat” which loosely translates as “the best time to stop doing things is at their best”. And that is exactly what we are going to do this month. We are going back to the Czech Republic. The last week we had our first farewell party. We actually did not know it would be our farewell party. Paul and Bob, our small group leaders, announced a cook-out meeting for Saturday night at the Moodys. I thought it would be some sort of a forerunner gathering for the Cinco de Mayo. Paul and Bob fired up (literally) Markus’ propane grill, through on Kim’s burgers and Chris’ sausages, and the rest of us brought salads, veggies, deserts, and drinks. Our small group is actually anything but small. It counts about fifteen couples. The kiddos were playing in the backyard on the slide, the burgers were making a mouth-watering noise, and our gang got a neat “surprise” visit from our pastor Tim and his wife Renee. Once the burgers got black enough, we gathered together to thank Got for our food. And then it came. Paul revealed the truth everybody knew except Stepanka and me. It was no Cinco de Mayo party! Now, you got to understand that we knew that saying a good bye would eventually come on our schedules, and that it would not be easy, but we did not expect it to come so soon. And here we are, our throats tight, thirty something people looking at us, we want to say something really nice to express how important these people are for us, but there is no voice coming out. So this is for you, small group people: we really like you and we will miss you very much! Thanks for the two years spent with you at the Covenant and God bless you!