Link Feature: Postcards from Prague (and Brownwood)

For Terry and Robin (Quinn) Chumbley, members of Howard Payne University’s class of 1991, the adventure of their lives together took them to the Czech Republic, serving students from various cultures at the Christian International School of Prague while raising a large family of their own.

Now on a one-year home assignment, the family lives in Early – just a few miles from their alma mater. Though their journey so far has spanned three decades and thousands and thousands of miles, it all began pretty simply: with a quick greeting in front of Veda Hodge Hall, HPU’s residence hall for women.

“He’s the first person I met at Howard Payne,” Robin says. “I was sitting on the bench outside Veda Hodge.”

Terry adds, with a smile, “She married the first person she met here.”

Though born in New York and having spent much of her childhood in Arizona and New Mexico, Robin was a teenager from Cleburne, Texas, when she visited HPU for the first time.

“I knew I needed to be in a school where I was a person and not just one of hundreds,” she recalls. “I fell in love with Howard Payne, and I knew this is where I was supposed to go.”

Terry is a second-generation Yellow Jacket – his father is Richard Chumbley ’67 – and was born in Brownwood but grew up in Allen, where his family moved when he was still a baby. After high school, he first attended a community college in the area and, like Robin, wished for a more personal, close-knit college experience.

“My freshman English class had something like 280 kids in it,” he says. “I didn’t like being part of such a big school.”

Favorite HPU memories include Terry’s time as the on-campus movie projectionist on Friday nights. Movies were typically shown in Mims Auditorium, but a spontaneous experiment in his room in Jennings Hall opened up a whole new venue for that week’s movie.

“I was up in my room in Jennings, on the fourth floor,” he remembers. “We were previewing the movie on the wall and then turned the projector around and showed it on the front of Veda Hodge. We got this crazy idea: What if we put a screen there?”

With bed sheets sewn together by a local resident to serve as a movie screen, Yellow Jacket ingenuity gave the campus a memorable outdoor theatre experience, complete with popcorn by then-president Dr. Don Newbury ’61 and hot dogs provided by the Baptist Student Union (now Baptist Student Ministry), commonly known then as BSU.

Terry and Robin were active in BSU, with Robin serving in the clown ministry and Terry involved with missions endeavors. They were also prayer partners.

On the academics side, Terry majored in accounting while Robin’s major was education. Favorite HPU faculty members included Dr. Frankie Rainey, who served as a professor in Christian studies and was a longtime faculty sponsor of Delta Pi, an organization with which Terry and Robin were involved.

“When I think of Howard Payne, I think of Dr. Newbury and Dr. Rainey,” Terry recalls. “Those were the two people who were the most influential in my life but also I think in the culture and the community on campus at that time.”

The year 1991 held major milestones for Terry and Robin: graduation from HPU and the beginning of their marriage. Terry worked in accounting for the next few years before obtaining teaching certification, which then led to opportunities to teach and coach at various posts across the state. During those years, the couple’s first five children were born and new doors began opening for the next stage of their lives.

“We really felt a sense of the Lord calling us: ‘There’s something else I’ve been preparing you all these years to do,’” Terry says.

Through a friend of a friend, Terry learned of the opportunity to teach and coach overseas.

“God used that seed to pique Terry’s interest,” Robin remembers. “I told him to check it out and see what happens.”

An organization of international Christian schools posted job openings and the couple began sending résumés.

“We were also homeschooling,” Terry says. “We not only wanted to continue that, we also wanted to be a part of a school and help others who were homeschooling on the field as much as we could. Homeschooling was a deal-breaker in most places, but this little school in Prague reached out.”

The Christian International School of Prague had opened in 2004 to offer faith-based education to expatriate and Czech families. The Chumbleys were pleased to find the school – as well as the Czech Republic at large – very supportive of homeschooling, which is not always the case in Europe. The school also offered programs such as art and physical education to augment families’ homeschool curriculum.

Terry found a warm welcome there. He was surprised that the school seemed very American, though none of the students had grown up in America. They were “third-culture kids,” or TCKs, who typically share a rootlessness but also a broader worldview and ability to relate to others across the social spectrum. As the school grew, outreach opportunities included various community ministries through sports and other activities.

The Chumbleys have a mission-oriented approach to life, with Terry and Robin very much partners in ministry. While Terry’s days at the school were spent ministering to TCKs and their families, Robin’s days were devoted to homeschooling the couple’s six children.

“My mission field is my family,” she says. “I’m called to do that wherever my husband is working.”

Terry and Robin have five sons – Camden, Jared, Easton, Payton and Marek – and one daughter, Landry. Camden, age 23, lives in Frisco, Texas, with his wife, Brecklyn. Jared, 21, is a university student in Prague. Easton, 19, is now attending a community college in Mississippi and living with another TCK. Payton, 17, is considering HPU as his college choice and took part in a campus preview day event in the fall. Marek, 15, is a freshman in high school, while Landry, 13, is a seventh-grader.

Easton, Payton, Marek and Landry joined their parents on the home assignment. They’re bright, affable young people who enjoy video games, movies and various other hobbies common to typical American kids their ages.

A sense of God’s leading and a close-knit family dynamic have been sources of strength for the Chumbleys as they’ve ventured into new mission work, adapted to an unfamiliar culture and weathered major health challenges, all while growing in their understanding of God’s provision.

“We’ve been really blessed,” Terry says, looking back on their experiences.

Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic, dates back to the 9th century. Nicknamed “The City of a Hundred Spires,” Prague has a grandeur and a picturesque charm, making it one of Europe’s most distinctive destinations. With an extensive tram network, Prague is also easy to navigate. The Chumbleys enjoyed discovering the city and making it their home.

“The architecture, the layout – everything is out of this world,” Terry says. “Even after being there 13 years, you walk across Old Town Bridge or you see Prague Castle and they’re impressive every time. It never gets old.”

As the one-year home assignment approached, however, Terry decided the time had come to resign from his position with the school.

“It can be very difficult if you’re the head of a school to say, ‘I’m going to be gone for a year – take care of everything while I’m gone,’” Terry says. “We hadn’t been back to the states for a long period of time and we hadn’t really reconnected with family and supporters, and it was a good time for us to do that.”

With the Prague chapter of their lives now closed and the home assignment in the U.S. underway, the Chumbleys live in the mission house in Early provided by the Heart of Texas Baptist Network. Terry works part-time at Good Samaritan Ministries in Brownwood.

Naturally, after living overseas for 13 years, the move back to the U.S. was bittersweet.

“What I miss most about Prague are the people I knew there,” says Marek.

“I miss walking around the city,” Robin adds, “particularly at night when the lights were all on and you could cross the bridge. It was beautiful.”

Though they still feel a strong connection to Prague, the Chumbleys have adjusted well to life back in central Texas. They appreciate the famous Texas friendliness as well as the barbecue, Mexican food and other tasty favorites such as donuts, which aren’t available in Prague.

“My favorite thing about Texas so far is probably Howard Payne,” Easton says. “And Underwood’s!”

Other cultural aspects have been a nice bonus. For instance, hearing “y’all” is a lot more common than it was in eastern Europe.

“We spoke Texan at home in Prague,” Terry says, while Payton adds that their dialect made them easy to spot: “Everyone said, ‘Here come the Chumbleys!’”

“We have a lot of friends who say ‘y’all’ now,” Landry says, “because they’ve heard us say it.”

Open to God’s leadership in the next phase of their lives’ adventure, Terry recently accepted a position with SHARE Education Services, an organization providing educational support for English-speaking expatriate families in various parts of the world. The Chumbleys will be stationed in Europe after the conclusion of the home assignment this summer.

As they prepare to return to Europe, Terry and Robin look back on their HPU days as having served a foundational role for the trajectory of their lives.

Robin credits HPU with providing a ministry-minded environment in which she sensed a call to missions, followed by a summer mission trip to Australia, where she and a partner worked with churches.

“The mission trip was a great opportunity to try some things and see God work,” she recalls. “That was the start to what He was going to bring us to do later.”

For Terry, his overall HPU experience was more than he could have dreamed when he was a 20-year-old transfer student.

“The day I stepped onto this campus,” Terry remembers, “I was at a point in my life when I needed some direction, I needed some support, I needed this community and I needed to be surrounded by a body of believers to really pour into my life. Not only did I get all that here, I got so much more. HPU truly is a transformational place.”