Lost bikes, found opportunities

After our bicycles were stolen from campus last week and a coworker found mine leaning against a tree in Schaffhausen, we have been keeping an eye out for the one that Andrew was riding, which is still missing. We were told that our bicycles were a very unusual design. So that makes it easy to look at all the bikes parked around the city and quickly rule them out as the one that belonged to Andrew. There was still an extra bike available at our office, so coworkers were kind enough to loan that one to Andrew so we can continue to go riding.

Last evening we went for a ride in Schaffhausen and happened to see a man ride past us going the other direction on what looked exactly like Andrew's missing bike. Knowing how unusual our bicycles are, it seemed there was a good chance it was the missing bike. We did a quick u-turn to get a closer look.

The man didn't look like someone who would steal a bike, and he had two little girls with him that were clearly his daughters. I wondered if maybe a teenager who stole Andrew's bike might have sold it to the man, who was unaware it was a stolen bike.

When we got right next to the man, however, I realized that his bike was black, while Andrew's had been a very dark blue. Just then, the man was getting off the bike and noticed me looking at it, so I tried to think of something to say. I blurted out that I had never seen another bike like mine, which is true. He was actually really excited to see how similar our bicycles were. We talked about our bikes for a few minutes, and this led to a very warm and friendly conversation in which we all got to know each other a little bit.

The man, named Heinz, is originally from the U.K., but moved with his company to Schaffhausen three years ago. He admitted that he is in a similar situation to us, in that he works with all English-speaking people and so has had difficulty learning German.

We told him about the school where Andrew works just down the road and we mentioned that we have an English-speaking church that meets there regularly. We asked Heinz if he might be interested in checking it out. He was very interested because the only English-speaking church he knew of was in Zurich. He only goes occasionally because of the long drive and inconvenience of getting there. He was excited to check out our church in Buesingen in the near future. He seemed really cool, so we hope he comes.

It was neat to see how our stolen bikes led to an opportunity to meet a potential new friend and share about our church with him.

What we've been up to

Some of you may have some interest in what we've been keeping busy with lately.

Andrew just showed me the material he is preparing for a 10-week online course this fall in church history. He's spent hours every day writing and developing the material, reading guides, tests and so on. He's about halfway done. I often come home in the evening finding him stretched out on the bed, surrounded by books and binders, poring over his computer for several hours even after he's been at it all day at work. Church history is his passion, so I don't think he will burn out anytime soon. Maybe he can get on here and tell you more about what he's been up to in the office.

Next weekend is a faculty retreat so Andrew will join the other instructors and faculty for a few days together in the mountains.

The Regional Communications team took a summer hiatus, as is common for Europeans. Tiki went home to see her family and renew her residency visa back there. My supervisor, Dennis, took a well-deserved three weeks with his wife at a lake in the Netherlands. Andrew and I took two weeks of vacation in Italy, with a week in between for me to keep the plates spinning with Engage magazine.

This month Tiki and I returned our attention to writing our weekly "Snapshots," with the first one going out on Monday. We're also gathering and preparing articles for the September edition of Where Worlds Meet, after giving it a month off for August. We have some exciting stories, such as the announcement of plans for how the Eurasia Region will partner with the global church in a special fall offering for World Evangelism Fund. Additionally, we're editing a few articles written by students on the Point Loma Nazarene University medical team that served in the Nazarene hospital in Washim, India, this summer. A youth mission team from Hungary sent us an article and photos about their summer ministry trip. And the list goes on. God and His people have been busy sharing Christ's love this summer throughout the region.

For Engage magazine, I'm working on some exciting developments. A new volunteer with a marketing business back home is helping me conduct some analysis of the Web site and visitor traffic. In his free time he's also putting together some marketing ideas and planning that hopefully I can put into action later this fall.

We brought on-board a writing intern from MidAmerica Nazarene University who has done a stellar job in completing his first two articles. I'm also working to beef up the multi-media storytelling of Engage, and to expand content that focuses on exploring mission theology and philosophy in our church today. We also started a new column called Ask the Missionary, and have added a series of mission book reviews (thanks, Greg and Amy!). I'm excited about more ideas that are in the works. I love my job with Engage, and all the potential it holds to continue expanding resources for our mission-passionate Nazarenes.

The students will be returning for the fall semester in a few weeks. It's been really quiet without them. While that means less competition for the gym room equipment, it also means an absence of fellowship that we have come to enjoy with young people from around the world. We are ready to have them back. :-)

Something sweet

Tonight Andrew and I took off for a walk through the fields just behind campus around sunset. The fields are ripe with tall stalks of corn, heavy-headed sunflowers, rows and rows of something like a really big radish, oats and wheat. It smells amazing. We dodged a few tractors that were coming and going through the narrow gravel or paved tractor tracks between the fields. Even though it was getting dark, we saw numerous tractors moving in perfect rows by the light of their headlights.

We were almost back home in the dwindling dusk when we passed a little pickup truck parked on a gravel walking path, next to a large grassy area thick with clover. An elderly man wearing dirty work jeans, a well-worn flannel shirt and baseball cap had used an old-fashioned scythe to cut swathes of the sweet clover. He was loading it into crates to put into his truck. He smiled, giving the Swiss-German greeting, and we did the same. He gave us a lingering look and I felt like stopping to see what would happen.

He didn't hesitate at all in approaching us as we paused to point at his scythe with interest. This began a friendly conversation in which we got about 10% of what he tried to tell us because we just know so little German. He asked us if we were from the "Bibel schule," which means EuNC. The school has such an amazing reputation in the area. I guess that's why he was so agreeable to a chat with us. He tried to tell us that the clover was for his horses, I think. He mimicked horseback riding while holding reins. He tried to tell us a few more things that we didn't get, and I was so sorry that I couldn't participate much in the conversation.

Gesturing that we should wait a moment, the man hurried to his truck, fumbled around in the back seat and returned with a jar. He showed me the picture of a bee on the top, so we knew it was a jar of honey. He gestured around us, indicating it was local honey. Then he gave it to us.

We were so surprised and gratefully repeated one of the few words we know well: Danke!

We told him our names and he told us his name was Franz. Andrew noticed that Franz had disproportionately large, dry, cracked, callused hands from the hard work he must do on his farm/horse ranch/bee farm or whatever it is. He mentioned the name of a man who works at EuNC, so we think he is a mutual friend. We intend to talk to our friend at EuNC about Franz to find out more about him, and maybe where he lives. We would love to see him again, when we have more German under our belts.

One of the things that's a bit sad for me in living in this small village is that, contrary to what you would think, I almost never meet the same person twice. I have on many occasions been stopped on the street to have a cheerful, friendly conversation, mostly in German, with a village resident, going so far as to exchange names, making sure I memorize theirs carefully so I can call them by name on our next meeting, only to never see them again.

Andrew and I also desperately want to learn German so we can have more in-depth conversations with the residents, to show them that we want to get to know them and care about their town and culture. However, the two classes we had intended to take were both cancelled. So we've found a foreign language school in Schaffhausen that offers 12-week courses at any time that is convenient for us. We just need a minimum of 4 people, and we've found two others on campus who would like to go as well. We are pretty busy through the middle of September, but we're hoping to schedule the course after that.

In the meantime, I can't wait to try out the local honey we were given on some fresh-baked bread from the bakery across the street.

A wedding

Work was interrupted today by the cacophony of honking horns outside our offices. Upon investigation, we saw it was a wedding party that was slowly progressing from the 1,000-year-old church on one end of town to a nice restaurant for a reception on the other end of the village. I am told this is a traditional practice and happens a lot in August.