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.