Chapter 3, in which I find that I have a lot more time than I realized on my hands

A lot of people want to know what my regular week looks like, and since the last two weeks I've started with my outreach days in addition to seminars, I finally have a pretty good idea of what my weeks will look like.

Mondays I will continue having seminars most of the time. Lots of theology and German, as I've previously mentioned.

Tuesdays I am helping out at the local Baptist Church with their breakfast café as a dishwasher/server/whatever role they need me to act in. This is a neat opportunity for me to meet people from the community, especially those from my neighborhood. Most of these people are elderly, and they love to talk to me while I'm there.

Wednesdays I go to something called Café International, a program of another local church. At this café, refugees come and drink coffee and eat with people from the church and community. I've met a few pretty cool people there, and I'm starting to form friendships with them. There are a number of Afghan and Iranian young men there, and although my Dari is almost nonexistent, being able to relate to their culture in a small way does help to connect.

Thursdays I attend a Spielstunde, or play hour put on at a church youth center in one of the rougher parts of town. We pick up kids from their neighborhood and take them there to just hang out and play with them. The next two weeks I will be assisting with some more activities at that outreach during the week due to the kids having fall break from school. A lot of the kids are refugee or immigrant children, but some are also Germans who come from a bad economic background.

Fridays I will be helping with the junior youth program at the Baptist Church, and Saturdays I sort of co-lead the youth group.

Except for Mondays, I only have 2 to 3 hours scheduled each day, with lots of free time in between. I have used this time to do things such as mow the lawn here at the church above which I live, pray, and run errands for Mike or Feli, the administrative people here.

A little bit less than two weeks ago I was praying and sort of just asking God what he wanted me to do with all of this extra time that I didn't anticipate having. I sort of just got this idea of talking to one of the men who sit begging on the street in the middle of town. I decided to take some lunch, find somebody, and sit and talk with him while he ate. Basically I just wanted to treat him like a normal person and recognize his humanity. So the next day, I went and took a sandwich and met Anjoseph, a Hungarian man who sits and reads at the side of one of the major pedestrian only streets in the center of town. It was a really different experience than I am used to, sitting and looking up at all of the people, some hurrying by to the next important thing that they have, some pretending not to see either of us, and some openly staring at me sitting there. It was a humbling experience and certainly made me glad that I have no need to sit and beg for money just to buy food. I don't know if it's something that I'm very likely to do again, but I think that it was good for me to do once at any rate.

Unfortunately I don't really have many pictures from this past two weeks, but here's one of us celebrating Johanna's birthday. Kris is my fellow American, from Virginia, next to him is Maren, who works at a Kindergarten during the week, and Johanna, who visits elderly people from a sister church to ours. Kris does a lot of the same things as I do, with the notable exception that he works in Heidelberg with kids on Wednesdays.