Before I begin, I must apologize for not updating every week. I get so busy with everything and Sunday I moved out of the apartment I was in and into the home of a family I stayed with last year when I was here for 2 weeks, the Mornhinwegs.
Sunday when I was at the Church Plant outside of Stuttgart, the story of Jonah and the fish was presented to the kids. After the story they made little whales out of socks and pillow stuffing. After this was completed, it was time to take the kids out to play some games with them. While we were playing there were some kids climbing up in a cherry tree cutting some limbs down. When the limb would fall, the kids would get all the cherries off of it. I went over there to watch and ended up getting some cherries as well. Fresh cherries are pretty good :). While there, one of the kids, I will call Jim, starting throwing cherries at me. I knew he was just playing and I told him, "Nein!" But he still kept going. To play around with him some, I started to chase him around, I was doing more of a slow jog then anything else.
But this is where I made a mistake.
I reached out to grab the arm of Jim, who had fallen off his bike a few days earlier and had a bandage on his elbow to cover up a pretty bad wound. When I reached for his arm, I ripped the bandage off and of course this hurt Jim. I tried to help him cover the wound back up. After a few seconds he pulled his arm away from me and walked off by himself for about 5 minutes. As, I was helping him I was telling him, "Bitte, bitte, bitte." I of course did not mean to do this to him and I felt really bad.
Come to find out, I was wrong in my translation of the word "Bitte," it does not mean "Sorry" at all. "Bitte" means both "Please" and "Your Welcome". After finding out what "I am sorry" is in German, "Es tut mir leid" or "Entschuldigung" I tired to tell Jim, but he would never look at me.
I told one of the workers what had happened and what I had done, and they told me that I need not to worry about it. She even tried to get Jim to listen to me, but he still would not. I did get a little back ground information about Jim's life and family situation. The people at the church are unsure what it is really like. For most of the kids who come to the Kid's Program, I believe it is that way.
I will hopefully see Jim again today at the Kid's Program and pray that things are ok, that he is not mad at me anymore. I will just have to wait and see.
Thanks for your prayers!!!
In Christ - Tyler A. Bowman
