At a recent Kids Treff, HfZ invited some of the children's parents to the church-run café across the street. "We arranged for a woman and her son to be there at 16:00. Exactly on time, the mom stepped into the café with her son. They had dressed formally. They addressed me with the polite Sie-form [of German], normally used with strangers. She had even made the effort to find out my family name that accompanies this formal address," Debi recounted.
To Debi, it looked as if the mother believed that the reason for this meeting was that her son had committed some kind of misdeed. But the staff of HfZ just wanted to get to know the parents of 'their' kids, the children attending Kids Treff.
During the conversation, Elena shared that she had been suffering from depression. She explained, in fairly good German, that her parents were Tamils (an ethnic group from South Asia), but that she wanted to integrate into the Swiss culture. Since she wanted to be accepted by the Swiss people, she made an extra effort to speak German properly. Elena is married and has one child. However, her husband is away a lot, so she spends much time home alone with Tom.
Debi offered Elena the children's book "Josi at the King's Castle," the book Tom knew already from Kids Treff. The story goes like this: A boy, not accepted anywhere, flees into the king's castle. He is invited to stay there. He takes the offer but hides his bleeding, hurting heart. But the king knows! He heals the boy's bleeding heart.
Elena accepted the booklet with the comment that she would love to have it, as it might help her to learn German properly.
Emil answered, "No problem, I will not disturb you!" And then he began to talk.
"He started to talk exactly where we had left off—it was so cool!" Debi related. Emil talked about hurting, injured hearts. This caused Elena to open up and tell them more about herself.
"We saw once more how God uses people that not we, but He Himself, had chosen to do a given job," Debi said.
The following week, Elena came to the coffee shop again. "I have read the whole book and have learned a lot of German while doing it!" she told the OM HfZ staff.
As she continued to talk with the OM HfZ staff, they saw that the book had also reached Elena's feelings, her emotions. Elena recognised herself in Josi's story and identified herself with him.