Article January 1, 2003 ISSUE

“Will you forgive me?”

Arturo Palomino,—Huancayo, Peru

I'm from Peru. Last year I attended seventh grade at a public school in the US, in the city of Boston. It was a big change for me. Besides the language difference, school was a lot noisier, and the kids were more concerned about the way they looked and the kinds of clothes they wore than they are in Peru.

One day I went to school wearing the same clothes that I had worn the day before to avoid having to wash them a lot and to save a little money. I had to pay to wash my clothes in the apartment building next door. One boy at school made a big deal about it, and he told me to be more considerate. I said that I had good hygiene, that I wasn't doing anything wrong, and that my clothes weren't in bad condition. But he started to spread this around to everyone, and the boys in my class began to tell me that I was a filthy person, that I was very stingy to do such a thing to save $1.25, and that they didn't want me as their friend. I didn't know what to do, so I kept quiet.

Another day a boy grabbed my drink and made an obscene gesture with it, and then a group of them threatened to beat me up. Fortunately, nothing happened. I felt humiliated, and I had to control myself to avoid fighting back and hurting anyone.

Things got worse every day, and I decided to tell my family about what had happened. They told me they would pray for me, and asked if I would like to talk about this with my Sunday School teacher.

That Sunday I told my teacher and we talked about how I could pray for myself. She gave me a chapter to read at home from the book Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, about how to treat your enemies (p.8 ). One of the things it says is that our enemies are really our friends, since they test our patience and goodness. Also, that the way to lose our enemies is to love them, which is what Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount.

I prepared to go to school by thinking constantly about this. Although there were moments when I felt a little insecure at school, I continued praying. One thought I had was that God loves me even more than my parents do, so God wouldn't let anything bad happen to me.

That comforted me. One of the laws of God is the law of Love, which takes care of each of us. This helped me not get into a fight, and see that there could be only good communication, friendship, and brotherhood between me and the other boys.

Unbelievably, one day the boy who had caused me so much trouble came to me and said, “Listen, will you forgive me for everything?” I replied, “Everything is OK.” And, day after day, the other boys approached me and asked me to teach them how to solve some of our math problems. Then the math teacher formed groups of four students each and told me that I was going to help them, which I was happy to do.

Things continued to improve. Soon I was everybody's friend, and I felt more secure about going to school.

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