I need to pray just to make it today - DC Talk
Kara and I have had a pretty bloggable past 7 days. It started on Thursday morning when I was driving to work and opted not to listen to the Vanilla top 40 radio because my ipod ran out of batteries. Something in me decided that it has been way too long since I had a talk with God. So for 15 minutes I tried to praise him and thank him for all that Kara and I have been blessed with over these past 13 months. I just wanted to say thanks and that I want to follow him. I asked to stay in his favor and thanked him for all the things he has given us. I also prayed that I could be his tool while I’m here. Something that I have forgotten a number of times since moving here.
So I got to work and I was just happy with the time I spent with God. Around 10:00 our housing coordinator came by and said the villa we wanted had opened up so if we could move in by Monday it was ours. I’m the first to admit we do not live in a real world. We had a baby, we needed a bigger place and after all the effort of sending an email, Kara and I waited a week and one was open. I’m without words. Actually as you can see, I do have some. So after letting people know the good news we had enough volunteers to move our house in one trip. A caravan of 9 cars picked everything up and dropped it off in about 2 hours.
About 11:00 on Thursday I got an email from a friend of mine who said he had been invited to a mosque and wanted to know if I was still up for the trip. He had been approached the week before and spent the evening talking to some guys about Islam and Christianity. He was then invited to come back the next week, when he told me this I thought this would be an awesome opportunity for me to build some relationships. I shot him back an email and said I was up for it. So that evening we met his friend on the other side of the town. When you meet locals here, it is not uncommon for individuals to park in a roundabout and wait for you. So we did the Qatari thing and met him there. We then followed him to one of the biggest mosques in Doha. This was definitely not sanitized tourist trip. This was a sandal wearing, Allah praising, Islam brotherhood crowd. I’ve watched foxnews, I was a little nervous but I have to say these were some of the nicest people I have met in this area. We pulled up around 7:30 and walked in on the middle of the nightly message. We sat down where a guy was doing the English translation and listened to what they were saying. Minus the mention of Jesus, this could definitely have been a sermon from your local church. The brief 30 minutes I listened to was mainly about how Muslims should not worry just about their countrymen, people in this region or Muslims alone. He was saying Allah loves all and you should seek to serve all. What I’m getting at, is it was a pretty loving message.
After the message all eyes in our circle were on us. I guess me and my friend kind of stuck out. Everyone introduced themselves and we discussed the message for about 30 minutes. We pushed it back and forth and it was a nice intro. After this the prayer call was made and the whole mosque filled up. There were several hundred men packed in doing the traditional evening prayers. My friend and I sat in the back and did our own prayers. After the prayers two guys bee lined over to us and started making friends. The conversation progressed and pretty soon we became bigger then Elvis. We had about 30 or 40 guys staring at us. Arabs have a very small bubble for personal space so we all were getting cozy. Well after talking with these guys for a bit, the original translator pulled us out and sat us down separately so we wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. Before we sat down everyone wanted to shake our hands and congratulate us. Some how everyone got the idea we had converted.
So when we sat down I made it clear that I had no intention of converting from Christianity. I was only here to make friends and share our culture. They all took it in stride and just asked us to keep our minds open. It really was a challenging talk but it was good to have. It’s been a while since I sharpened my whit in this area. After this we were invited outside to have dinner. We ate from a bowl of rice and chicken while we sat on a mat under the desert night. After passing around a bowl of camel milk and talking some more we headed home.
This was a surreal experience on about 10 different levels. I hope to continue meeting with some of these guys and build friendships. I talked to my pastor about this on Friday and he gave me some realistic advice that I was surprised to hear come out of a pastors mouth but he has more life experience in this area then I have. He basically said that I should try to build relationships, do the culture exchange thing but I should never and he repeated that, argue the Bible inside of a mosque. I told him I agreed and he was happy. Words can’t really describe how happy and emotionally draining this was. Now that my hands hurt, I think I will leave it at that.
So I got to work and I was just happy with the time I spent with God. Around 10:00 our housing coordinator came by and said the villa we wanted had opened up so if we could move in by Monday it was ours. I’m the first to admit we do not live in a real world. We had a baby, we needed a bigger place and after all the effort of sending an email, Kara and I waited a week and one was open. I’m without words. Actually as you can see, I do have some. So after letting people know the good news we had enough volunteers to move our house in one trip. A caravan of 9 cars picked everything up and dropped it off in about 2 hours.
About 11:00 on Thursday I got an email from a friend of mine who said he had been invited to a mosque and wanted to know if I was still up for the trip. He had been approached the week before and spent the evening talking to some guys about Islam and Christianity. He was then invited to come back the next week, when he told me this I thought this would be an awesome opportunity for me to build some relationships. I shot him back an email and said I was up for it. So that evening we met his friend on the other side of the town. When you meet locals here, it is not uncommon for individuals to park in a roundabout and wait for you. So we did the Qatari thing and met him there. We then followed him to one of the biggest mosques in Doha. This was definitely not sanitized tourist trip. This was a sandal wearing, Allah praising, Islam brotherhood crowd. I’ve watched foxnews, I was a little nervous but I have to say these were some of the nicest people I have met in this area. We pulled up around 7:30 and walked in on the middle of the nightly message. We sat down where a guy was doing the English translation and listened to what they were saying. Minus the mention of Jesus, this could definitely have been a sermon from your local church. The brief 30 minutes I listened to was mainly about how Muslims should not worry just about their countrymen, people in this region or Muslims alone. He was saying Allah loves all and you should seek to serve all. What I’m getting at, is it was a pretty loving message.
After the message all eyes in our circle were on us. I guess me and my friend kind of stuck out. Everyone introduced themselves and we discussed the message for about 30 minutes. We pushed it back and forth and it was a nice intro. After this the prayer call was made and the whole mosque filled up. There were several hundred men packed in doing the traditional evening prayers. My friend and I sat in the back and did our own prayers. After the prayers two guys bee lined over to us and started making friends. The conversation progressed and pretty soon we became bigger then Elvis. We had about 30 or 40 guys staring at us. Arabs have a very small bubble for personal space so we all were getting cozy. Well after talking with these guys for a bit, the original translator pulled us out and sat us down separately so we wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. Before we sat down everyone wanted to shake our hands and congratulate us. Some how everyone got the idea we had converted.
So when we sat down I made it clear that I had no intention of converting from Christianity. I was only here to make friends and share our culture. They all took it in stride and just asked us to keep our minds open. It really was a challenging talk but it was good to have. It’s been a while since I sharpened my whit in this area. After this we were invited outside to have dinner. We ate from a bowl of rice and chicken while we sat on a mat under the desert night. After passing around a bowl of camel milk and talking some more we headed home.
This was a surreal experience on about 10 different levels. I hope to continue meeting with some of these guys and build friendships. I talked to my pastor about this on Friday and he gave me some realistic advice that I was surprised to hear come out of a pastors mouth but he has more life experience in this area then I have. He basically said that I should try to build relationships, do the culture exchange thing but I should never and he repeated that, argue the Bible inside of a mosque. I told him I agreed and he was happy. Words can’t really describe how happy and emotionally draining this was. Now that my hands hurt, I think I will leave it at that.
posted by Russell at
5:35 PM
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