Happy Holidays! 09/03/2011

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"Did you enjoy your Eid?" is the question most people are asking around here.  Basically it means, "We hope you had a happy holiday."
  
We are back and mostly recovered from our cross-island journey to celebrate Eid al-Fitr with some of our Muslim friends.  We had a great time of seeing people we hadn’t seen for a long time, sharing stories, eating lots of food (5 full meals in 5 hours time! Yikes!), watching our kids integrate seamlessly with the kids in the neighborhood (how cool is that?), lots of driving (15 hours of driving to get back home in holiday traffic...zzzzz...) and joining in the community activities to celebrate this most important holiday of the year (that means no sleep because the fireworks and celebration went on through the night). 
 
All in all not unlike many holidays in the States, minus the football.  Well, they do have football but its the kind of football that requires the use of feet; unlike our version of football (otherwise called by such names as gridiron, American Football, or sissyball by our Australian rugby-loving friends...hey, don't come after me I just report the news).
 
One friend, a young mother, we noticed was wearing her head covering for the first time  since we’ve ever known her.  I ask her why she was wearing it now and what did it mean to her?  She answered that she was “finally ready” to wear it and that she decided to begin wearing it because she felt that her heart was now pure.
 
Later I told her that I would be praying for her throughout this coming year that she would know the clean heart and forgiveness of sins that comes through faith in Isa al-Masi (Jesus, the Messiah).  She thanked me for the prayer but then explained that she believed that her forgiveness had come to her through the Prophet Muhammad.

Boldness check...
 
Later I told that I had read much of her Scriptures and that I admired the wisdom of Prophet Muhammad when he said that Muslims ought to read the Gospel because it will answer their questions about the Messiah and that everyone who follows the Messiah will be considered worthy on the Final Day.
  
“...I hope someday you’ll decide to follow Isa al-Masi,” I told her via sms after we had left her home.
  
We hope you enjoyed this year Ramadan Emails (www.loveneighbor.weebly.net) and learned something along the way, were challenged to rethink some of your thoughts and encouraged to see that God is working among these Neighbors of ours--people that He loves dearly.

 

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