A Thousand Tongues To Sing

This picture is from when I was in Tanzania. Statistically, Christians are in the majority in Tanzania. But there are still a significant number of Muslims, and in Moshi, it felt like a pretty even split in town. Since I've slowly but surely been developing a heart for the 1040 window, particularly within the extremely legalistic Arabic North Africa region and also for the girls in the sex industry in many parts of Southeast Asia, I asked Mama Moshi if we could visit a mosque. I wanted to understand better. I wanted to get a feeling for what it's like to follow the prayer rituals and respond to the chanting in Arabic. I wanted to try to understand, if only in the slightest respects, the female subjugation in the world of Islam. Where is the draw? How much of this devotion to Allah is genuine and how much is the result of tradition, upbringing, or societal expectation? I was hungry to learn. 

Mama Moshi said she couldn't do much for us in this department since she's Catholic, and you have to be invited by a member to a mosque: non-Muslims cannot just go any time they please. However, fortunately, one of the ZARA drivers named Saleem, a.k.a. 'Slim,' agreed to have his daughter, Ama, take the four girls on one Thursday for the noon prayer service. We had to be covered head to toe in kangas (wraps around our lower bodies) and shawls (seen in the picture above). Not an inch of my 'nakedness' nor my 'dirtiness' was allowed to show. I had to wash my hands, forearms, face, ears, legs, and feet three times before I was allowed to pray in the line of women gathered upstairs. (The men were downstairs.) Finally, after we purified ourselves, the beautiful sound of the call to prayer in Arabic commenced the repeated standing, kneeling, prostration involved in the prayer rituals. We prayed, apparently, for forgiveness, acceptance, and cleanliness... Rather than declaring Allah as the One True God and His Prophet Mohammed as the Final, True Prophet, I prayed [silently] and declared [boldly] Jesus the Christ as the Son of the Living God and Lord and Savior for all.

I don't yet have the words to articulate what occurred in my heart that day in the mosque. I might not ever have the words. 

In 1739, Charles Wesley wrote the famous hymn, "O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing." David Crowder did another version of it in one of his recent albums. Of course, Revelation 5:11-12 says it best. Either and every way, I pray for the nations.

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Today was my first day as an Assistant Case Manager at World Relief in Stone Mountain, GA. Though the office is in Stone Mountain, most of the apartments and several of the partnering agencies are in Clarkston and within the city limits of Atlanta. As the only full-time intern for WR this summer, my job is ... everything. 

- I'll pick up incoming refugees from the airport and watch them step foot onto American soil for the first time;

- I'll teach them that refrigerators are for food, not clothes (a tricky concept when you stop to consider how much a refrigerator looks like closet shelving);

- We'll walk and talk together and I'll try to be a good listening ear or strong shoulder to cry on;

- I'll take Mohamed and Ahmed grocery shopping at Kroger and model how to comparison shop and show them how to use the EBT card; 

- On Mondays and Wednesdays, I'll drive Uger's wife and sister (and others, etc.) to First Baptist Decatur to outfit their family of six; 

- Often, I'll file paperwork for hours; 

- More often, I'll pray for hours; 

- Sometimes, I'll explain to Hassan that his one year old daughter gets 1.6 mL of the medicine, not 0.8 mL, which means he'll have to fill up the tubule twice each time he gives her the medicine. 

- Everyday, I'll try to love and serve the widowed and the orphaned; everyday I'll do my best to love and serve the nations as Christ has modeled and commanded us to do; everyday, I'll be lost and broken without Him.

"भला-कुसारि" is transliterated to "bhalā-kusāri" which means "greetings and good wishes"

I would like to speak Arabic and Nepali. . .