Daily Archives

7 April 2009

Jerusalem

Ramadan

7 April 2009
Ramadan is the name of ninth month in the Muslim religion. It is a time of fasting, praying, and alms giving. They fast from sun up to sun down for the entire month. That is so crazy. Do you know how hard that would be? That is insano. The Muslims also give a lot more money and food to the poor at this time. The refrain from gossip and other evils to purify themselves and become closer to Allah. At the end of the month of Ramadan, they have a FEAST! That’s the part that we did, although we feasted months and months early. You have to modify things for JC life though.
Dr. Adnan Musallam, our professor for our Palestinian/Islam class, taught us about Ramadan and introduced us to the two sheiks that he had come and pray for us. The sheiks are like the religious leaders. The two that came in were father and son and their names were Nagi and Feras I think. Their positions at Al-Aqsa Mosque have been passed down in their family for 530 years. They are the type of people that do call to preayer.
Five times a day, there is call to prayer. I love listening to it. And when I first got to Jerusalem, I loved it waking me up at 5 am every morning. Love it. They sing surahs (sections of the Quran, the Muslim holy book) and it’s really amazing what they can do. They don’t breathe for sooooo long too. They just sing/speak the surah. 
After learning about it, the feast began. Our kitchen staff at the JC is so good. Jimmy and Mohammed, they’re all so good to us.

Marianne, Kara, and I sat together at a table, and guess who else… KEN! We had so much fun at our little table. And we created some sort of concoction for Ken to drink. He did it, painfully. What a trooper. But he did get a magnum bar out of the deal… :)
Jerusalem

SERVE

7 April 2009
There are so many opportunities to serve and help other people here in Jerusalem. One of our main service projects is putting together hygiene kits to send to those in Gaza, who have been devastated. It’s so good and we put these assemble lines together and speedster speedily pack the bags with towels, soap, tooth brushes, tooth pastes, and other such things. Those people need it.

Another service opportunity is feeding the babies. There is a Muslim hospital right down the street and you can go there and feed the little newborns and the babies that are underweight. This one I was feeding was maybe about 4.5 lbs, and it was 40 days old or something. Feeding the babies is really cool. Made me miss my darling nieces.

You can also go to Princess Basma’s Center for Disabled Children and play with the kids. There are all different severities the children, but it is so fun and so good and they just need people the play with them.
There were so many things we could do here to help bring a little peace to Jerusalem. I only wish I would’ve done more. Peace.