Visiting Mosques

5th Avenue in Brooklyn is only 3 blocks away from where I live. Within recent years this area has seen an influx of Arabic-speaking people from various nations across Asia and the Middle East. The brothers, thus, have formed a group to call on those among the Arabic-speaking community.

The newest neighbor in our building, Rana, moved from Long Island to Brooklyn to increase her share in working the Arabic territory with the group, as she was raised knowing most of the Arabic language. Yesterday Rana met up with Becca, Nicoletta, and myself for about an hour in the afternoon. Her mission for the day (requested by a brother in the group) was to get an Arabic directory. Before we picked her up she had had a conversation with a man in a falafel store and he told her that she could get a directory at a local fruit stand/grocery store just a few blocks away.

So when Rana met up with us, I went with her to the store where she explained what she needed in half English, half Arabic. The man behind the counter said he didn't have any there but the mosque across the street would definitely have them . So we crossed the street and Rana asked a man standing outside the mosque for the directory. There was a lot of hmm-ing and haa-ing and it was determined that there weren't any left in the mosque. However a nice man who was going into the mosque said the Internet Cafe, just down the block, should have one. Therefore he escorted us two little Westerners to the Internet Cafe where we obtained a business directory but not a personal one. But Rana was determined to get the personal one too. So we stopped into one more store across the street and the shop keeper said we could go to any mosque and they should have an personal Arabic directory.

Then we hopped back into the car (after we checked two other places-a store and a lawyers office) . The only other major mosque I knew of was on 6th Avenue somewhere between 60th and 65th Streets. We found it on 63rd Street. There Rana and I hopped out again and met a man who happened to be the Imam (I'm sure I misspelled the English translation of that) who is like the priest of that mosque-his name was Adel. He checked inside if they had a spare copy but to no avail.

Adel then offered the phone number of the mosque and his own cell phone number for Rana to contact him to check when they do get one in. We thanked him and returned to the car, Rana absolutely beaming!

Rana then headed to the Heights to join her group for telephone witnessing which lasted LATE into the evening. When she knocked on our door later that night, she told us that she had got in contact with Adel again and he had found a copy for her. Then he asked her why she wanted one. Rana's reply was that she had just moved from Long Island...Adel then finished her sentence, "Ah of course and you want to get to know Arabic people in the neighbor hood! I knew you must've been new here." So Rana didn't have to explain the real reason that she was going to use the directory to witness to people about the Bible. That would've made for an interesting experience!

Apparently this was above and beyond what the brother, who commissioned Rana for the directory, had expected! They were all so excited because the brother was only looking for the business directory, but now the floodgates were opening and they were receiving a complete directory of all Arabic speaking in the area. Talk about speeding up the work!