5 Things Upon Coming Back to The States.

بِسْــــــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِارَّحْمَنِ ارَّحِيم

Alhamdulillah..
let's do the five things

1. Saya bersyukur dah selamat sampai kat DeKalb (regardless of DeKalb hehe) after 39 hours of journey + delays.

2. An amazing travel buddy and other empowering encounters. A single Korean mom with two kids saw mamat and I pray together and came to ask us about Islam in general. She was surprised to find out the Muslims believe in Jesus Alayhisalam. So, she made a vow to read the Quran this year :)

My seat in the American Airlines plane was sandwiched between two strong ladies. One lady was going from LA to Chicago to stay with her sister in law who just performed a double mastectomy. Subhanallah. I looked up to her because she's sacrificing a lot to give her some moral support to even though her sis-in-law had already lost her husband.

A lady who seemed disheveled but then explained herself why she was in that state. Apparently she just got back from her fourth funeral of the month. Her best friend was in Amsterdam and she flew all the way to bid the dead farewell.

Models of the day!

3. Amazing NIU MSA crowd at the Involvement Fair...students were so eager to try out traditional desserts (kuih raya choc crunch nestum from Malaysia dan Bakhlava from Chicago), ice popsicles, the henna art, and Muslim cultural consume - the hijab, kufi etc. Alhamdulillah ya Allah. A student who dropped by at out table also made a remark that our table was the best by far! Subahanallah...all credits go to Allah and amazing support from the comrades. You guys ere really God-sent. Support kawan2 adalah pasakku, sumber semangat dan kekuatanku! That was our very first event of the year. I was a lil bit stressed over it. How do we create influence?! But the moment orang2 kuat MSA kata tak jadi nk transfer out of NIU, that was when I knew Your help was close. Indeed, Your help is close. All I can say is that, even though we are a religious organization, we used our different cultural backgrounds to our favor :) Yey! Subhanallah. Allah ni Maha Genius!

4. The sweet sour of the four-five meeting sessions with adik2 BBD. Subhanallah. Allah, mereka juga adalah sumber inspirasi dan semangatku. The supposedly last meeting before Raya holiday and SPM Trial, we watched Mr. Ruben's video of conversion to Islam. I was very moved by their sharing. Some of them even cried after expressing their thoughts and feelings...it was our sharing wida'! But then, the last week of my stay in Malaysia, Allah panjangkan jodoh kami :) sempat buat another session...all because of an Indian girl's request through one of the adik2, saying that she wanted to see kakak2 ni because she felt like she loved them even before she met them. Subhanallah...we don't know why was that so but it felt to me like daya tarikan ukhuwah :) She's very special. She's a self-proclaimed Hindu. She memorized a couple of chapters in the Quran, she even read doa makan like Muslims do and she gives Salam. Jadi, that very last session, it was more like a girl talk sambil menjamu kuih raya :) sgt chilled out. Kami share psl kisah seorang gadis hingusan yg berusaha mengenal apa itu cinta sambil mencari2 puteranya, di samping menyelit kisah Khadijah, Bilal ibn Rabah, dan Anas dan puterinya radiallahuanhum. I missed them so much :')

5. Alhamdulillah for our friend's kind offer of free accommodation. It takes 5-6 days from today until mamat and I could move into our apartment. May Allah bless and protect you dear friend for lifting up the burden of your brother and sister.

To summarize, da'wah takes many form. Alhamdulillah. Thank you Allah for creating many ways of touching people's hearts.