Yesterday was such a busy day. After sorting out myself with my work, I went to The Grove Primary School in Arbury because the Religious Education (RE) teacher invited ISOC to come and help her to teach Islamic Studies to the children in her class. There are 26 cute little children in her class and they are all so curious about Islam as the teacher is a non-Muslim and there are only 3 children who are Muslims. A brother and I went to the school to tell them about Islam. Apparently the brother has his son in that class too. So they started to speak Urdu to each other in some occasions. Yes, they are from Pakistan.
We started the session with a little introduction about ourselves and then about the 5 pillars in Islam. Then the brother made adhan (caller to prayer) before we prayed 2 raka'ah of Dhuha prayer. He led the prayer where his son stood behind him, me and 2 other Muslim girls in the class stood behind and followed him. After that, the children started to ask questions about Islam. They are soooooo cute and funny yet very thoughtful. All sort of questions they asked about Islam. After that, we played some children nasheeds and ended the session by giving them snacks for the break. The brother bought all the snacks for the children and also chocolate for the teachers and staff. May ALLAH reward him for his generosity.
Then I went for jumaah, met the sisters. MashaALLAH, the congregation was big. We have 2 full lines of sisters whereas before this, there's only 1 line or the most, 1 and a half. Alhamdulillah many sisters are coming to pray jumaah now and so do the brothers. And the best part is all the sisters that came, they all can pray! No one sitting at the corner during the prayer. At 3pm, I went to the faculty and joined the discussion to improve the facility of the faculty focusing on the needs of the postgraduates. I requested for halal food to be provided by the canteen and also a multi-faith prayer room in the building. Other things like the improving the online information available for postgraduates and better link with other universities. The final resolution is to form a new association for students in the faculty. With that, then we can bring more improvement to the well-being of the students and also channel the energy of the students into one big organisation.
At 5pm, I attended to Night Slide where the pictures that I've taken for the Day Experience Research 2 days ago were being shown. We were having focus group discussion while the pictures were being shown. We were also being served with lots of food. The focus of the discussion is to know what kind of expectation of postgraduates would like from the ICT services in Cambridge, what type of environment will the students excel in their studies. It's quite interesting and I learned a lot from the method of their research by just being a participant.
At 7.30pm, after quickly printed out the picture of sister Sheridan and stuck it into a birthday card, I was with sister Farzana who was driving to Little Ouse near Ely to attend sister Sheridan's 50th birthday party. We got lost after 45 minutes of drive and we were in the middle of a big big farm but we met a kind man who showed us the way to the party place. Alhamdulillah, we reached there at about 8.30pm. As I went into the house to look for toilet to make wudu', I was kind of shivering because the 3-storey detached house is very very spooky! No kidding. It's owned by a scientist who lives in the middle of nowhere alone! Anyway, the party was nice and we went home like really late. I slept in the car while sister Farzana drove me home. I'm such a bad company...
On the way...
Beautiful countryside with river
An old bridge
The sun was settingWassalam.
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