a couple of months ago, the local spiritual assembly of my community asked us all to host devotional gatherings – either regular or not. so i went and visited some friends and told them “we’re starting a devotional!” naturally, they were super excited, and we’ve had a devotional every thursday since then.
one evening, we were all sitting around after prayers, and we started talking about forming a teaching team, and addressing some of the needs we saw among our friends and in the community.
one of the families we know is very interested in the teachings of the baha’i faith, and wanted to be involved in core activities. they have 3 sons – two are junior youth and one is a child. so we decided that one of us would tutor a ruhi book 1, another would teach a children’s class, and a third would animate a junior youth (jy) group. we started about a month ago, but it was hard to gather the boys at first, and encouraging them to invite their friends to the group and class has not yet been effective. and then it became apparent that the two junior youth could not be in the same group together – their questions and stages of growth are completely different.
last night was my first night with the middle brother, jamal. i thought i would start our group by trying to get to know him better. i decided that we could start by doing an activity and asking each other questions – basically, to have a conversation.
it went about as well as i could expect… he isn’t very used to actual conversation, so it was odd and involved a lot of outbursts of random craziness (which i find hilarious), but, on reflection i realized i had learned a few really important things.
the most significant is that he hasn’t really thought about what he would like to do in the future. his ideas about travelling, careers, etc are very limited, and the more i probed, the more i realized that he hasn’t ever been exposed to many ideas. he’s currently interested in medicine and cooking (as careers), so i thought i would start there, and i want to also show him different places and cultures in the world – thank God for the internet!
from there, we need to start building a jy group! but, so far, so good!!!
