Alhamdullahi! Ramadaan is over! May Allah accept this from us all as an act of Ibaadah!
As admonished by the Prophet( SAW), we all should strive to fast six days in this month of Shawwal so we can earn the reward equal to a year's fast!
I was on a training in NEW YORK and had to stay at The RIVERIA Hotel ,having tried to get a muslim brother/family to stay with to no avail.It has a muslim Sudanese brother as the shop attendant who has stayed in the US for over decade. He understands English but I was always at liberty to converse with him in Arabic. The cyber cafe was also close to the shop and I do visit the cafe to surf the NET. On such occasion, his friend, a black American brother came visiting and we got talking. I asked him some questions and I got filled up with a ray of Imaan.

First, the direction he faced while praying Salaatul Maghrib was quite different from where I have had to face on his Sudanese friend guidance. When I asked him, he replied he was oblivious of the exact direction of the Qiblah and that Allah is not particular with your direction but your attention and submisssion. As an Omo Ile Kewu from Naija, i know it is part of the conditions for the validity of a prayer to face the Qiblah. As a mulsim, one should make conscious efforts to locate this before praying. However where one has prayed and faced a direction different from the Qiblah in error one is not bound to repeat such prayers. What amazed me was the depth of this brother's conviction, soft-spokenness, and the aura of tranquility around him . Anytime he talks, he punctuates it with Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah

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Second was the conversation between us about his family. He told me point blank that he was divorced. Reason being that the wife is the type who loves partying, girating, and really deep in fun seeking. He, on the order , being a conscious revert, will want none of that and has tried severally to make her change. This is one thing I noticed in that society :DIVORCE RATE IS REALLY REALLY HIGH.Yet, he took great pride in the fact that his sister embraced Islam through him and she was coming up gradually in her new found faith. Then the bombshell! He confirmed to me that due to a health condition, he could not really work. He called it hormonal imbalance issue and i could see balls of sweat gathering on his forehead then. Doctors will know what this means and if it is actually capable of draining one to the extent of barring one from work . Asked how he fends, he confirmed he was on government support of twelve hundred dollars monthly. All this while , always punctuating it with Alhamdulillah...Alhamdulillah! I felt within me I was not grateful to Allah enough!