Interestingly enough, these past few days have been a holiday of sorts for us here in this majority-Muslim city.
We are currently in the middle of “Kai Zhai Jie”, which literally translates “Breaking (the) Fast Holiday”. This is one of the biggest Muslim holidays of the year which takes place right at the end of the month long fast known as Ramadan.
Today was the first time that I have ever really felt the ‘holiday spirit’ for a holiday that was not really my own. I have now experienced numerous foreign holidays overseas, such as Chinese New Year and Chinese National Day, but I have never really felt like it was anything special or like I was actually having a holiday myself.
That is, until today. For some reason, today as I watched families on taking taxis or riding motorcylces (yes, a whole family on 1 motorcycle!) to go visit relatives or friends, and the fact that our own baby shoe factory, where our workers are all Muslim, are off from work for most of the week, I actually felt like it was a holiday. I was able to relax, get some rest, not worry about too many responsibilities, and spend the majority of the day in the home of some good Muslim friends of ours. It was really a nice day. Not quite the same as Thanksgiving or Christmas, for obvious religious reasons, but still a nice time to spend with friends and get to know people a little better.
Pray with us for our friends that they would come to know Jesus!
