2023: Day 10, Teaching English and Visiting a Mosque

After a delicious breakfast of goldrush casserole, we moved to the first floor of the Center, and Nathan led us in a time of worship and prayer.

We then set off for the South Asian Community Center, SACC for short. The South Asian Community Center is near Jackson Heights, an area of Queens where many people from South Asia and South America live. SACC is a Christian organization that is seeking to serve the people of Jackson Heights by offering services such as English classes, immigration help, and citizenship classes.

For the first part of the morning, some of us helped indoors with teaching while a few others rotated operating a registration table on the sidewalk and prayer walking along nearby streets.

After the first class, Camille indicated that the next class would be full of many more students and would benefit from more staff, so we all moved inside to help teach. Within a few minutes, the classroom filled up wall to wall with students eager to learn English. We helped students successfully complete their assignments and worksheets.

In the early afternoon, we made our way from Jackson Heights to Al-Khoei Foundation, a mosque, elementary school, and Islamic community center in Queens.

The school’s principle, a gracious woman, warmly welcomed us. She gave us a brief overview of the organization and then took us into the auditorium, explained to us the pillars of Islam, and engaged with our questions.

From the mosque, we made our way on a rather long train ride to Shepherd’s Cup, a café in Brooklyn. The staff welcomed us into the artfully designed space, served us good Turkish-themed food and drinks, and the manager took time to sit with us and share his vision for the café.

The ride back to the center took about one and one half hours. As we traveled, many produced books from their backpacks to read.

At the day’s end, we had a meeting to reflect on the day and wrote cards of gratitude to the numerous individuals who guided our time in the city, and showed us fabulous hospitality this week.