Tom Facchine – Medina Stories #01 – Walking To Al Masjid an Nabawi

			So when it came to when I got some of Deena, they didn't have room for us to stay on campus. So the
university owned dormitories on the other side of the city. And so they would actually have buses
and then bring us to campus every day. Now, my particular cohort when we came in, I started, I think
I tested out of the first semester of work for the Arabic Institute. And so I started at level two.
And again, I think they were out of space in the Arabic Institute. So we had night classes. So our
mornings were free. And one of the pieces of advice that I got when I first got to Medina was go,
you know, after you get acclimated a week, two weeks, go to the Haram go to the prophets, Masjid,
		

			and get yourself signed up to a Koran Holika. Because it's the only way to really learn the Koran.
And not just memorization but to pronounce it correctly, and et cetera, et cetera. So I wanted to do
that. And so I went around to some of my friends that were in the same situation like, hey, the
Koran Holika, is that are going on or after fajr okay, we can't make the ones in the evening because
we're at the university doing our classes. And so we're all new students are all students are
generally not have means we don't have money. We didn't have transportation, knowing how to car. And
even the people that we didn't know, that did have a car though, upperclassmen, they were at the
		

			university in the morning, you know, so we're on our own. So, me and a group of guys just got
together and said, You know what, like, we want to go and take advantage of this. So let's just go.
Let's just sign up. We were at the prophets machine in the evening, and we signed up for Koran
class. And in the morning, we don't know how we're gonna get there. We're just going to start
walking. And so we left the dorm talk about Allah, we started walking, and yeah, it's about where
we, we're, we're in the neighborhood called Rob Wah. And it's about a 15 minute walk 50 to an hour
depends on how I walk, walk fast, but it's about an hour walk from Rob wallet to the profits
		

			machine. And I kid you not every single morning, every single morning, somebody would pick us up and
take us to the machine for free. Not a single day, did I actually make the entire hour walk all the
way down there.
		

			I would have to make the hour walk back. Because people weren't coming out at the same time that we
were. And people wanted the reward of bringing people to the MSG. And this is for free. They would
not charge us ever. I think maybe in my entire time doing this, maybe one person one time asked for
money. And then we're like, come on man. And he was like, Alright, just get in. You know, but that
was something that started and it was every single day. You know, every single day, we just went out
onto the street. We even got to know some of the people because they were the people that happen to
be passing on that road at that time of day. You know, so you develop relationships with people. And
		

			I just thought it was a really good example of how you know the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu
sallam. If you take one step towards Allah, He takes two steps towards you. You know, sometimes you
don't know how something is going to happen. And that was a constant lesson over there in
particular, that you knew what you had to do, and you had no idea how to get it done. But you just
had to leave the house and say Bismillah and then put forth your effort, and then somehow Allah
would intervene and you know, help you out in some way that you didn't expect.