Habibullo-Eugene Kiselev
A Synopsis of my Life
June 17th, 2019, Monday, 10:41:45 p.m.
Yekaterinburg, Russia. GMT 05:00
I would call the today “the day of pleasant encounters”. When I was coming from the University this afternoon, I suddenly met the two LDS volunteers. “Hello, elders!” I shouted to them. They were sort of surprised and said, “Oh, how do you know the Church members?” I briefly told them my story of communicating with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my conversion, disillusionment and finally leaving the Church. The names of the volunteers were Elder Levy and Elder Stromberg. Ah – ha – ha! I said Elder Levy I would be calling him “Elder Lehi”, just as a joke. (Note: Lehi is the name of a Prophet from The Book of Mormon, which is considered to be the Holy Scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). When we had parted my spirit was high.
Having come home and having had my lunch, I headed for the mosque named “Noor Osman” to take part in the ṣalāt al – ʿaṣr. I came a bit earlier, so I was alone for some time. Later on, several men came in. One of the men was from Algeria, and his name was Mohammad Bedia (Arabic: ). This new acquaintance of mine turned out to speak English very well, so we have talked for quite a long time. Mohammad wanted to get acquainted with the imām of “Noor Osman”, whose name is also Mohammad. My new interlocutor told me he was an international student of the Ural Federal University attending an English-speaking program. When I asked him if his teachers knew English well, he said, “Some of them speak English pretty well, others are not that good in English”. After that, Mohammad hastened to go on his business.
When Mohammad left, another young man began to talk with me in English. He was a student of the Ural State Agrarian University. He was from Tajikistan and his name was Ahmad Dauronov (Tajik Cyrillic: Аҳмад Дауронов). I found Ahmad to be a very interesting person. We spoke English and we discussed nearly everything: his University studies, his life in Tajikistan and my ethnical background. I also offered my new acquaintance some ways to sustain his level of English. Indeed, he told me he had been learning the language for some six months, but he can speak almost fluently! Oh! I am proud of him! As we were talking, the prayer time came. We prayed the ṣalāt together; I loved it so much today!
When I was working with my thesis tonight, I received a phone call from Jəkub Fəizov at about 09:06 p.m. He reminded me of their address; I said I would translate it into English once I had finished working with my thesis. Jəkub said he would be happy to drink tea with me someday. I said, “Well, call me whenever you have a desire. I’ll come to you, and we’ll drink tea together!”
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