Mormon In Dubai
dblight—istockphoto.com
(Editor’s note: following is a sneak peek at issue 155, which will be landing in your mail boxes in about a week.)
By Amy Chamberlain
Living in Dubai means that after a while, you become immune to the incredibly mish-mashed wash of cultures around you. You no longer notice Indian women in silk saris queuing up at Coldstone Creamery; you ignore the fact that Madonna’s “Holiday” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” are blaring while you browse through twenty kinds of lentils in a spice souk; and you sometimes don’t notice that your son’s five school friends, trailing in the door behind him, are from five different countries.
But all expatriates (also known as expats) in Dubai, I think, have that moment when they realize not that they are far from home, but that they are in a place where random bits and pieces of their home country have, somehow, been transplanted along with them. During my first week here, I found myself sitting in the “India” courtyard of a lavish mall, located in the midst of the Arabian Desert. Set incongruously amongst Indian-inspired pillars and tiles sat a Starbucks. Around the corner came an Arabian man—big, tall, and dark, wearing a traditional dishdasha, and carrying a mammoth bucket of KFC with one arm and a bag from Toys R Us in the other.
Of all the impressions from my first few weeks in my new home, this is the one that stays with me the longest. I had expected Dubai to be foreign and “other.” I hadn’t expected to see these odd bits of American culture plunked down in a Middle-Eastern setting. Another iconic scene that says “this is Dubai” to me: a local man, again in traditional dress, at a stoplight in the swank Jumeirah neighborhood. He is driving a metallic orange Hummer H3, wearing Ray-Bans, talking on his Blackberry, and blasting Prince’s “Wanna Be UR Lover” out his window.
In a country where expats outnumber locals by more than eight to one, you can go for a long time without ever meeting a local. We live in an area that’s a multi-cultural dream come true (no one on my street comes from the same country as anyone else) and my son attends an international school, where he has friends from Spain, Kazakhstan, Great Britain, Australia, France, Holland, and Morocco—but he doesn’t know anyone from the UAE.
My own main exposure to locals has been in the role of university instructor. I teach English classes at the American University of Dubai, a job which kind of fell in my lap via a casual comment to a ward member. I had been missing the teaching that I had done at BYU and wanted to learn more about Local Culture. There just had to be some, I reasoned. Somewhere.
Go, Jack Bauer!
I‘ve just finished teaching a session of English 100 and am chatting with the eight or so local boys I teach. They all wear pristine white, neatly-pressed dishdashas that they surely don’t launder themselves—there must be a whole army of maids to thank for their appearance, I think—but the ultra-Arab effect is tempered somewhat by the fact that every day I see them, each one wears a resolutely American baseball cap. Red Sox, proclaims one. Yankees, bellows another.
I have just asked them some questions about Arabic pronunciation. Q vs k, for example, fascinates me: the sound at the end of Iraq is not a k sound, exactly, and I wanted to hear the difference. Same with Quran, which is a more correct spelling than Koran. Eight eager new teachers demonstrate that particular unpronounceable sound, as well as gh vs. kh vs. just plain old k.
“No, listen, Miss,” says Ghassan. “It’s like this.” He does something with his throat. “Can you hear the difference now?” I’d been pronouncing Ghassan more like Khassan, apparently. I try the throat-abrading sound, and my new tutors cheer. I can hear and passably imitate all of these sounds, but I am completely stymied when they demonstrate two different letters that BOTH sound like “sa.” For the life of me, I can’t tell them apart.
“Sa?” I say.
“No, no, sa,” they say.
“That’s what I just said,” I say.
“No you didn’t,” they insist. “Sa. Not sa.”
The tutorial winds down, amidst equal parts teasing and encouragement. I realize that two of them are talking about the TV show 24 and swapping episode details. I am semi-listening as I pack up my books when it dawns on me: all these kids of Arabic descent watch . . . did I hear that right . . . 24?
“Oh yes, Miss,” they say, nodding eagerly when I ask them. “Yes, we love it. We have seen all the seasons.”
Uh . . . well . . . hm. “You do realize,” I say, somewhat tentatively, “that the bad guys on that show are almost all from the Middle East? It always comes down to terrorists?”
They look at each other blankly. Then comprehension dawns. Ghassan makes a dismissive gesture and tsks impatiently, a supremely Arab way of showing you don’t care about something. “Miss,” he says, “that’s just Hollywood, you know. It’s good . . . how you say . . . good drama.” They all nod in agreement.
“We all root for Jack Bauer,” says Sultan, grinning. “Go, Jack! Kill the evil terrorists!” He adjusts his leather baseball cap emblazoned with “NYPD” to a jauntier angle and holds the door for me on the way out.
Tricking for Treatings
My son and I are at a Halloween party at my son’s friend’s house. This friend is half-Khazak and half-British. The kids are prepping for a round of neighborhood trick-or-treating as part of the party, which strikes me as amazing. I certainly didn’t expect “trick-or-treating” as a Middle-Eastern activity. My son and I are the only Americans in the group.
The kids have to work for their candy here. Some of the neighbors are prepped with bowls of treats, but many have no idea what’s going on and therefore have nothing to give the kids. Any house where incense hits you in the nose when the door opens falls into this category. So, on average, the kids have to knock on three or four doors for each piece of candy they get. I’m definitely in favor of harder work for less candy. For my child, that is.
Some people look confused for a moment as the costumed little monsters stare expectantly at them, bags upheld, but then come back with handfuls of coins for them. Giving small gifts of money is the custom during Eid al Fitr, the holiday at the end of Ramadan. And some very generously give whatever they have in their cupboards: apples, bananas, and even boiled eggs.
One woman wrapped in an Indian sari asks, hesitantly, “For Diwali?”—the festival of lights that isn’t until December. But about a third of the occupants we pester know exactly what we’re doing and what night it is. To make up for the boiled eggs, we are treated to big handfuls of expensive premium European chocolates at five different houses.
We pass five or six groups of kids who are also trolling for candy, and none look or sound American. It is decidedly odd to see Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, and even children of obvious Middle-Eastern descent dressed as witches, skeletons, and goblins, going door-to-door for candy. I guess Halloween is catching on in Dubai. One little girl, in a red-white-and-blue Uncle Sam hat and an American flag dress, knocks on the next door. When the lady of the house answers, she shrieks, in an Iranian accent, “Tricking for treatings!”
Going There in Style
In a stake roughly the size of the Western U.S., certain concessions have to be made. The kids in the Dubai ward meet at the airport to fly to Bahrain for their youth conference, for example. Eight months later, I make the same trek for a different reason: stake leadership training. On two Fridays a year, the Church pays for a plane ticket to and from Bahrain for those of us in leadership positions who live more than a few hours’ drive away. It also pays for a driver, if one is available, to bring us to and from the Bahrain church building. Volunteers from the Bahrain Ward make us lunch and, after a full day of training, we attend sacrament meeting.
The stake used to hold its training meetings on Thursdays. That was back in the day when the entire Middle East had their weekends on Thursday and Friday. But a few years ago, the U.A.E. changed to a Friday-Saturday weekend in order to more closely match the rest of the western (i.e., business) world, which means that our stake members don’t all have the same weekends anymore. So now, stake training is held on a Friday. We slot it in around the Bahrain Ward’s Friday meeting.
Bahrain being what it is, the rental car agencies in the Doha airport aren’t exactly full of rusty old Pintos. They mostly rent Bentleys, Rolls Royces and Land Rovers. In our testimony meeting, one member from somewhere in Saudi tells about how he and his group got lost coming to the Bahrain church from the airport. Not to worry, though, their rental Rolls Royce came with a top-of-the-line GPS system. “We didn’t know where we were going,” he comments, “but we were going there in style.” Later, I think I know how he felt as I’m sitting in the Doha airport. It is late November, and people in Middle Eastern attire are coming and going, threading their way through massive Christmas displays of neon snowflakes, blinking red-and-green lights, snowmen, and a twenty-foot-tall Santa Claus. “Merry Christmas!” proclaims a sign in English and Arabic.
Must-See TV
For the most part, my English 100 students are cheerily unconcerned about their mediocre scores thus far, two-thirds of the way through the semester. They can’t write a basic, five-paragraph essay, nor do they really seem to want to learn how; nevertheless, I am dutifully forging onward in my Duties as a Teacher.
Usually students can’t get me off track. But one day, my guard is down and my local boys decide that a discussion of cultures would be more interesting than the group work I am trying to make them do.
When I ask how they are doing with their assignment, Ghassan says, “Finished! Finished!” He points to the three groups around him and shakes his head virtuously; they are not finished but he is. “We finished quickly because we are three multi-cultural students working in harmony,” he proclaims. “And we work in harmony because of me. I brought us all together.”
Ghassan’s group-mates all laugh, and I say, “You’re quite an ambassador.”
“Yes,” he says grandly, sweeping his arms out to embrace his peers in a gesture of beneficence. “I am ambassador of peace. And English grammar.”
Another student in the group, Yusuf, says, “It’s amazing we finished at all because Ghassan is so . . . ” and then finishes his sentence in Arabic. Many students laugh. “I don’t know how to say in English,” he explains.
“Easily distracted,” translates someone else.
I laugh and start to move on to see how the other groups are doing, but one of my two students named Sultan asks, “Miss, what part of America are you from?” I tell him Utah, and he says, “Mountains.”
“Yes,” I say.
Ghassan asks, “Can you speak with British accent?”
“No,” I say. “I can’t. The American accent is totally different from the British.”
“Australian, then!” they beg. “Speak like Australians do!”
“That one I REALLY can’t do,” I say.
“Why not?” they ask. “Try!”
“No,” I say. “I promise I can’t do either. It would be like you, Sahar,” I continue, pointing to a local, “trying to speak Arabic with another accent. Can you?”
“No, but Karim can do a very good Lebanese accent! Do it, Karim!” Karim, grinning, says something in Arabic with what I presume is a Lebanese accent, and everyone dissolves into laughter. By this point, of course, they know that I won’t be able to force anymore work on them in the immediate future.
I try to get everyone back on track by making some noises about the worksheet, but Ghassan says, “Miss! Wait! Miss! Hassan is from the Utah of the U.A.E.”
I am puzzled, and Hassan explains: “Mountains. There are mountains in the part of the U.A.E. where I’m from.”
I laugh and say, “No there aren’t! There aren’t any mountains at all in the U.A.E.!”
Without missing a beat, he says, “OK, really tall sand dunes, then. Close enough.”
Everyone laughs again, and then they all decide that the other Sultan is from the Texas part of the U.A.E. because his hometown is further south and, according to Karim, “it’s a really sandy part.” When I point out that all the U.A.E. is a “really sandy part,” he says, “No, down there, the sand is really deep.”
Sultan grins. “I keep losing camels,” he says. That brings down the house. Work is officially over for the day.
After class ends a few minutes later, my eight local boys hang around. One of the Sultans asks me if I’ve ever read R.L. Stein books. I think I didn’t hear him right. “You mean—you can’t mean those Goosebumps books? That series?” I ask him.
“Yeah!” he says. “Oh, Miss, those are spooky! I read those as little boy, and I still have nightmares to this day!”
I stare at him for a moment. “You grew up in the U.A.E. and you know what Goosebumps books are?” I ask, temporarily stunned.
“Oh yes,” the others nod. “It’s because the U.A.E. has no culture of its own.”
I start to disagree, but the boys are already naming off the TV shows they like the best: Prison Break, Lost, 24, NFL football games, Supernanny, Oprah, Desperate Housewives, Dr. Phil—Karim does a hilarious Dr. Phil impression—and then Ghassan adds, “and Jackass . . . ”
I get all mock-outraged. “You watch Jackass?!” I ask, hands on hips. “Really? What would your Imam say? Does he know you watch those kinds of programs?” They all burst out laughing at my reaction.
“My Imam doesn’t know, Miss!” says Ghassan, gleeful. “Don’t tell him!”
Mohammed gets very earnest, making sure I understand. “I think there is a Christian religion where you have to go and talk to your priest about what you’ve done?” he says. “It’s called . . . confession? But our religion doesn’t have that. Our Imam can only suggest what we should do, not tell us.”
“And besides, Jackass is—how do you say—censored here,” Sultan says cheerily, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “All the bad stuff is taken out. Inshallah [God willing] they will show it for many years to come!”
Being Part of the Problem
Going to church in Dubai means that you have to navigate through streets that are sometimes signposted and sometimes not. When they do have names, they sometimes make sense and sometimes don’t (Road 13 is one street over from Road 37, for instance). Our ward currently meets in a large rented villa. We have far too many people to fit comfortably in this villa, but it’s the best that the Church, and the U.A.E. government, can do for the time being.
We do have it easier than Saints in Saudi Arabia (which, if you are super hip and cool, you just call “Saudi” or even “The Kingdom”); in some areas, Saudi Saints have to resort to sly tactics to meet at all. They change their meeting times and places regularly to stay under the government’s radar and have to rely on word-of-mouth or phone calls to disseminate the information. Dubai’s government openly recognizes other religions; in fact, in an unprecedented move for a Middle-Eastern country, Dubai has actually donated land to a church “compound” on the southwest edge of the city. Most Western churches have a purpose-built meeting place in this compound.
Not, alas, the Mormons, due to the vagaries of the Church legal system. Overall, the LDS leadership is skittish about establishing too large of a presence in the Middle East. Rumor has it that we don’t have a satellite dish on our building because Church leaders in Salt Lake don’t want us to “stand out.” Needless to say, in Dubai, one stands out more by not having a satellite dish; however, we Dubai Saints are nothing if not patient and long-suffering.
Although the government officially recognizes the LDS church, I never can shake the feeling that I’m doing something slightly naughty every Friday when we arrive for services. Maybe it’s because the building itself is not signposted (the government isn’t quite that permissive) or because we have neighbors who get annoyed if we park too close to their villas. Or maybe it’s because we can often hear a nearby mosque’s call to prayer. Sometimes I’ve heard it during our own sacrament prayers.
And although we are all strangers in a strange land, and fairly savvy about meeting other people and other cultures, no one here has failed to notice the cultural divide between Westerners and Filipinos. Without exception, the Westerners are doing white-collar work. Ford executives, lawyers, computer network administrators, accountants, and engineers in our ward: they all are Western. The Filipinos, on the other hand, are all in Dubai to do blue-collar jobs. They are maids, mechanics, and cleaners. Our ward’s Westerners earn as much as ten or twelve times the salary that the Filipinos earn.
So our cultural divide is further exacerbated by an economic one. Naturally, LDS Filipinos have some resentment toward Westerners who enjoy a vastly different lifestyle than they do. And naturally, Westerners become somewhat exasperated at Filipinos who seem clannish, insular, and unwilling to take on the more difficult callings in the ward.
I am sitting at home on a Friday afternoon, fretting about my calling as Primary president. Church has just finished, and I’ve been talking with the bishop about the Filipinos who are unwilling to take a calling in Primary. It’s true that I do have one great Filipino teacher, but I’m cranky and resentful, because we still need some teachers and it seems that only Westerners are willing to fill these slots.
The doorbell rings. It’s a Filipino brother, his daughter in tow, asking to borrow a book from my husband who is not home yet. I invite him in to wait for Peter to arrive. The brother sits down with his daughter who is in my Primary, and we chat about the ward. I know this girl is named Rebecca, and I know what class she’s in, but to my utter mortification, I can’t remember her father’s name. After he leaves, I have to go look him up on the ward list. We’ve been in the same ward for more than two years. He and his family live less than a mile from me. I’ve heard his name many times but never realized who owns it.
Is it any wonder that some Filipinos are reluctant to serve in callings with Westerners? The nameless streets aren’t all that I have to learn to navigate better.
(Originally published in issue 155 of Sunstone)
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May 20th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Having lived in Saudi Arabia for 18 years, we didn’t experience the same frustrations with our Filipino members. Maybe it isn’t the same as with the UAE, but there were no Filipino families where I lived; just single men working slave hours and slave wages in segregated housing compounds that didn’t allow them easy access to the American oil company compounds where the church meetings were held. So I guess that was their “out” to keep from having to hold callings. They barely saw their families for years (who remained in the Philippines) while working as contractors for wages that may or may not have been better money (meaning, false advertising wasn’t out of the question) than what they could make at home.
I admired these men who lived in difficult, lonely circumstances and yet still had a humble but firm testimony of the Gospel.
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:58 am
[...] but is far from having a large presence there. Recently there was a great article entitled “Mormon in Dubai” that talks about Mormon church members living in Dubai and some of their experiences of [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
I can relate to a lot of this, having lived in the UAE for 3 years, but some of your experiences I can’t relate to much, particularly your generalities about the Filipinos in your ward. I wasn’t in the Dubai ward, but I know Filipinos in Dubai, Al Ain, and Abu Dhabi who are not “blue collar” workers, so your statement that “the Filipinos, on the other hand, are all in Dubai to do blue-collar jobs. They are maids, mechanics, and cleaners” is very much an over-generalization. Obviously, many Filipinos are doing the types of jobs you named, but there are also quite a few doing white-collar, professional work (especially in health care, although for much less pay than western professionals, sadly). Not only that, but in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi there have been Filipinos serving in the full spectrum of callings in the time I was there and since (Branch President, Bishopric counselors, R.S. President, Primary Pres., all kinds of teachers, etc.). That’s not to say there aren’t cultural and economic divides and such, because there definitely are, and they are a big challenge, but I didn’t experience things quite the way you have. Dubai is a different place than Al Ain or even Abu Dhabi, though, I must admit!
Have you visited the east coast at all? If you drive to Khor Fakkan you’ll see some nice smallish mountains!
It was fun to read your very apt descriptions of everyday life in the UAE. I loved living over there and miss so many things–thanks for the chance to reminisce a little!
May 28th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Nice blog.
Sadly, the address of the church in Dubai seems to be a well kept secret. Makes it tough for visitors like me (sent on work.)
Any chance you could shed light on it. I amanged to go last year, but I had a colleague with me then, and he had a contact.
I know it’s awfully close to Friday …
Thanks
July 31st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
[...] but is far from having a large presence there. Recently there was a great article entitled “Mormon in Dubai” that talks about Mormon church members living in Dubai and some of their experiences of [...]
December 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
[...] but is far from having a large presence there. Recently there was a great article entitled “Mormon in Dubai” that talks about Mormon church members living in Dubai and some of their experiences of [...]
January 25th, 2010 at 7:08 am
Hi,
My husband and I want to move to Dubai and work in one of the schools there, maybe ASD. Are there any mormon contacts at the school that could get us into the director or principal. We have worked 8 years overseas. We have 2 children 5 and 7. I am Primary President in Bogota Colombia right now. Can you help? Thanks Julie
January 29th, 2010 at 5:00 am
Gudday,
My wife and i would like to attend a sacrament but the problem is we both dont know where to find the church here in dubai, if possible is there anybody out there tell us where the meeting being held so that we could also partake of the sacrament and renew covenants with the lord.
Pls Contact me here:
mob# 505723592
email add Joaquinsalapare@yahoo.com
Thanks Joaquin.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:01 am
Were living at Al Qouz Near Jumierah.
April 28th, 2010 at 2:27 am
kamusta ka na buhay ka pa ba? padala ng chocolates bye punta kami dyan sa inyo!
May 7th, 2010 at 5:05 am
hi! can i have the complete address of mormon church in dubai.. my mom is there and she always wanted to attend sunday meeting but she cant because she dont have an idea where the church is.. thank you
May 30th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
For information regarding church services in the Middle East please contact the Middle East Desk of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 1 (801) 240-2146 or email at middleeastdesk@ldschurch.org
Best Wishes!
June 11th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Thanks for the Great Blog post! I found your post very interesting, your a great writer. I’ll make sure to bookmark your blog and return in the future. Keep up the great work, I found you on Bing. Thanks for now, Have a great day.
June 24th, 2010 at 3:36 am
For LDS info in Dubai, please email dubaibishop@gmail.com
October 4th, 2010 at 8:11 am
Hi, Interesting post. Having only discovered blogging within the last couple of weeks and I am completely hooked!! It’s blogs like this that are responsible! =) I have been so encouraged that I decided to make my own site. I’m in the middle of researching for an article i’m writing and was wondering if I can link to your article? I think it may be of some interest to my viewers. Best wishes! Keep up the good work. theplumber
October 26th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
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January 3rd, 2011 at 7:21 am
Hi !!!
My name is Jacek and I am church member from Poland . If anyone of you guys have problem with finding church whether this is in Dubai or any place in the world .Please go to http://www.lds.org then click on MEETING HOUSE and choose the country by filling the box and you will find it . So easy so clear . Thank you – Happy New Year 2011 to everyone
March 23rd, 2011 at 10:33 am
Can any one help, I see I am not the first to ask.
I have been here three weeks now and still do not appear to havfe tracked down the Abu dhabi ward address(ward A). If anyone can help with a number of anybody at church in the region, I will take it from there.
My number: 050 824 1604, or mail me at: bri_deane@yahoo.co.uk.
Thanks in adfvance to anyone who can help.
Jacek, no address on meeting houses, dzienkuje bardzo.
May 18th, 2011 at 12:10 am
Hello
the problem is not finding the address of the church but reaching it …
I am in Palm Jumeira and without a car I’m stuck!!
help please
Ellis
0508453844
May 22nd, 2011 at 7:19 pm
‘Is it any wonder that some Filipinos are reluctant to serve in callings with Westerners? The nameless streets aren’t all that I have to learn to navigate better.’ — Is it any wonder why the Filipino’s would want to serve in callings with Westerners who think like that?? So it’s ok for the Filipino to know who you are but it’s not your ‘responsibility’ to remember theirs? Do you not pray for them to receive help with their struggles because after 2 years of livin’ right next to them, you don’t even know who to pray for? How can you feel comfortable going to church and renewing your covenants on a weekly basis knowing that there is this type of feeling happening in the Lords house? Did the Lord say he would only bless some of us because he couldn’t remember some others names? Did he just leave us for 2 years and not bother with us becaue we were less relavant to His work? I’m ashamed. Of all people, i would have expected that ‘Westerners’ would have been the most understanding of our Heavenly Father’s Plan and His work. It’s because of this that there lies the responsibility in us to help other members by reaching out to them. If you see a problem, fix it~!! These are OUR ‘Brothers and Sisters’… not strangers and what’s ‘other guys’. It’s not my church, it’s not your church, it’s OUR church… and most importantly, it’s the Lords church, so when asked what would the Lord do… you shouldn’t have to think about it. I’m an inactive church member who was looking forward to work opportunities in Dubai and hopefully going to church there. But it looks like i’m not the only one who needs the help. I’m sorry if you feel this invites the Spirit of Contention. It is not my intention. I just love my Heavenly Father.
Sincerely,
-Soni Tonga
May 31st, 2011 at 3:10 am
I HAVE NEED OF VBS ,CD’S & KIDS BIBLES
“TEACHING EVERYONE WITH ALL WISDOM SO THAT WE MAY PRESENT EVERYONE PERFECT IN ” . . . COLO 1: 28
SOUL2SOULMINISTRIES
P.O.BOX-3 ,TENALI522201,GUNTUR(DT)A.P.INDIA
===================================================================================
Rev. P. EPHRAIM
To,
Dear servants of God
Greetings to you in the most precious name of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Let me introduce myself that my Name is Rev. P. Ephraim, We have established a Christian Organization named “Society of the Prince of Peace” with the Help of some Faithful Christians. We established this society only because that we can proclaim the spirit of God in our Area. Some of our Gospel Teams have been Distributing the Bible free Tracts and Booklets in the particular centers Hospitals, Educational Centers and some Remote villages of our Area. By the Grace of God we are running a Christian Lending Library in my town since 1997. So many people are come and search the scriptures and saved their souls to our Lord’s kingdom through these scriptures. I will be able to succeed this program. So we request you please pray for my spiritual need and send some Bibles, Bible based material to my library purpose.
We have A Good Team of Youth 15 member, they are all involved Tracts distributions, street preaching and they are visit to some remote villages and proclaim the God’s words and distribute the free tracts and new testaments. So we need some more Gospel tracts and Library material to my area people spiritual help. Kindly consider my request and send the above material to me. We win some souls here through these materials. God bless you always. I am waiting for your kind reply.
Pls Prayer for our Need‘s: – OUR TEAMS ARE VISIT TO SOME REMOTE VILLAGES , AND SPREED THE WORD OF GOD AND DISTRIBUTE THESE TRACTS FREELY. OUR TEAMS VISIT TO HOSPITAL EDUCATIONAL CENTERS WEEKLY ONCE I HAVE NEED OF MORE THEN TRACTS & BIBLE’S . . .
Therefore Brother as you too know pretty well as all these services are Herculean tasks and as such, we are humbly and earnestly requesting and imploring that please kindly pray for the total augmentation of our respective ministry here in India . With pleasure, your physical presence here with us is highly solicited according to your tentative schedule and as per God’s Will. We will pray for your visit to India and its grand success. We do hope you may react peacefully and consider our this specific request with kind heart and also with prayerful outlook.
It is our humble request please kindly visit once our ministry website with pleasure.
See Our Web Site : – http://www.soul2soulministriesindia.co.cc
Please pray for us as we pray for you. We shall await for your further the most valuable and prayerful response at an earliest with good anticipation and fervent hope.
We pray for you and your Family and also your ministry in my Regular prayers.
WE NEED YOU! Please Help Us. We especially need monthly donors
I HAVE NEED BIBLE ,CD’S , TRACTS AND ONE DVD-PROJECTOR . . .I & MY TEAM DOING THE GOSPEL WORK HONEST IN MY AREA IN SINCE 1999
May God Bless U
Yours in His service forever
Rev . P. Ephraim
June 8th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Hi guys! I might be moving to Dubai in a WEEK, around June 17th. I understand that the bishop of the Dubai ward is Bishop Steele. His phone number is on the LDS website, but I can’t call international. I would like to connect with LDS members before I move there, especially the Bishop. Does anyone know Bishop Steele’s email address? For privacy reasons, you can send it to my email: sondrasasser@yahoo.com
Thanks so much!
June 8th, 2011 at 8:31 am
Oh thanks guys, just searched the comments better, and found some email addresses!
July 22nd, 2011 at 2:03 pm
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August 4th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Hi my name is Sam I was looking for Mormon Church in Dubai from a few days through friends and webs but unable, fortunatly i found your email ID and thought may be you have found the location if you did please I need your help!!!
I would be very thankful for your help!
Regards,
Sam
cell;971-557749471
October 16th, 2011 at 4:33 am
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October 23rd, 2011 at 10:21 am
Hi, My name is David Imbrah jun. am a 25year old Ghanaian and i will be flying into Dubai in about three weeks time, I want to make contacts with members of the church in Dubai before I arrive in the country.
my cell no. +233-0248022791
October 23rd, 2011 at 10:27 am
Hi, Brothers and Sisters of Zion,
I deem a great opportunity to meet you when i arrive in Dubai from Ghana in a few weeks to come,
I will be grateful however if any member would be generous to receive me and have me employed when i arrive at Dubai.
my email address is: davidlashingtonimbrah@yahoo.com
please let me hear from you if you read this.
thanks
November 15th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
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December 23rd, 2011 at 11:54 pm
I do understand the member frustration as I am a Filipino member who has served in quite a few of the bishopric of that ward mentioned. The calling of a Primary President is no small responsibility so you do really need to have all the help you can have to start the children in the right path of faith. The weight of the responsibility of giving the right lessons must have been the reason why the Filipinos are not willing to accept the call. I will now admit that when I was in Saudi Arabia I turned down an invitation to help in the Primary. I was afraid that if I made a mistake in teaching the children I will be charged with child abuse specially that these are Westerner children. Feeling guilty I spoke to another member and he comforted me by telling me that the reason why we are here in Saudi Arabia is so that we will not be looking after children because our children are home with our wife. Regarding the gap in economical situation between Westerner and Filipino for me it is not an issue as I always say to comfort myself with my lowly station “We have sufficient for our NEEDS”. Filipinos do accept calling as I do and my wife do. Maybe they only need to have a better encouragement and let us consider their gospel maturity to respond. As a former member of a bishopric I do understand her frustration.
March 27th, 2012 at 7:55 am
hi i will arrive to dubai in sunday im looking if there is any lds family can let me stay with them for few days until i get my job papers plz mail me at kapo77s@yahoo.com
March 27th, 2012 at 7:56 am
i will arrive at 1 of april plz let me knw
October 17th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
my dear co-members of the church!for almost 1 and a half year searching for the location of our meeting house here in dubai i was failed but i di”nt lost hope am still hoping to find it one day so that i can renew my covenant also>if ever u want me to help and be a part of the righteous please send to my email add our meeting house in dubai>thank u/i am a relief society president in our branch in philippines and i miss to work my callings.santiago ward
November 26th, 2012 at 7:39 am
i am new in dubai on the stret no job degreed philosophy speak english german italian french, need urgnet help for job, room, food teleofn 0553558640, email, robert55angel@yahoo.com
February 11th, 2013 at 6:41 am
hi this is priya ,i need address of abu dhabi branch it will be so helpful if any one give me the correct address
March 15th, 2013 at 10:33 pm
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