Parents Appreciation Banquet

Usually for our ICR Lauren, Shelby and I go to Nur Allah and help with their weekend school. However, this past week things looked a bit different. On Sunday was the 27th annual Parents Appreciation Banquet, which is sponsored by Nur Allah. Instead of helping with the weekend school we went to this event and helped with set up, and then sat and listened to the many speeches from the award-winners. Going into this event I had expected to be one of the only white people in the room. While the thought of this was unfamiliar to me, I was trying to go into the event with an open mind, understanding that this unfamiliar experience would be a good learning experience for me. However, my assumptions were wrong. Not only was I not the only white person in the room, I was far from it. It had been my understanding that this event was only from Nur Allah and other mosques in the city, but what I failed to understand was that this event was open to all members of the community, not just those of the Islamic faith. I was also very nervous about the event as I was just unsure about what to expect. However, everyone was super nice and caring, and made sure that we were comfortable, though we were supposed to be helping them. This experience was truly eye-opening for some assumption that I make, and showed me that I need to work on not making assumptions so quickly.