WOW...I'm old

This past weekend was my birthday. I got the most wonderful gift: a really cool audio version of the Qur'aan. A couple of my friends went in on it and bought it for me. It was so nice of them. I'm really glad Allah blessed me with them as friends. I feel really bad though because I haven't been able to call some of them because my phone is on the fritz. But if you guys are reading this: SUBHAN ALLAH for your friendships Shireen, Lamisse, Somayya, and Abdolhossein. May Allah reward you guys with many bounties. Your gift really helped me to renew my faith because it came at a time when I was getting weak in my imaan. Ma sha' Allah, you guys new just what I needed and I want to tell you guys that it is truly a blessing. Thank you so much.
I went camping this weekend also, ma sha' Allah it was really nice. Come to think about it, it was the first time that I had ever been camping. Wow, I never would have thought that on my 22nd birthday I would be in mountains of Lake Tahoe. We went hiking, and swimming and was just in general roughing it. I felt really gross at the end though because there were no shower facilities. I didn't take a shower from the August 6-8. Ugh! Its all good though. Oh I also played soccer for the first time since I was like 7; it was pretty cool because even though I suck at it I still had a lot of fun. Being there this weekend was really nice because It allowed me to get back into the regular habit of salat. I'm telling you, this weekend was full of baraka. Allah is so good to me, I just wish sometimes that I could be a better muslim to show him how much I appreciate how many chances he has given me get right, and get better grounded in my faith.
I'm going to try to be better insha'Allah.
You know something, when I think about it, I kept getting alot of ayat this weekend that were telling me to straighten up. First it was the Qur'aan gift, then on the way driving to Lake Tahoe, Abdolhossein happened to find a random CD inside of his music CD collection and it was of a khutba, it was really good because it talked about how thinking that you're too sinful for Allah to forgive you is the ultimate sin of all because you believe that there's a limit on his mercy and his forgiveness. It also talked about ways to guard your imaan. Ma sha' Allah. How cool was that. While I was there, having alot of muslims around just made you feel like being better (like making sure to pray on time) and when I got back, my roommate, Baqer, gave me this really cool gift: it was like a velvet box, and when you opened it up it had two silver tablets. On one table was ayatul kursi and on the other was some other ayah. My weekend, as I said before was full of signs ma sha' Allah! I thank Allah for each and every one of them.