40 years is a long time. For 40 years, we were comfortable at our spiritual home nestled on Garrison Blvd. For 40 years, we prayed there. We watched generation after generation of our children learn there: how to get closer to God, how to respect their elders, how to manage a football game in the backyard right before breaking fast in the holy month of Ramadhan. For 40 years, we welcomed our neighbours to our weekly Friday prayer services and to break fast with us in Ramadhan. We prayed together, we cooked together, we became one big family: the Ahmadiyya Muslim family of Baltimore.
Like any growing family, our prayer and love outgrew our cozy Mosque on a Garrison Blvd. As the month of July 2015 came to a close, so did our time at our beloved Garrison Blvd home. The men and women, the children, youth, and the elders of our spiritual family came together to pack up our belongings and move them to our new home in the community of Rosedale, MD. The overwhelming sense of peace that filled our hearts at our first Tahajjud prayer service at our new Mosque in the early morning hours of August 1, 2015, made one thing clear: we were already in love with our new spiritual home and community. Our spiritual family felt blessed to gather again a few days later for our first Jumu’ah (Friday prayer service) at our new Mosque on August 7, 2015.
We feel blessed to have our new home in Rosedale. We look forward to inviting our neighbours to join us for prayer services and meals. We look forward to making new friends and embracing our new community. Our spiritual family is brimming with love for the country and community that gave us the opportunity to open the doors of our new Mosque. God bless America, and God bless our new community of Rosedale.
While we will never forget our childhood home on Garrison Blvd, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Baltimore cannot wait to fulfill the mission of our beloved spiritual founder at our new Mosque in Rosedale. In the words of the founder of our community, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as), “The task for which God has appointed me is that I should remove the malaise that afflicts the relationship between God and His creatures and restore the relationship of love and sincerity between them. Through the proclamation of truth and by putting an end to religious conflicts, I should bring about peace and manifest the Divine verities that have become hidden from the eyes of the world.” [Lecture Lahore, Ruhani Khaza’in, vol. 20, p.180]