family of five

Our Sunshine, our Holyland Baby, Jeyden Akhtarkhavari Ru

Love his Smile

first day as a family of five. Which is 3 years later became his favorite number and when we asked him why he said because my family is five. so as a result he say five prayers at night we read five books before we sleep he eats five of his favorite food and when I give him something he does not like and I say eat just five bites he said I can pretend that my favorite number is one and eat one. I can never win even at the age of 3 with him. He is absolutely in love with his adorable two sisters.

Fist day out of the hospital we went as a family and visited the Shrines in Haifa

Yasmeen Graduated from High school. 

Back in the USA

It is been few years since I wrote. Looking at my last post with pictures in 2011 it seems like yesterday in some way and in another way it seems like it is been a life time. So much changed. We left the Baha'i World Center in Haifa about a year ago and came back to the US.  Our heart and soul is still connected to Haifa and Akka. It was an amazing journey of 7 years. We came back with the most people gift, our baby boy, Jeyden. He was born in Haifa and like an angel, smile and bring so much love and joy to our family. He will be 4 years old in October 17. It was so hard to leave the Holy Land, the people, the culture, the mountains of Haifa and the wild life and calming view of the sea the safe feeling of being close to the Shrines and the Holy places, the project we were blessed to work on. Naim served with amazing people in the computer department. I could have not been more blessed as few months after I arrived to the World Center I meet Khosrow and his beautiful wife, who became my boss, my mentor and truly guided me like a father. I worked on the Restoration of the Ridvan Garden and was blessed to see it from the initial design to the final stage of testing and operation for a year after the design. I worked on all the new project around Bahji and the new properties developments. Also during the time the Universal House of Justice establish the Water and Energy Conservation committee that I was appointed to service as a member with four other talented, smart and wonderful human beings. Just thinking that I wake up to get ready to work on the holy places is truly a miracle that I watched the coming back to life the river of the most beautiful Garden in the World as Baha'u'llah referred to Ridvan Garden.  As a guide I took some of the pilgrims to visits the Archive. That I ended up doing interviews on TV, radio both for local and the West Bank answering question both about our projects and the Faith. Yet I felt so in adequate and unworthy every time I was asked to do any of these tasks, but I was able to do it by just relying on God and feeling that the Beloved Universal House of Justice was guiding me. Equal to all these blessing we were giving tests and difficulties. But some how you learn to deal with these one at a time and pray and pray. What actually made me start this blog again today was that I had something really bad happened in my life you know one of these days that you just feel like it is really hard to move on or breath and hard to even pray. Yet not know knowing what to do I opened my email to find a picture of the Shrine with the kind and simple words that in the body of the email saying praying for you. I could not stop crying then walked to my mail box to just get out so Jeyden does not see me cry found a large envelope from a friend that serviced with me in Haifa and now in Canada with my favorite nut candy no letter nothing just the candy. I sat cried and eat my candy and looked at the picture of the Shrine and cried some more and now I feel so much better. We really don’t know how little things we do can touch someone’s heart. How connected we are as human being.  How amazing the power of love is.

Update with pictures

2011 is Here

2011 is already here!! Nothing changed much since 2010 it is the end of the day almost midnight I am with my cup of tea and needing to go to bed soon to start the day early tomorrow to catch up with all the endless list that I was not able to finish today. I am still working hard; the story of everyday what to cook for dinner and how to balance my life.

This idea of a balance life seem to keep creeping to my mind. Is it the fact that my mind can't stop worrying! could it be the few days I spent in the hospital was a good reminder of how fragile we are; is it the fact that I am getting older and realizing that I don't want to just do things to just fill my day that every minute matter

The last few days I have been thinking about my days and my hours. I am getting back to watching the sun set over the sea the most beautiful view, I have stop to feel the wind on my face, to walk a little slower from one place to another, I try to not just walk by the flower beds without taking my time to enjoy their beauty, few days ago I spent some time watching a bee farm in the garden going around busy with their work was the best therapy to forget about the world for a while. It is been a while that I have taken the time and watched my girls sleep. I notices that I have been too worried about what might go wrong and to busy trying to protect them from what I think might be a mistake that I have forgotten to enjoy them. It is so easy to lose track of what makes us happy. We get too busy trying to do things and get things that we forget to live.

The last few months I have been listening to much more music just doing that I been much happier for many reasons it seems that it awaken my soul. Remembering beautiful moments of my life things that made me happy. We are too busy feeling guilty about mistakes we have done or what other might think of us. Many things in life is out of our control but it is truly nothing comparing to what is in our control. We are such a free creatures but we build walls around our body and around our soul we work so hard to crowed our selves with material things and we feel trapped. We set so many rules and restriction that we suffocate our selves. Then we wonder why are we not happy.

This idea of contentment is such a beautiful concept but again how to balance contentment with not being lazy. Doing the right thing; helping someone; working hard for something you believe in brings such a joy yet it is an art to learn how to balance that with taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself to be productive and useful not for the sake of taking care of yourself and not going over board and becoming selfish!. Again this idea of balance how much is too much and how much is enough and how much is just right. a simple chemical balance can give you the answer of the perfect reaction yet what can help us learned how to balance our life is something that my mind is exploring lately. I have not been a good friend to communicate with many of you so to balance that i thought a good place to star is getting back to updating this blog and postig what is going on my mind. Wish you a happy 2011!

Back to blogging after 2 years!

I just realized that in few days it would be 2 years since I last updated my blog. I don't really have a good excuse. I will not even consider updating you on everything; just looking back I am amazed of how many things happened in the last two years. Maybe the first thing I should do is add some pictures of the girls and you will see what I am talking about…
















One thing has not changed is my English and skill of writing has not improved much but here I am writing what comes to mind – so you can take this as a worming of what might come..

Our girls are the center of my life and our service here in Israel. The girls are growing as you so much. Yasmeen will be 15 years old in 8 months; thinking about it makes me anxious, excited, happy, but worried as a mom. I pray every day that her life will be focused on serving humanity. Nadia is my little angel who is not little anymore. As much as I would like to keep her young she is growing up and will be 15 in 1 year and 9 months. Why 15? It is the time when they get to take responsibility over many things in their lives as youth over their spiritual growth. As parents we will continue to guide them and assist yet it is up to them from this point. They also have the chance to choose their path of which religion to choose. Even though they both are being raised as Baha’is they still will have to choose and decide for themselves and strive to live their own spiritual life.



Today is one of those day that I am sure I will not forget a sad indeed as I am sitting her while one of my favorite places are burning away. The Carmel Haifa Forest. Started yesterday were the sky is changing colors, the birds and all the animals of the forest either burning or escaping to find a new home. It is December and you would expect that we had many days or weeks of rain however this year was different almost not much rain yet since the early year. So the forest is absolutely dry the wind is hot and moving in a way to help spread this fire. Families and friends are calling from overseas with worries and concerns you can hear it in their voices we comfort them that the fire is far from our home and the holy places are safe and the wind is taking it away to the other direction. While our heart aches about the 40 people that were burned in the fire. Our girls are calling their friends from school who live close to the fire area panicking if they can’t reach them. our home is open for all the friends who might need to escape the fire.

People are getting together here and for a moment forgetting about war. Baha’is, Muslim, Christen and Jewish and others are all praying for the same God asking for rain and to stop the fire. Why is it so easy to put our differences aside when we are in pain and work together yet we have no problem inflicting pain on others? So much to think about and ponder upon!. Living in this part of the world for 4 years had changed me so much. It opened my eyes to so many things.

I am happy to be back and writing and wish you all a wonderful day!

Week In Texas

I can't belive it has been over 2 months since I updated the blog. I am not going to get into explaing what is going on now. I will update the pictures for the last two weeks of our trip to the States and then will updated you on what is going on. Even thought I am dieing to complain and few things and telling you about so many excitting things going on with us now but I will be patient. It is so wonderful to think back of our time with families. We really miss everyone alot.

Our trip in texas was great. We got to see all Naim's family his sisters, brother, the kids grandparents and great grandmother and their kids and husbands and wife. Here are some pictures from that week in Texas I will post it now and add the comments later to the pictures.

2nd week of vacation in Chicago

Our trip to Chicago was so much fun. Susan and her family also came with us which made it extra special. There are things that can never be capture in pictures or write about it is the special time when you are with someone you love; someone that you can be yourself with, it is the feeling of being truly happy.

Any free time the kids would run to the game room and watch TV, play Wii, exercises, wrestle, or hang with all of that and all the junk food that they like that Nesreen made sure to have before we arrived the kids were in heaven.


At night we went to this amazing dinner that Hilary and Nesreen had set up for us it is called the midieval time. The kids absolutely loved it and specially Yasmeen as she had a special treat since it was the day before her birthday

Hilary’s family his brother and brothers wife, his sister and her family, his aunt and several of the friends came to celebrate Badi’s graduation from the university, Daniel graduation from high school, and Daniel’s Eagle Scout ceremony. This was emotional time for Nesreen as both of her boys would be leaving home moving to Florida. They are both in Orlando now Badi is working as a computer Engineer and Daniel is going to college. Badi and Daniel will both still have someone to baby them when needed as Rosa is only one mile away from them. We are all very proud of and they are setting a good example to all the other kids in the family to follow.

Then we spent the next couple of days visiting museums and down town Chicago and going out with families to eat and spending the night talking and not getting much of sleep.