Mooncake Festival

The Mooncake Festival, also called the Mid-Autumn Festival or Lantern Festival, is a Chinese harvest celebration.  There are legends linked to the beginning of it, but from what I can gather, what remains today is mainly the lighting of lanterns and the eating of mooncakes, although apparently there is also the offering of special sacrifices to a moon goddess of immortality connected with the legend.  Around the festival time, mooncakes are sold all over Singapore.  These are pastries filled with a variety of ingredients, including red bean paste and lotus.

This is in a local mall.  All the booths you can see in this picture are selling mooncakes.

Mooncakes

More mooncakes, at our Mooncake Gospel Meeting (more on that below)

Our family went with a couple families from church to the Chinese Garden during the Lantern Festival.  Many people were carrying lanterns around.

A couple examples of the types of lanterns people were carrying

Special lanterns for Jael and Jason!

Those of us who went to Chinese Garden for the festival,
 minus Dorcas, who was taking the picture!

Beautiful sunset that night

On September 21 we had a Mooncake Gospel Meeting at church.  This is a meeting held around the time of the Mooncake Festival each year.  The meeting is completely in Chinese, so that people can invite their Chinese-speaking relatives and friends to hear the gospel.  Elder Lee Kong Wee spoke on John 8:12-30 under the theme "The Light of the World."  After the speech there was dinner, with mooncakes for dessert.

Elder Lee speaking

Psalter #55

The audience

We pray that God will use the words of the message and of the songs sung to work in the hearts of those at the meeting who are not yet believers, if He has His elect among them, so that His Church may continue to be gathered!

Indonesia

About a month ago, my husband and I went to Indonesia for two days as an anniversary gift from many of the people from church.  Here's a glimpse into that country, beginning with some of the sights on our 55-minute bus ride from the ferry terminal to the resort:

The following pictures show a "gas station" we stopped at with our bus.  But there were no gas pumps!  Instead, the fuel was stored in the side room of a rundown building.  A woman came out with a big funnel, followed by a man carrying two big containers of gas.  She held the funnel, he poured the gas in, and we were on our way!  Both of them gave service with a smile, and that was true of everyone we ran into in Indonesia--the people were so happy, and very helpful and pleasant to be around.

A few groceries in the room to the left, and gas in the room to the right

Indonesia's money, the rupiah, is practically worthless.  The current exchange rate is one U.S. dollar to 11,494.25 rupiah.  We bought snacks at the resort gift shop and were charged 95,000.  It seemed so strange to be paying 95,000 for anything, much less a few snacks! :-)

We were served lunch and supper at the resort.  We got to pick out our supper menu. Finding amid the Chinese dishes on the menu something called "chicken gordon blue," I said to my husband, "Hey!  Do you think that's chicken cordon bleu?!"  We decided to try it out, and sure enough, it was. :-)  

Chili crab--very popular over here--along with some soup

My "chicken gordon blue"--very good!

A few random pictures:

An Indonesian cutting open a coconut

A fresh coconut

A fishing hut out in the water

 On White Sands Island--We stayed on Bintan Island, but this 

was nearby, and we took a small boat here for an hour.

 Finally, a few pictures of the beauty of God's creation in Indonesia:

The beach at the resort

Coming up to White Sands Island

The White Sands Island beach

"O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth"!

Ghost Month

Hebrews 2:15 talks about those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."  The meaning of that verse cannot be seen any more clearly, I don't think, than during Ghost Month in Singapore.  Ghost Month occurs during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, this year August 7 - September 4.  Buddhists and Taoists believe that their ancestors come back from the dead during this month and walk around on the earth. If these ghosts are not kept happy, or have not received enough offerings in the afterlife, they may hurt those who are still living.  So there are many extra offerings placed out, and many extra burnings of incense and joss paper.  Joss paper is explained a bit in part of an email I received from someone from church:  "For the Chinese, they offer anything they can imagine that the deceased liked while still alive. If you happen to walk past any shop selling joss papers and stuff, you will be amused. Paper computer, money, cigarettes, hats, clothing, etc., now durian is offered. What they did on earth, they imagine, they will do in hell."  (How striking that they know their ancestors are in hell!)

We often smelled the burning going on around us.  In addition to the extra offerings, some people hold feasts with empty seats for their ancestors' ghosts to sit at, and there are performances held (singing, dancing, etc.) in which the first row of seats is left open for the ghosts to use.  At the end of the month the gates of hell are again closed, so the ghosts can no longer roam the earth and cause harm to the people still living.  People can go back to swimming without fear of being drowned by an angry ghost, or move to a new house without fear of a ghost harming you or bringing bad luck to you.

 Offerings being made right outside the elevator to our flat

A burn barrel and offerings below our flat

An extra-large place for offerings on our street

This was only there for a few days.  The bottom is full of ashes.

Burn barrels, ashes, and offerings outside a Singapore mall

A sign on our way to the mall -- "Let's keep our environment
clean by practicing responsible joss paper burning."

People burning joss paper for their ancestors

This picture was taken a couple weeks before Ghost Month started.  This 

goes on all year in Singapore, but much more during Ghost Month.

Our church meets on the fourth floor of an industrial building.  

This offering was left out near the stairs on the third floor of that building.

The offering closer-up -- a complete waste of 

those little cookies, one of our kids thought :-)

A hell note

 Look at the amount!  This can supposedly be used by the dead

to buy things in the afterlife, or to buy their way out of hell.

Now you can see the bondage that the fear of death brings.  During Singapore's Ghost Month, several families in the PRC were touched by the loss of a dear relative or friend. When we see the fear of death that the unbelievers have, the comfort of us as God's people is all the more striking.  We do not have to keep our loved ones happy in the afterlife--they are perfectly happy with their Lord in heaven!  We do not expect that they are in hell and hope that they won't come back to earth to harm us--they are in the perfection of heaven, dwelling with God as "the spirits of just men made perfect"!  Here is the rest of the verse I quoted at the beginning of this blog, along with part of the verse before it:  "Through death (Jesus) might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."  Blessed deliverance!