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!