Moon Festival Celebration

This year, the Moon Festival (中秋節) falls on September 14, but to take advantage of the weekend (Saturday), our church celebrated this festive occasion on September 13. Celebrating Moon Festival has become a "semi" traditional celebration in our church. We usually invite everyone from church to our celebration. And this year we did the same, members of both congregations, as well as guests, were invited to come together to celebrate Moon Festival, and we had a blast. (Okay, at least I think we did). If my memory serves me right, this is the third time we celebrated Moon Festival as a church. All in all, I counted more than 80 participants including children.

Celebrating and enjoying aside, a lot of behind the scene preparation and cooking were involved to make this celebration successful. A lot of us, (yes, us and that includes me) just came and enjoyed the good food and great time. We ignored or forgot to express our appreciation to all those that spent countless hours slaving themselves in the kitchen preparing the food for us. I think a big "Thank You!" is in order....

One thing we did this year that is different from previous years is that we made our own moon cakes. The Grace Fellowship invited an expert to come in on Friday night and taught us on the art of making moon cakes. I heard that they enjoyed the lesson very much and all of them are now expert moon cake makers. :) I think a lot of us regretted not coming to the Friday night meeting because we really missed out on a valuable lesson, and a free one I might add. I think those home made moon cakes came out looking good and tasting great.

Dinner was great. There were a lot of food other than the moon cakes. We had BBQ beef, noodles, and ..... We even had salad for those that are not used to, or don't enjoy Chinese food. We also had three big trays of fruits for desserts.

After dinner, we were entertained. Ben did a great job with the help of his wife, Kathy and daughter, Ashley in introducing Moon Festival to those of us that are not familiar with the occasion. Ben and Trudy also put together some games for our enjoyment. A lot of people participated while others watched.

I think most of the us are entertained and we enjoyed the fellowship. I think this kind of fellowship really helped in fostering better communication and understanding between different cultures of our great church family. We are looking forward to (at least I am) our next Moon Festival celebration....

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