Lanterns in the Moonlight

It's harvest time in many areas of the northern hemisphere, and Vietnam is no exception. That is typified in the cities by the appearance of countless colorful booths selling "mooncakes" or "Bánh Trung Thu." This festival is a long-standing tradition on the lunar calendar occuring on the 15th of the 8th lunar month, coinciding with the full moon, perhaps known as the "Harvest Moon" in the west. The mooncakes are somethiing of an oriental fruitcake-- some people love them, some abhor them, and most everyone gives them-- they are the ubiquitous gift currency of the times. Thus far, with the actual date of the holiday still over a week away, we've been the recipients of double digit quantities, and likewise given or shared a similar amount. As might be presumed by the marketing efforts involved in purveying these seasonal delights, they can be fairly expensive. A few households have moved to "home production" for these, and one of our friends from K Hospital graciously shared some of their efforts.

     

              Home-made Banh Trung Thu look inviting, each hiding some treasures in side.

Traditionally, the cakes are stuffed with a bean-paste, but mankinds drive for variety has led to a hostof new  flavor delights, including fruit-flavors such as pinapple and coconut, green tea, cashew and lotus seed, and other flavors I cannot recognize. 

                             No egg-yolk was hiding inside this Mooncake, though that is common in more traditional ones.

There are of course musical and other cultural aspects of a thousands of years old holiday, including Lion dances, lanterns to add to the moonlight, and songs and music. You might enjoy this collage of music and images that captures a bit of the sense of magic of this holiday intended to help re-connect children and their busy parents at the time the harvest was concluded. http://youtu.be/WmlDBgW5BJs

The Hanoi Branch has seen fit to make the holiday a reason to re-connect people as well, and hosted a branch social organized by the Young Single Adults group. They had a lot of fun planning the event, making the decorations and preparing games and refreshments. A Banyan tree (Cây Đa) came to life through their efforts for example, and a bright yellow moon peered through it's still leafy branches. 

                                    

                                  

The gathering had a lot of energy and we tried to augment that by offering some "Family Home Evening" consultations on the side for any of the parents who wanted to step aside into a quieter space for a minute or two. But the magic of watching little kids excitement may have made that mostly a pipe dream.

      

          The flashing lights in her butterfly wings made this young mistress hard to miss!

In the process of preparing for this version of family relations education we discovered some of the various resources that are available here, as well as some of those that aren't. We were gratified to see the talents being used to render English video resources into versions with Vietnamese sub-titles. We could use more media like this: http://youtu.be/PeAMPGxqiE8

For our English class this week, we tried to explain what a "wiki" was and how that fit with the concept of Wikipedia, which many of our class had used. We then proceded to try to create a mock entry around the traditions and celebration of Tet Trung Thu. It was actually somewhat revealing that many of our students didn't know a lot about the backgrond of the holiday and really struggled to come up with much as far as dance or costumes. Most of them however, could recall their favorite flavor of Mooncake. 

The clear highlight of that evening however was right off the bat, when Uncle Khanh said he had something important to say that would take a few minutes. We yielded the floor to him and he proceeded to relate what an important event had occurred one month earlier when Elder Holland visited. And he carefully recounted three things that he felt were the core message not to be forgotten from this visit by an Apostle of Jesus Christ. "Do it right from the beginning; learn and read all you can about leading the church and don't even think about leaving it; and Make the choices that will change your circumstances rather than waiting for others to change your circumstances." Though he is not a card-carrying member yet, his witness of the impact of an inspired message certainly touched many others who were there.

We continue our efforts to help connect and re-connect lives to the Tree of Life, the Light of Life, and the Lion of the Lord's house, Jesus Christ. I've been working with some fine young men in re-organizing and educating the men of the congregation in "watching over" the other members of the church. That duty, given to all who hold the priesthood, is commonly implemented in the form of "assigning" people to be the visiting friends to other families, to love them, serve them and watch out for them. But in units where the numbers of willing hands are limited, the kilometers are many, and the numbers of people needing watch-care high, such as this small congregation, we will need to think beyond that traditional model for a while yet. But if they knew the joy that awaits them in such work of ministering in the stead of Christ, they would be most eager I think. Thankfully there is inspired general and very individual help available in making the hard decisions about which families receive an assigned friend, and which are watched over by other means. 

Our goal in doing this is to make the Hanoi Branch of the Church one that God trusts to take proper care of his precious children. I feel quite certain that when he trusts us to watch over and nurture others, he will send both the further shepherds for the flock, and add to the flock more abundantly. We have several shepherds in training with this re-organization that I suspect are part of the test of his trust in us.