GongYi Home of Hope

Mid Autumn Day Festival
Some time in September (the date is never the same because Chinese Festivals and holidays follow the Chinese calendar rather than the Western calendar), there is a national festival called “Mid Autumn Day Festival”.

This is when everyone eats Moon Cakes (many of them are similar to a Fruit Cake) and on the night of the full moon, everyone in the family gets together and has a nice meal and then goes outside and together watches the moon come up.

We find it interesting that almost all cultures have some story about the moon. We have the “Man in the Moon”, the Japanese have the “Rabbit in the Moon” (some say it is making MoChi or rice cakes) and the Chinese have their stories about the moon. We have established a tradition at the Home of Hope of having our last outside activity for the year (before winter sets in) in conjunction with the Mid Autumn Day Festival.

We bar-b-que hot dogs, have chips and soda and in keeping with tradition, each child gets several moon cakes along with vegetables and fruit. Of course no activity is complete here without there being entertainment….. singing, dancing, games and story telling.

In the picture above left, the children are doing some repairs on our bridge that crosses the pond to the area where we are getting things ready for the Moon Festival. We can’t get galvanized nails or screws here so the decking on the bridge has to be re-nailed each year.
To the right (above), Brian and Peter are cooking the hotdogs while some of the little ones look on and to the left the children are really enjoying all the good food! (In this picture we have Morris and Enoch). When everyone was finished eating, the entertainment began.

As we finished eating, the little ones gathered around “Ye Ye” (below left) and began telling him about all the good things they had to eat. They described in detail the hot dogs, chips, soda and juice, fruit and candy! It was so cute to see their excitement!Meantime, the older ones were getting the tables, stools and speakers ready for the program to start. Naturally, it was steadily getting darker and even though we have exterior lighting set up for these programs, it gets almost too dark to take good pictures. That certainly doesn’t stop the children from giving their various performances and playing their games.

In the middle picture above the children played a new game we hadn’t seen before. They separated into pairs and then each pair was given a balloon to hold between them without using their hands. Once everyone was ready, the music started and the leader of the game gave them various things to do and of course they could not drop the balloon or touch it with their hands. If they did they were out and had to sit down.

The grand finally to this game was each couple had to pop their balloon, again without using their hands. It turned out quite funny… especially watching them try to pop the balloons. The picture to the right (above) is one of the dances the children put together which was quite neat.

As is always the case, all good things must come to an end and once the program was over the stools, tables and other furnishings had to be moved back to the main building.

Many of the children continued eating on the snacks that were left. By the time everything was put away, all the “eats” were gone!

Thank you so much for helping make all of this possible. It is an undeniable truth that if it were not for the Home of Hope and our awesome support base these children would NOT be enjoying any kind of life and in fact may not have even made it this far in their individual, life’s journey!

A day never goes by but what we remember our Home of Hope friends and our sincere prayer is that you will be richly blessed…. more abundantly than you could ever ask or think!

If you are not yet part of the Home of Hope support base, please consider becoming part of this awesome journey of love in bringing hope and happiness to the less fortunate children of central China. You can help support the children by clicking on the “Donate Now” button, above left.

Above, left to right: Mary, Rachel, Aaron, Charity, Dawn and Caleb

Blessings from China!