Holidays

Last spring when Sean preached at our fellowship, some new friends from Malaysia (who also have students in Jessie and Maddie’s classes) were very interested in the references Sean made to celebrating Passover. As a family we have enjoyed the Passover celebration as an annual tradition during the Easter season. So this year we decided to invite the Chins to celebrate with us.

Some of you may know that Passover is a week-long celebration with the first two nights and the last night being the highlighted evenings for Seder meals. Sean did an outstanding job as leader of the meal. There is lots of responsive reading, directing of eating certain foods and drink and answering of questions.

The kids also wanted to share this tradition with some of their favorite teachers, so we chose to have a second Seder meal the evening of Easter Sunday.

Rachel and her science teacher, Ms. Forney

Jessie and her history teacher, Ms. Neumann

Michael and his English teacher, Ms. Luginbuhl

One highlight in the preparation of the second meal, for me was the obtaining of a beef brisket!! Meat choice and cuts here in China are quite a bit different. Meats just hang from huge meat hooks in open markets. To get a particular cut of meat is challenging. My friend, Kim, was out shopping at one of the frequented retailers by us foreigners and found a brisket in heavy shrink-wrap packaging! This is a pretty amazing find. She phoned me and asked if I wanted her to pick one up for me. I was so blessed all afternoon Sunday, smelling the familiar scent of oven-roasted brisket.The kids enjoyed sharing the experience with both their classmates and individual teachers.

We’ve become friends with a Malaysian family from our church and school. We were invited to their home for the Lantern Festival (the last big holiday during Chun Jie – Chinese New Year). The family has two children, Boyie in Maddie’s class and Bo Wen in Jessie’s class. During the evening Bo Wen had prepared a slide show explaining the various traditions celebrated in Asia during Chun Jie. It was really neat to learn more.Our hostess, Mrs. Chin on the left, and one of our English teachers at TIS, Ms. Tan, on the right

One of the customs in Malaysia is to join together as a family around the table to toss this salad made up of smoked salmon, shredded carrots, radishes, cucumber, bacon, dressing, etc. The higher one tosses the more blessing one receives.