This past week was the annual Chinese "Ghost Festival".  All throughout the city of Johor Bahru, you find large piles of paper that represent a large pile of money.  The Chinese people then stand in front of the large pile of paper, offer up their prayers with incense sticks, and then they light up the pile of paper and set it on fire.  This represents these earthly people sending money and prosperity to their ancestors in the spirit world.  You can see a blue table with a pineapple and other fruits and cakes.  During the night, the ghosts are suppose to come and take the offerings.

 This a a giant stand, on the side of a road, similar to the covered tents we have back in Utah when they sell fireworks in July.  The yellow bags on the ground are bags of paper strips that they sell to be burned for their paper money ceremony.  On the table are smaller packages of incense that many Chinese people come up and purchase to take back to their homes.  As we drive around our city, we wonder who is really taking the fruits and cakes during the night.  It sounds like our silly childhood tradition of a "tooth fairy" who takes the tooth during the night and leaves some money in the morning.

 These are rows and rows of huge incense sticks that are sold to the public.  Each of these incense sticks are over 6 feet tall and about 9 inches across.  They are really big and as you drive past the stand of these, they light the top of these sticks and let them burn down to the bottom.  There was no smell from the large sticks as we came right up to them and took pictures.  The smoke is also suppose to drive away the evil spirits or ghosts and bring good fortune to those who light them.

 Almost every time we have a lightning and thunder storm, which is almost daily, the power to the traffic lights are knocked out.  This is one of the intersections to turn right onto Pasir Gudung, our local freeway to go up to the Masai Church building.  The funniest part of this huge "every man for himself" traffic jam, was a police car came up behind the motorcycle, in the left of the picture.  They were sitting right along side of us, so we were glad to see them because they should get out and direct the traffic jam.  Instead, they waited for the lori on the right to pass through the intersection, and then they proceeded through and got on the freeway.  Unbelievable!

 On Saturday night, August 16th, we were invited over to Pres. Jeff Lee's home with his wife, Sister Cheryl.  A year ago, Sis. Cheryl had a baby boy named Hyrum.  This is Hyrum's first birthday party.  There were about 40 to 50 people that came over to the party.  The party was catered with all kinds of delicious foods and desserts.  The first metal tray had rice (of course), then spaghetti, then chicken tenders, then fried chicken, then some delicious steamed vegetables.  After those containers, there was fish and some kind of potatoes and a filled vegetable pastry and lots and lots of little finger desserts.  It was "sangat sedap"!

Here is Hyrum's one year old birthday cake.  This cake was pretty good, this time.  It was covered with a whip cream icing and didn't taste too bad.  Usually, the icing out here in Malaysia tastes exactly like pure butter.  You take a bite of the icing and it has no sugar or sweetness to it.  It tastes just like butter with food coloring.  You have a hard time gagging it down, even though it looks so delicious.  All the Malay birthday parties we attend get the same kind of butter icing cake.  Can't wait for "butter cream icing" again.  I love Macey's Food Store in Spanish Fork.  They make the best butter cream icing.