I've already been to a funeral

On February 4th we found out that the Pastor's mother had died. She lived right across the road from us. When someone dies here it is very different than in Canada. Within hours people were coming to the house to pay their respects. They set up chairs and sun shelters in the yard. By late afternoon they had also set up lighting for outside. I found this all very fascinating, I didn't understand why they would do this. Rebecca told me that the people would come for days to pay their respects. Here you do not just come if you know the person that has died. You come if you know anyone in the immediate family to support them.

Another thing is that they bring the body home for viewing. It was a little strange to go over and see the body lying in a casket in the livingroom. I did go over one day with Rebecca. We prayed with the Pastor's father. He was very happy that we had come to pray with him. Rebecca told me that she found out when they had returned to Sri Lanka in December that Pastor Ramesh's mother had become a Christian. She had been a hindu. Praise God.

How a funeral is conducted is different for every religion here. One thing that they do so that people know that someone has died is to put flags up above the road. The ones that they put up for Pastor Ramesh's mother were black with white crosses on them. They are different for the faith of the dead person.

I went to the funeral service but I didn't really understand what was going on because everything was in Sinhalese and Tamil. An interesting thing that happened at the end of the service was that everyone gathered around the body. I didn't understand why so I asked someone and they said it was their last chance to say goodbye to her. Everyone filed out of the church after they said goodbye and then went to the cemetary for the burial.