Greek Orthodox Funeral

Our dear sister Ban Alzrai passed away on Saturday morning from lung cancer.  It was a blessing.  She has suffered so much.  For the past week, we were praying for the Lord to have mercy on her.  Finally she can be at rest.

When a person dies in Jordan the funeral takes place very quickly, probably because of lack of embalming.  The service for Ban was held yesterday in the Greek Orthodox church here in Husn.  The family is only semi-active in the Mormon church and their son is a priest in the Greek Orthodox, so we can understand why they would want the funeral to be held there.  At first we thought it would be nice to have it at our chapel, but that never would have worked - there's not enough room and there are too many stairs.  About 300 people attended and filled the large, ornate hall--men and women seated separately.

The priests all looked like this--with hats 

 Fifteen priests stood in a circle around the casket, sang, chanted and threw smoke out out into the congregation by waving an incense burner.  The smoke smelled good.

After about an hour it was all over and the men took the casket to the cemetery while the women went into a hall to drink cold water and wait.  When the men returned from the cemetery they again went to separate rooms and were served big plates of mansif (rice and lamb with yogurt sauce).  No ham, no funeral potatoes, salad in a bag or cake with chocolate frosting.  Darn.  It was all very nice, but we didn't feel the comforting spirit of the Holy Ghost.

My memory of Ban is that when she came to church she would sit by me and interpret because she could speak English.  I will miss that.  Ban is from Bagdad, Iraq.  Once she showed us a picture of her with Sadam Hussein when she was a teenager.  He presented her with an award for being the smartest student.

For the next 3 days it's customary for friends and neighbors to drop by the home to visit the family.