Maybe I'll take this public soon

I am thinking of taking this public soon so that those individual who are of a mind to do so can see more of my daily life here in Albania.

Let me talk a bit more about the funeral customs here.

When a person dies, immediately word starts to spread around the neighborhood. Once a funeral service (as opposed to a funeral home) is contacted then a sign goes up in several prominent areas of the neighborhood to let the neighbors know that there has been a death. Visits start that first day as people come to show their grief and offer condolences. Women are expected to wear dark clothes and no lipstick. Men will visit in one room, women will visit in the other room - usually with the body in the casket in that room with them. No coffee will be served, none of the usual signs of hospitality will be offered. This is a time for grief. Since there is no embalming available here, the funeral itself is usually held within the first couple of days. For the first 24 hours, the family will stay with the body and people will visit.

The next day, people will gather a little while before the funeral, then everyone goes out to the cemetery together. Since many people in Albania still do not own vehicles, the family will usually rent a bus or two to take people out to the burial site. Once there, if there is to be a religious observance, they will have the Imam or the Priest say a few words, then the body is interred. The funeral I attended this week was a non-religious service. In other words, once we all got out there, the son-in-law of the deceased asked everyone to observe a moment of silence, then the body was interred. There were no words of encouragement for the widow, no words of condolence, nothing. No mention of God, no mention of heaven or a life after death, just a moment of silence, then the grave. Right now in Tirana there is a shortage of cemeteries, and the two main factions of the government are locking in a spitting contest over it. That means that no new land is available for cemeteries, so they are digging up the roads within the existing cemeteries and burying people there. The graves are fairly shallow, and packed in pretty tightly together. It did not appear that families were buried together, but rather, as people die they are buried in the next available spot, wherever that may be.

After the burial, everyone loads back onto the buses or into their vehicles and goes back to town, where the family invites everyone for lunch at a restaurant. Usually only about one third of the people invited will go to this lunch - only those who were closest to the family or the deceased. Over the next few days, more visits will be made to the home of the deceased and coffee will be served. It is expected that some small monetary gift will be left for the family when the coffee cups are gathered. This helps them deal with the expenses of the funeral, the luncheon and hopefully for the widow for a little while anyway. These visits will last for the first week after the person's death, and then life will return to some semblance of normalcy.

On the 40th day after the person's death, there will usually be a dinner held in honor of the deceased and close friends and family will return once more for this dinner. I will tell you more about this dinner when it happens, since we have been invited to attend the dinner in honor of our neighbor.

Each stage of this process has its little protocols and things that you are supposed to say. You can see that this is much different from what we do in the US so we are on a pretty big learning curve here. Please pray with us as we learn, as we gain more fluency in the language and culture so that these times would be opportunities for us to share the hope that we have in Christ with those around us!