“Have you heard? Sister Noma passed away early this morning. It’s such a shock. She was diagnosed with cancer only a short time ago.” We were at church when Zoë Lieben shared this sad news with me. I was new to Southeast Asia and had never met Sister Noma before. She had apparently gotten sick about the time I arrived six weeks earlier. “Would you be willing to take a van load of people to visit the family late this afternoon?” Zoë asked. “None of Sister Noma’s children are Christians, and we want to surround them with God’s love.” I didn’t need to be asked a second time. This is what I had come to Southeast Asia to do—to minister to hurting people.

There are no funeral homes here, as we know them in America. When a Tai-Kadai person dies, they lie in state in their home. Since Sister Noma had been living with her married daughter, Aelan, she would be lying in state in her daughter’s home. It was in this home that church members gathered that Sabbath evening to support the family and to comfort one another in the face of this sudden loss of a much-loved church member. The young people led out in a beautiful sundown vespers of Bible promises and songs of hope. We left just after 9 p.m., promising to return the following day for the funeral.

The next morning dawned bright and early. An early-morning market run started our day. Arriving home from the market later than planned, I made a quick change from my blue jeans to my new black traditional skirt with white embroidery on the border. When I had chosen the fabric two weeks earlier, Zoë had commented, “Now you will have something to wear to a funeral,” referring to the Tai-Kadai tradition of wearing black and white in honor of the deceased. Inspecting my reflection in the mirror before hurrying out the door, I was grateful that God had impressed me to buy this particular piece of material.

Arriving at Aelan’s house, five other ladies and I stepped out of the van. The last three kilometers had been especially jolting and very dusty. As we walked from the vacant field/parking lot to the house, the dirt was still damp from the buckets of canal water that had been thrown on the road to keep the dust down for the mourners. The tops of the white funeral canopies could be seen over the top of the wall surrounding the house and yard. Walking up the driveway, we passed dozens of tables that had been placed under the canopies to accommodate the many guests that must be fed during the days of mourning. We made our way into the house where the closed coffin still sat in the living room. A simple but beautiful wooden box, it was covered with a large blanket of flowers. At the head of the coffin sat a photo of Sister Noma. Flanking the coffin were large baskets and sprays of flowers tastefully arranged. Near the foot of the coffin sat a basket containing white envelopes. I learned that these envelopes are provided for guests’ convenience. While it is customary for the family to feed everyone who comes to the wake and to the funeral, it is also customary for the mourners to slip some cash into one of the envelopes to help defray the cost of feeding so many.

Shortly before she fell asleep in Jesus, Sister Nona had requested that she be given a Christian funeral and burial. The challenge? Her oldest son is a Buddhist monk, and none of her children are Christians. To help ensure that her wishes were honored, the pastor and church elders had taken turns sitting with the body around the clock, from the time of her death Sabbath morning until the time of the funeral at noon on Sunday.

As the Christians gathered in the living room for the funeral service, Nona’s youngest son, a young man in his late teens, positioned himself close to his mother’s coffin. He played guitar skillfully and accompanied us as we sang praise songs and hymns. Periodically, particularly when someone new entered the room, he would reach over and softly knock on the side of the coffin. “What is he doing?” I whispered to Zoë.

“He’s ‘waking her up,’” she whispered back, “alerting his mother that someone new has arrived.”

After the two-hour service was over, people moved out to the canopy-covered tables for the funeral dinner, a delicious meal of traditional local food. Soon a flat-bed truck arrived and backed up to the front porch of the house. Working together, the men and boys loaded both the coffin and the flowers onto the back of the truck. Never far from the coffin, the youngest son climbed onto the back of the truck for the ride to the cemetery. A long procession of cars, vans, and pickup trucks followed the truck far out into the countryside where the Adventist cemetery is located. Far back in the line, we parked beside the dirt road along with the other vehicles and walked the last quarter mile to the gravesite. I was surprised to see a number of graves “pre-dug” and already lined with concrete. The graveside service included many speeches and a number of hymns led by the youth from our church. It was an unseasonably hot day, and everyone was grateful for the bottles of cold water and cold orange drink that were passed around.
Shortly before the coffin was moved from the truck to the grave, all four of Sister Nona’s children, including the Buddhist monk, lined up in front of the grave. The youngest son held the photograph of his mother. Their grief was palpable. Sister Nona’s eldest son, dressed in his bright orange monk’s robe, was allowed to pay his final respects to his mother in his own way. He bowed to the coffin several times, kissed it, then addressed the crowd. No one was near enough to interpret for me, so I don’t know what he said.

As the coffin was moved from the truck to the grave, people began dismantling the various flower arrangements and handing flowers out to everyone. Someone handed me a lily. Slowly the coffin was lowered with ropes into the concrete-lined grave. The Adventist pastor sprinkled a trowel full of dirt over the coffin. Family members then stepped forward, dropping flowers onto the coffin, then moved to the side to allow others to bring the flowers they held. As the flowers fell, the youngest son stood at the head of the open grave clutching the portrait of his mother. Soon the coffin was covered with flowers.

Slowly the crowd began to dissipate. But the family stayed by until the grave was closed—not with dirt, but with a newly poured slab of concrete.

Just over a year has passed since Sister Nona’s sudden illness and death. But this is not the end of the story. The seeds of God’s love, planted by Sister Nona’s life and watered by the church members’ outpouring of love at her funeral, have resulted in new life. Each Sabbath now finds Aelan, her husband and her children sitting together in church. Her face is the picture of joy as she learns more and more about her mother’s best Friend, Jesus. Please join me in praying for Aelan, her husband, her children, and her brothers, too.

• Twitter