dead and buried

Today was a different day for us, we went to our first funeral. It was older man the father of Maria who is part of biggest part of our group. His wife is the mother of 16 and 3 of them are members of the church. He was not a member so he was buried and attended to by the catholic church. But at the home where they had the casket and at the time that they were to take him away Maria asked me if I would sing a hymn and say a prayer for him, so he would be guided to a safe place and to be clean to meet God. I of course felt honored to do this and I sang [Nearer my God to me] After words I offered a prayer. Then they put him in the Hurst and they followed him to the road where they hopped into other cars and we were on our way to the cemetery. They stopped by the Catholic church for there ceremony and from there they went to the cemetery. When we arrived there the sat him down in front of a cross of repentance and forgiveness, where the opened of the casket, and from there they went to the place where he was to be buried. The cemetery was full of graves so much so that it was hard to walk between them. There was a lot of small graves showing us that a lot of children die very young here. And of course almost every grave had cross on it, and there was a few small houses made for some of the graves. Now back to the man and the grave for him. Before they put him in the ground they opened up the casket again for the family. After that they put him in the grave, it had a cement box there and after they put him in it there was four concrete squares that they but over them, and they had wet cement to seal the box and set the cross in the ground. After that the people grabbed a hand full of dirt to throw over the grave. Also they put a sack of clothes and his hat in with the dirt, then three men began to fill the grave up with dirt. Everybody stayed there till they were done. It was so different to watch to see the whole process from the time we gave him a blessing two days before to the last of the dirt being tossed on him in the cemetery. The man was 79 years old and had a full life. He died with his family around him.