Pastor Emtee's Funeral

The night of the fellowship with the students, we were saddened to hear of the death of one of our retired pastors. Pastor Emtee had pastured the church in Kampong Speu for many years, and had recently retired to spend time with his wife and grandchildren. Here you are seeing his two sons-in-law leading the procession out of the church, carrying the picture of Pastor of Emtee.


Pastor Emtee had formerly been a soldier, so he was afforded a great amount of honor from the leaders of the local army base. Here you are seeing a detachment of soldiers honoring one of their own as they prepared to carry the casket out of the church.


A striking aspect of Khmer funeral services is that the family cares for all arrangements themselves. From the building of the casket, to transportation, to digging the grave, the family is responsible to attend to all of these duties or to hire people to do them. Here you are seeing the grave that was dug at the foot of the mountain that day, a grave that was partially dug by several of our pastors who attended the funeral to pay respect to a fellow minister in the Wesleyan Church of Cambodia.