I was about six years old, first grade student… And half of the school facilities were under construction, remodeling the classrooms. So they put all the grades, from 1 to 8 on a condensed schedule. Grades 5- 8 in the morning, from 7:00 to 1:00 PM, and grades 1 to 4, afternoon, from 2:00 to 6:00 PM. The school is right by the cemetery, and by 6:00 PM is pretty dark outside. Imagine the fear of all my colleagues, and mine, leaving the school… All kinds of scary stories with gosts and dead bodies chasing the living ones… It looked like something going on in that cemetery and around – this was the idea. Kids love those stories and are afraid of those stories… very strange mixture… I was closing my eyes and run as fast as I could, until the cemetery was far back…
No sleeping in that Koimeterios, cemetery/Dormitory, but buzzing of activity. That was the feeling. I grew up with this until one day, a year or two later; I was wise enough to pay attention to a Sabbath School teacher who told me and other Adventist kids, from the Bible, the sleeping thing…But for my other colleagues, death was and still a mysterious, spooky, scary, dark territory… No sleeping in Jesus, but a freaking dark mystery.