Some Memories of My Mother...Emily Bessie Prantner Hansen

*Sitting on her lap and eating rice pudding with raisins in it. Guess I sat on her lap at meal time when I was little.
*Her standing by my side as I cried when my sister & her husband drove off down the driveway to go back to her new life in the cities.
*Taking a nap with her on her bed.
*Watching her "sprinkle" clothes with water in a pop bottle with a "sprinkle" thing on top...and then watching her iron clothes and her letting me iron hankies.
*Her making fried chicken the night before our week's vacation "up north."
*Her having words with my brother, Marvin, for accidentally burning up my favorite doll that was on the freezer with his cigarette the night before our vacation "up north" and then buying another doll on the way that could never replace the one that burned.
*Waving good-bye to her as I walked down the driveway to catch the school bus...I think I waved the entire way down the driveway.
*Coming home from school when I was in kindergarten and handing her my sopping wet hankie (from me crying).
*Getting up on summer mornings and she was always working in the "huge" garden.
*Her washing me up with a wet wash cloth (cause only had a bath once a week)...and the night she discovered a lump/tumor on my upper arm. I was 8 years old and had surgery at St. Mary's in Roch. I cried & cried when they wouldn't let her stay the night with me in my room.
*All the times we went fishing on a Sunday afternoon at Waterville...sometimes going to a river by there.
*The notes she left me on the cupboard for when I got home from school....either telling me that they were across the creek (those times were the best)....or else a note telling me that they went to town (those times were the worst)...cause my dad was an alcoholic and he'd go the bar while she bought groceries and then she had a terrible time getting him to leave to come home. Many a night I paced our small house from one end to the other, watching the headlights coming down the river road, hoping each was them and crying when it wasn't...but never letting them know that I had been crying. I don't think she ever knew how sad I was.
*Times in the fall when I came home from school and it was potato digging time.
*Her tying dead chickens by a twine to my bike and having me throw it in some ravine on the edge of our field. She told me that all I had to do was untie the twine from the bike and throw the both the twine and the chicken.
*Her showing me how to "pick" eggs....I never could do it. I would scare the chicken out of its nest....I wasn't sticking my hand under them like she did.
*Watching her "slop" the pigs...or give "slop" to the pigs.
*Loving it when she made homemade pizza.
*Her every year Christmas Eve oyster stew & goose.
*Her cleaning up my knees after I wiped out on my bike.
*Moving "up north" with her when she was 56 (my age now)....
*Oh how she missed me when I moved to Owatonna after a couple of months.
*All of the letters that she and I wrote to each other...when she lived by Battle Lake and I lived in Owatonna and then Austin.
*Her living 13 years "up north" and all of the visits up there...never missing a Christmas, even when it was 50 below wind chill.
*Her coming and staying a week with me after each baby was born.
*Calling her when I was sick.
*Her moving back to Austin after my dad died and staying with us until she found an apartment.
*Her saying that she was going to stay in that apartment until they carried her out on a stretcher.
*Her buying a house....finding one that wasn't too far from our house.
*Going for walks and meeting her half way.
*Me walking to her house and her giving me a ride home in her car.
*Her watching my girls after school and taking care of them when they were sick.
*The year she got saved.
*Giving her a ride to church.
*Every Sunday...either her coming to our house for dinner or her having dinner for us at her house.
*The summer of 2000 when she started to have memory problems.
*That fall when I organized her pills and would call her to see if she'd taken them. Her: I think so. Me: Look and see. Her: It's there but I know I took it.
*After that...going to her house every day and giving her the pills.
*The day in February 2001 when I called from work to see what she was doing. She was confused, had been waiting outside for us to take her to church (it was a Friday)...taking her to the hospital that day, not knowing she would never go back home.
*Looking for an assisted living place for her to live.
*The day she moved into the Kingsley House.
*The day she moved into Our House Assisted Living.
*The day she fell at my feet and broke her hip and shoulder.
*The day she moved to Blooming Prairie Nursing Home.....that was one of the saddest days of my life.
*The day I went to the home, saw the ambulance, walked in and she was on the floor...broke her hip again.
*The day she moved into Comforcare...JOY - She was back in Austin.
*Summer of 2010....when she no longer knows that I am Laraine, her daughter.
These are a few memories of my mom.

It Happened One Day!

It was the spring of 1998. I was at work. I can see myself at my desk. I called my mother. I told her....You know, you're not saved in your Baptism. Her response...You're not? I went on to explain the gospel to her & she was open & ready to receive Jesus. That was the beginning...for her. This is her testimony:
Emily accepted the gospel truth in the spring of 1998. Emily repented of her sins and received Jesus as her LORD and Savior. Emily was baptized by immersion in January of 1999 in obedience to God, symbolizing the death, burial & resurrection of Jesus Christ. Emily gave her testimony at her baptism. One of her favorite Bible verses is John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but receive eternal life."
Some things that happened after that:
*She left Lutheranism....in the dust!
*A dear friend spent time with her...showing her things in the Bible and answering all of her questions.
*She went to Bible studies.
*She listened to Charles Stanley on TV, invited a neighbor & took notes.
*She talked to her Catholic neighbor about Jesus.
*She talked to her "Fats Club" ladies. One of them told her that she must be talking about being born again. The neighbor nor the other ladies were interested in such talk.
*She was eager to be obedient and be baptized. So eager that she would have been baptized in the river in the summer of 1998 but decided to wait and be baptized at the YMCA pool the next January.
That's what happened one day!