By Ann Hanson
I tell people that God literally picked me up off the street and put me in church.
In the middle of World War II, when I was six years old, my parents bought a new, and as yet unfinished, house in a new development in the Chicago suburb of Glenview. Within a few years some other new homeowners started a church in their home. We didn’t know about it until we discovered a small white frame church had been moved onto an empty lot on the corner two blocks from our house! It was the talk of the neighborhood!
It wasn’t long before Vacation Bible School was announced. My fried Janet from up the street said she was going and I should come too. It was only two blocks away, I could walk and Mom didn’t have to take me, so she said OK. That was the beginning. I finished two weeks of Bible School and began attending Sunday School and church services every week. I remember several things in particular about that church. There were people there who took an interest in me. They taught Sunday School and led the youth group. I still remember most of their names. They put a strong emphasis on memorizing Bible verses. And we did a lot of singing! I still remember many of the hymns too!
Two specific incidents from that time: Easter Sunday when I was about nine or ten, Pastor Honette in his sermon said that each person had to accept Jesus as Savior personally. I knew I had never done that. So I went home, knelt by my bed and said, “Jesus, I want you to be my Savior”. Mission accomplished! Thanks to the members of that small church, I came to learn what that meant. The second incident occurred when the choir director came to the back row where we five or six teenagers were sitting and, pointing to each of us, said, “You, you you, you and you, Choir practice. Wednesday night, 7:30” we were all there! I have been singing in choir since I was 14.
A very large part of my growth as a Christian was camp, specifically Covenant Harbor Bible Camp, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. There I rededicated my life to Christ, There I met Peggy, who would be my roommate in college and in nursing school. And there, when we were 17, I met Wes Hanson! Little did I know when I asked him if he would be my date for supper on Wednesday, that it was the beginning of a great adventure! Did we know that his family would soon move from Wisconsin to Chicago? Did we know that his new home was easy walking distance from where I would go to college? Or that he would get a job at the same hospital where I would work while in school? No, but Someone did.
It is really hard for me to write this part. We were a dating couple and then married couple for almost 70 years. It was a life full of church music and secular music. Full of family and travel. Full of God’s love and faithfulness. And I am so thankful!! Thankful for the Victor Olsons, who started the little church on the corner, thankful for Janet who prodded me to go to Bible School, Thankful for pastors and choir directors and Sunday School teachers and youth leaders, And thankful that our travels ultimately led us to Yorktown Methodist Church and all of you, Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
