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Brother Emil Krutz and I were called to pray for Grandma Dahl who was ill with double pneumonia. There were eight saints in the room and I heard one ask another, "How old is Grandma?" The reply was, "Seventy-seven years old," to which someone answered, "If I were that old I would not care to get well."
We anointed and prayed for the sick woman but she showed no signs of life or of getting any help. Brother Krutz looked at me and said, "The Lord heard prayer." We went into another room and closed the door, Brother Krutz said to me, "You go in there and send the folks out." We went back into the room and asked visitors to kindly step out of the room; then locking the door we again offered prayer. When we took our hands off this time the sister sat up in bed and said, "Call my daughter, Mrs. Umden, and tell her to bring me something to eat, I am so hungry." She was perfectly well and lived several years longer.
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For a year or more I was having pain in my liver. I was prayed for a number of times but did not even get relief and my body kept swelling up until I could hardly wear my clothes. The Ministry advised me to go to a specialist and find out what the trouble was and said then if I were healed God would get more glory out of it, so I went to the specialist.
The doctor said that it was not cancer, but worse still, it was enlargement of the spleen. He then said, "Dear man, there is no remedy for your trouble; I can only make a harness that you can wear suspended from your shoulders to help support your stomach, which will be some relief."
When I got home I told wife what the doctor had said and that I had made my last trip in the ministry. She looked at me and said, "No, you are not going to die." "Well," I replied, "I have been in this world fifty-six years and that is a long time, so if the Lord sees fit to take me I will be satisfied." She went out of the room and when she returned I saw she was crying and lifting her right hand' she said, "You are not going to die." "How do you know," I asked? "The saints will not give you up," she answered.
A short while after this I was thinking that I would like to go to Arlington, South Dakota, now called Badger, before I died. I had raised up that congregation and they were very kind and dear to me. So I dropped Brother Gesselbeck a card asking him to meet me at Estaline on a certain date. Estaline was thirteen miles from Brother Gesselbeck's home. I arrived at Estaline about 6 a.m., but there was no Brother Gesselbeck there! I walked to a restaurant across the street and asked if any one knew Brother Gesselbeck. Yes, they knew him and why was I inquiring? I then told them my plight, that I was expecting him to be there to meet me. "Well," the man said, "Mr. Gesselbeck is an honest man and if he had gotten your card he would have been here, but yesterday was Washington's birthday, a holiday, and he will not get your card until after five o'clock this evening!"
Well, here I was in a bad predicament—no money to go back home, no telephone out there and so ill that I could not walk over a block or two at one time. I was wearing my heavy winter clothes beside a heavy dog-skin fur coat. I left my grip at the restaurant and, walking across the street, found a long pole and started out on a thirteen mile hike. I would walk a little and then sit down, and even lie down a while and rest in the snow, and wept and prayed.
It was about five-thirty in the afternoon when I reached Brother Geselbeck's pasture. It had taken me over eleven hour to walk the thirteen miles. I was praying and weeping when I saw Brother Geselbeck coming from his mail box with my card. He looked up and saw me, then lifting his hand with the card in it, shook his head as if to say, "Poor Brother Susag!" In order to prove to him that I was not dead yet, I threw away my pole and jumped as high as I could and when I came down I was perfectly healed and the swelling was all gone! I had thought that this would be my last trip to Brother Geselbeck's, but I have made many since then.