Good-Bye Mom: Passing of Irene Rahn (nee Martel)

(February, 1941 – March, 2013)

IRENE - 1980 (39 years old)

On the morning of Saturday, March 23, 2013, at the age of 72, my beloved mother, Irene (Martel) Rahn, left her broken and pain filled body to enter the Kingdom of her lifelong Lord, Saviour, Redeemer and King, Jesus.

No services will be held.


However, she had a deep heart of compassion for the homeless and one of her final requests was that, in lieu of flowers, you send a donation to:

Hope Mission

P.O. Box 953

Edmonton, AB

T5J 2L8

Phone: 780-453-3877

www.hopemission.com

She is well known to Hope Mission and they have set up a memorial fund in her name.

Simply write: “In Memory of Irene Rahn” on your cheque OR
mention her name when you give online:

www.hopemission.com

(But if you wish to give anonymously that’s fine too. The important thing is that you give).

I, her daughter Laura-Lee, am in complete sympathy with her wishes.

Jesus, in his infinite mercy, gave both Mom and myself all the strength and peace needed for her final journey.

For those of us she leaves behind, her request is that we be comforted and remember her while reading

 Psalm 16 (especially verses: 5-11)

                 and

 Isaiah 26 in the Bible.

She can also be remembered by reading many of the posts here. (She permeates all of them).

I especially direct you to the previous post:

"Love in a Neon Orange Lunch Box"

Which has consistently remained the most viewed entry worldwide since it was  originally posted.

With deepest sincerity,

her daughter, Laura-Lee

Her Wedding - 1960




"A song from me, Sweet Mama. I'll sing "Glory" to Jesus from here and you make sure He knows I mean it.
Love Your Laura-Lee (BOTH of Yours)"

*Press the PLAY button on the "TUNE-Glory"

  Lyrics to song "GLORY" 

One day eyes that are blind will see You clearly
One day all who deny will finally believe
One day hearts made of stone will break in pieces
One day chains once unbroken will fall down at Your feet
So we wait for that one day, come quickly

Chorus:
We wanna see Your glory
Every knee falls down before Thee
Every tongue offers You praise, With every hand raised
Singing glory, to You and unto You only
We'll sing glory to Your name


One day voices that lie will all be silenced
One day all that's divided will be whole again
One day death will retreat and wave it's white flag
One day love will defeat the strongest enemy
So we wait for that one day, come quickly


Chorus:
We wanna see Your glory
Every knee falls down before Thee
Every tongue offers You praise, with every hand raised
Singing glory, to You and unto You only
We'll sing glory to Your name

Bridge:
We know not today or the hour
Or the moments in between
But we know the end of the story ... When we'll see ...

Your glory
Every knee falls down before Thee
Every tongue offers You praise, with every hand raised
Singing glory to You and unto You only
We'll sing glory to Your name, oh one day

IRENE (MOM): A Life in Photos



Driftpile 1947 (first communion dress)

July, 1965



June 1960



1980 
Home from Work (with her sister, Faye)
 Our "Famous" Green Station Wagon in background



Red "Christmas" Socks 1981

Christmas Sandwich making 
(and goofing around) 1981

1984 (my brother's 21 Birthday) 
Laura-Lee (finger ears) & Irene (Mom)

1956 - 15 years old

1956 - with sister, Faye and brother, Harvey

 (and cat, Binky)



" Here Mom put on this nifty COFFEE FILTER HAT I made for your birthday." ---- "OKAY!"

 

  2005

"Never too Old School for Cool. Right Mom?"

F.Y.I.

Mom's obituary in the Edmonton Journal  Saturday, March 30, 2013. (Click on LINK Below)

Edmonton Journal Obituaries (IRENE RAHN)






*Most Popular Previous Blog Entry about Mom (Click on LINK Below)

"LOVE in a Neon Orange Lunch Box" (Previous Blog Entry)

LAST PHOTO OF MOM (IRENE)



 Mom (with me on my Birthday, May 2012)

SAFELY HOME

I am home in Heaven, dear ones,

Oh, so happy and so bright,

There is perfect joy and beauty

In this everlasting light

All the pain and grief is over,

Every restless tossing passed,

I am now at peace forever,

Safely Home in Heaven at last!

Did you wonder, I so calmly

Trod the valley of the shade?

Ah, but Jesus' love illumined

Every dark and fearful glade.

And He came Himself to meet me,

In that way so hard to tread,

And with Jesus' arm to lean on

Could I have one doubt or dread?

Then you must not grieve so sorely,

For I love you dearly still,

Try to look beyond earth's shadows;

Pray to trust our Father's will.

(*Thank you C. and K. for sending the poem and your kind words about Mom.)

To Those who supported me through this journey, I especially thank you for your prayers. I could feel them sustaining me through these dark days.

Please remember to pray for me still. Now comes the enduring task of facing each day of the rest of my life without the company of my closest and truest friend.

Love Always, Laura-Lee

"Thanks for the lovely "Princess Dress", Mom"

"But who do I go streaking with now?"

UPDATE: March 19, 2016, Saturday

Out of my more than 200 posts, this one continues to remain in my top 5. 
I honor Mom by trying to live the way she taught me.
 Below are a few LINKS to other popular posts about her.

 Thank you for remembering with me and continuing to pray for me. (Both matter more than you probably realize)

Love Laura-Lee


"The Night Mom Passed Away" POEM by Me


My Dark Tunnel in the Night (Dream)


Mom Memory "Got Milk?"

Love in a Neon Orang Lunch Box



>

Shhh. I'm Voting and it's a Secret (UPDATE)

In my original blog post of "Shhh. I'm Voting and it's a Secret", I stated how concerned I was that if we begin voting online or with electronic machines our votes will no longer be private, nor will they be safe from someone accesses the computer systems to tamper with the election results. (see original post entry)

Usual Way to Vote in Canada

However, I felt like I left everyone hanging. It's one thing to point out a problem, it's another thing to offer a solution.

Therefore, after consideration and research, I encourage you to write to the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, in order to make known your objection to this type of voting.

The best way to do this is to send a paper letter to our PM (especially because we are making the point that voting on paper is more secure).

Last time I Voting was through Machine

 

With this in mind, I have written two different letters to send to the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, which you will find attached to this Blog Post.

Prime Minister of Canada
Stephen Harper

 

 

You can pick whichever one expresses your wishes best OR you can rearrange it to suit yourself, OR you can use it just as a basic outline for whatever you wish to say.

Stephen Harper

There are a couple things to keep in mind:

1) I made sure that the address to the PM is correct

2) the form of addressing the PM and signing off are also correct.



So all you have to do is:

*Print it out (right click on most computers)

* Put the date at the top

* Sign your name and your City and Province
      ( your entire address would be better, but your Name, City & Province is quite enough for it to be official)

* Address an envelope and

* pop it into the nearest mailbox

**Remember: No postage is needed to mail something to any Member of Parliament (or politician). That's the law!

New Way to Vote: VIA COMPUTER !?



LINKS to LETTERS to Prime Minister STEPHEN HARPER

 

 

I deeply hope you will do this. Throughout the past 30 years I have written many, many letters of objection (and recommendations) and they have a bigger effect than you can even imagine.

Once I wrote a letter about objectionable advertising on Vancouver City Buses. I found out later than only my letter and two others were received, but it was enough to have the advertisements taken down. So don't ever think you can't make a difference.
And nobody is effected by the mail they receive from the public more than a politician.

So print, sign and mail.

Love Laura-Lee

The Pope Has Left the Building

Pope Benedict XVI

1948 Israel Becomes nation again

 

 

If you haven't heard yet,  Pope Benedict XVI resigned. It's the first time a Pope has resigned in 600 years and the first time one ever stepped down ...  willingly.

I should remind most of you of my Religious beliefs. I am now a Protestant but I was born into the Catholic church and remained one (in good standing) until I was 14 years old. Also, the majority of my rather large (by today's standards) French Canadian family is Catholic as well.

To those of you who know very little about the Catholic church and the Pope let me give you a bit of background:

When a new Pope is chosen, it's the "College of Cardinals", ( the most powerful members of the Catholic Church  just below the Pope) that are also responsible for many duties in the Catholic church, meets to pray and vote on which one among their members should be the next Pope.
The belief is that God speaks directly to this group of holy men and tells them who He wished the next leader of the Catholic church to be.

College of Cardinals

So, when the Pope gave his resignation to the College of Cardinals, he was actually giving his resignation to GOD (according to Catholic beliefs).
God chose him to be the Pope (by responding to the prayers of the Cardinals) and only God can "fire" him. And, in the past, the only way God fires a Pope is to remove him from the earth altogether.

So, quite frankly, Pope Benedict XVI 's reason for quiting (that he is experiencing frail health and failing in his mental and physical abilities to fulfill his "Pope-ly" duties) is absolutely ridiculous.

Every former Pope got old and sick at some point. Does Benedict think God wasn't aware that he was going to age when appointing him? 
The first Pope, Peter the apostle of Jesus, got sick and old too, but he didn't quit on God or relieve himself of the responsibilities of guiding and advising Jesus followers before he died.

And if I know all this, believe me, Pope Benedict knows this too. I'm sure he's read the Bible verses:

" But he said to me, ' My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."   (emphasis mine)
 

          (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) 
 

So this resignation, and the reason for it, is so obviously a ruse of some kind, I'm not going to speak or speculate any longer about it. (I'm sure there will be no end of people who will do that).




Even though I am a Christian, I have not yet spoken very much in my blog about End Time Prophecy, the book of Revelation, the Latter Days, the Apocalypse, the Tribulation, or whatever you call it.
Basically, it refers to the belief of most Bible-believing Christians that we are in a period in history that will see the physical return of Jesus Christ to the earth to reign as "King of kings and Lord of lords" at last.

At the beginning of the 1900's Christians all over the world began reading the book of Revelation in the Bible  and started to comprehend it's meaning. For the previous 19 hundreds of years since it had been written, the meaning behind the images and descriptions in that book had been quite confusing (and sometimes really scary).

But as the past 100 years has gone by, the End Times prophecies have become clearer and clearer, until we've come to the point where it now feels like reading Bible prophecy and watching the nightly news are one in the same thing. 
You don't need to be a great theologian or scholar (or even a Christian) to recognize the imagery in Revelation.

I myself became interested in Bible Prophecy in the early 1980's, but I didn't understand much of what I was reading. Now, it all seems so much more simple to me.

The event of Israel becoming a nation again (in 1948) kick-started a  deluge of prophecy from the Bible finally being fulfilled. And one of the biggest events to happen next is the appearance of the anti-Christ. This is a person who will be the leader of the entire world and will appear to be a saviour to all the problems in our time but will actually be Satan in disguise.

But I've been expecting Jesus to return (on a daily basis) for the past 30 years and non-believers are starting to say to me,
 "He's never coming back. It's just wishful thinking. There's no reason to believe that He will come now any more than any other time in history."

But things are different now! If reading the prophecies in the Bible doesn't convince you, nor the fact that everything happening in the world today was foretold and written down thousands of years ago by God. Then certainly this Pope situation should prove we are in very unique times.

It's true the Catholic Church (and therefore it's leader, the Pope)  is not as powerful as it used to be, but it is still a massively powerful entity. But it will have to become even less strong and more divided before the anti-Christ is unveiled on the world stage or the Church will give him too much resistance for all the plans he has. 
The fact that a Pope doesn't quit, EVER, but that the current one just has, is another piece of the puzzle to prove we are living in times never experienced before.

So, exit the Pope stage right; enter the anti-Christ stage left. But I'm waiting for when ultimately Jesus will enter from one end of the sky to the other ... never to leave  nor  to resign his power on Earth to anyone else again.

"For as lightening that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."
 

(Matthew 24:27) 

How a New Pope is Selected: (from YahooAnswers)

A Papal Conclave works like this:

+ A pope dies and is buried

+ The cardinals come to Vatican City for the conclave that will elect the new pope. The word conclave (Latin, *** + clavis, literally, "locked with the key") designates:
. • The place in a locked section of the Vatican where the cardinals under the age of eighty elect a new pope.
. • The actual gathering of the cardinals.

+ The conclave begins 15 to 20 days after the pope's death.

+ The cardinals pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit during a Mass

+ The cardinals, sealed in the Sistine Chapel, vote every morning and afternoon.

+ A two-thirds majority plus one is required for election for the first 30 ballots. After that, a simple majority is required.

+ After each vote, they burn the ballots and add special chemicals to make the smoke white or black.
. • Black smoke means no new pope yet.
. • White smoke announces the election of a new pope.

+ The cardinals may elect any baptized male they wish. There have been occasions in the past where they have elected a layman. After their election, the layman has to be ordained priest and bishop.

+ They ask the one elected if he accepts. The moment he accepts, he is pope.

+ The pope chooses his “Papal” name.

+ Then the new pope is announced to the world.

For more information, see:
http://www.americancatholic.org/features…
http://www.americancatholic.org/Features…

Pope Smoke (issuing from the Vatican)

 

Secret of my Spinsterhood

I'm 46 years old and still a Spinster. Many people have wondered why I am still one.

Well, now I will reveal to you the reason I am a spinster after all these years.

Come in real close and I'll whisper it into your ear.

"The reason I'm a spinster ...,"

 [looking back and forth to see if someone is eavesdropping] ...

"Okay. Here it is. The reason I'm a spinster is ... I've never been married."

(Ha ha ha. you fell for it. that's one of my stupidest jokes, but everyone always falls for it).



One day I went up to my minister and said, "When I want to have my wedding, do you know why you can't marry me?"

He asked with a concerned look, "No. Why?"

I responded, "Because you're already married".

(ha ha ha)

Hey. If you haven't figured out by now that I can't tell a good joke to save my life, you have NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.

 Gotcha!

 

 

 

NOW: For something completely different ...

*** NOTE: Throughout several blog comments are some about "VERTICAL JUMP/The Jump Manual".

So I have collected the COMMENTS and LINKS and INFO from all over "Laura-Lee Was Here" and have created it's own post entry.
Follow the Link:
 INCREASING YOUR VERTICAL JUMP at Laura-Lee Was Here