Prayer pulls couple through scary cemetery ordeal

An elderly couple is crediting God and their deceased son for saving them from a scary and near life ending ordeal for at least one of them in a local cemetery in December.
Joseph Simons, 84, of Kasson nearly died as he lay in a snowbank in Evergreen Cemetery in Mantorville while his wife, Eeanna, waited nearby in a vehicle that was stuck in the snow Dec. 28. A Dodge County sheriff’s deputy came along about four hours later and found the couple with Joseph conscious but barely coherent and his body temperature rapidly dropping. 
“I prayed to God and I asked Joey to send us help,” Eeanna, 79, said referring to her son who is buried in the cemetery. He was killed in 1985 in a motorcycle crash in California. “I’m convinced somebody sent help and prayer is a good, strong thing,” she said.
Within a half hour of her praying, deputy Scott Prins came along and rescued the couple. He has since been honored for his heroic actions with a lifesaving award from the sheriff. 
Joseph was rushed to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester where his temperature had dipped down to 60 degrees. After spending two days in the hospital, he returned back to his Kasson home to be reunited with his wife. They celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary last week.
“I was as close to dying as I want to ever come,” Joseph said. “We are just lucky that somebody came along,” he said.
Joseph is grateful to the emergency responders who rescued him. “I am so lucky,” he said. “I owe them a great deal for what they did to help me.”
The couple estimates they were stranded in the cold and ice covered cemetery for at least four hours before being found. “By 8 o’clock I realized something terrible had happened,” Eeanna said, noting they arrived at the cemetery around 4 p.m. 
They came to the cemetery to visit their son’s gravesite to see a cross that had been placed there for Christmas. “The road was practically pure ice and we slid off the road,” Eeanna said. “The harder we tried to get out, the more stuck we got.”
Joseph, who has difficulty walking, tried to push the car out. “I couldn’t move the car,” he said. 
He decided to walk to a nearby residence by the cemetery, but never made it. He reached a fence that he couldn’t get through. “I fell down in a snowbank,” Joseph said. He added he yelled for help, but no one heard him. 
Meanwhile, Eeanna stayed with the vehicle and kept honking the car’s horn, but that noise went unheard as well. “I knew if I would start walking, I would fall down, too,” she said. 
Luckily, the temperatures