Don Snow Saint and Sinner

I miss Don Snow.

When you work in a church you meet all kinds of people who touch your life in different ways. Don was one of a kind.

He was a big man with a deep radio voice, and a fat Dalmatian named Lexie, that he brought with him everywhere. This immediately made me love Don, because I too have an unnatural love for dumb Dalmatians.

If you look around on this website you can find Don’s faith story. When I was working on the “Welcome Video” for the church Don volunteered to help me out. I was looking for members from all of the different worship services to say something short about their service. I had a script written. Don threw it away.

About that time, Young and I had the idea to run a series of Faith Stories of our members on the website. I asked Don if he was interested in us taping him. Don said no, he had preached his faith story at a service in the chapel a few years earlier. He told me that it was too painful to repeat, but that I could transcribe it if I wanted to. What you see under “Faith Stories” is what he wanted to say to welcome people. What you can’t see is that Lexie was there at his feet in the Sanctuary, sitting there quietly while we taped. And then I listened to Don's faith story.

Don’s story killed me.

I sat here in my office last summer listening, transfixed by his voice and his pain. I wish I’d been there that night in the chapel to hear it in person. Instead I transcribed it, stopping, sniffling, typing, repeating, typing some more, and crying quite a bit. My officemate, Tami, came in to make sure I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown. I tried hard to impart the rhythm of his story and his sincere love of this church family. It is not perfect, but when you read it, you get the sense of him.

Don understood that the church wasn’t for perfect people.

The church is a place to catch your breath, reassess, center yourself, and be with other imperfect people who are trying to turn to God just like you. Turning to God is easy during the good times, but hard, so hard during the bad. To quote Don, “At a time when I couldn’t talk to God in a rational, reasonable, even polite voice, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, God found a way to talk to me. God showed me the face of Christ in a whole lot of people. Many of them here at this church and it was a really good thing. It helped me survive and for that I am grateful.”

Don and I spoke quite a bit about how we missed some of the saints of this church who had passed on in recent years. It’s a strange thing to realize that he is one of those saints now.
That has got to have him laughing.

I miss you Don Snow.