A Story And Some Sad News

Many years ago -- almost two decades, actually -- my family moved to a new house in Sioux Falls. My parents had never been churchgoing folks, but they decided they wanted their kids to be raised in one.

They ended up at Sunnycrest United Methodist Church one Sunday morning and liked it well enough. It was when they went back a second time a few weeks later that they got hooked; the pastor remembered them, their names, what they did for a living, and both of us little girls. He apologized for forgetting their last name.

All three of us kids then got to grow up in that church, and the people there became a second family. Truly, that pastor changed the route of my life in ways I can't even comprehend -- simply by remembering a young couple that appeared one Sunday.

Eleven years later, retired and not having been at Sunnycrest for nine years, he remembered who I was. I was sixteen by then, and obviously quite different than I had been when he had left but he called me by name, remembered my parents, and most astonishingly didn't confuse me with my sister. I was awed.

Reverend Ken Voas passed away on Wednesday at the age of 81 in Rapid City. The world has lost one quite extraordinary man -- but he leaves behind a legacy with no end in sight.

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