Testimonial – Dale Skaggs

Member at FUSM since 2007

Before Lynda and I joined First Church we had spent the better part of thirty years moving every few years in pursuit of career goals. We have wonderful memories, and beloved friends from all the places we lived but still, something was missing. In the first two years after we joined the church we experienced deep loss in the deaths of Lynda’s mother and one of my brothers …and we found great joy in the birth of our grandson. Our new friends in First Church carried us in our grief and unabashedly shared in our joy at becoming grandparents. Their actions, more than any words could have done, offered us the greeting we had longed for without even knowing it, those words we hear in the place where we truly belong, “Welcome Home!” I am so grateful that for 175 years our forebears nourished this community of faith, so we could receive that welcome when we came searching for a whole life. And in all our fifteen years here, at every Ingathering service, and every Christmas Eve, and every Sunday …we still hear that assurance of belonging, that comfort of knowing and being known, those simple words, “Welcome Home.”