Deacon Jim Snell
Business Manager
505-865-7385
Contact

I was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico on January 18, 1953, that makes me 70 years young.  We moved to Belen in August of 1953.  I have four brothers and one sister.  We all went and graduated from Belen High School except one brother who went to Carrizozo High School.  After high school I served four years in the U.S. Navy as a Yeoman mostly in Norfolk, Virginia.  I felt I was doing my part for our country and enjoyed my time.  On January 12, 1974 I married my high school sweetheart Rosemary Gay Chappell.  We will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary next year.  She is a patient woman.  I attended the University of New Mexico and received my BS in Elementary Education and MA in Elementary Education and MA in School Administration.  I taught in the classroom for twelve years and served as a school principal for seventeen years in Los Lunas.  My wife and I were married at Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Los Chavez by Father Castillo and Brother Kineh (a Baptist minister from First Baptist Los Chavez).  I attended Mass with Gay and saw a wonderful devotion to our Lord in the congregation at San Clemente Parish and after twelve years of marriage a friend and I drove to Albuquerque to participate in the RCIA program at Risen Savior Parish for one year and came into Communion with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil of 1987.  In 1998 I felt I needed to be more than a lector at Mass and a helper around the parish so I applied to the diaconate program and began a four and a half year journey to the Diaconate.  I will have been ordained 20 years this July and hope to continue to serve for many more years with God’s amazing grace.  It is a real privilege to be part of something so big and important in the lives of parishioners.