Connie Salles was inducted as a Unity Santa Fe Treasure on Sunday, August 13, 2017. The following is the biography published on that date.
Unity co-founder Myrtle Fillmore taught that God is inside each person. "You need to think of God, the all powerful Healer, as being already within you, in every part of your mind, heart, and body." Connie Salles is and always has been a healer.
Connie was born in Connersville, Indiana and graduated from IU Bloomington with a BSN. She worked in both labor and delivery and medical/surgical departments and married her high school sweetheart. They had two daughters. She went on to earn a Master's Degree in adult education from all University in Muncie, IN and became a nurse educator in the maternal/child and mental health fields.
Connie grew up attending a Baptist Church. She widely read and studied a variety of spiritual and metaphysical theories and practices from adolescence on. She read the Daily Word and Unity Magazine and loved books written by Joel Goldsmith, especially Conscious Union with God.
Connie moved to Wyoming in the 1980s and attended an Episcopal Church. She had the opportunity to travel to China and the USSR with Maternal/Child RN groups. She met her husband Roger at a hot springs in Wyoming and together they traveled to Naples, Florida. They stayed with a friend of Connie's who was studying to become a licensed Unity teacher and Connie began attending a unity Church there.
In 1991, Connie and Roger drove cross-country in a van and lived for a time at Ojo Caliente. They saw the lights in the mountains of Truchas and Roger was reminded of his homeland in the Pyrenees. They bought a house in Truchas in 1994, a 1760 fixer-upper which they renovated. They met their influential Sufi teacher, Reshad Feild, who lived in Santa Fe, and they studied with him intensely from 1992-1993.
In 2001, Connie was given an idea in a dream to look up Unity in a phone book. Roger had never joined a church and she persuaded him to come with her to Unity Santa Fe. They both sat and cried that first time, feeling they had come home. Roger served on the Board of Trustees and volunteered with Connie in many ways until he passed away in 2009.
Connie joined the Bookstore and Events Team beginning with Andrew harvey's 2000 visit. With Roger's encouragement, "Connie knows all about spiritual books", she organized and managed the Bookstore from 2001-2010 and participated on the Events Team during the most active years for events at Unity Santa Fe. Connie enjoys being both a Prayer Chaplain and a member of the Healing Team. She previously served on the Board for a six-year term and was voted in again this year with the title, Keeper of the Flame. She participated in the two-year Spiritual Mastery Program and is currently participating in Ministry Transformation, a mission-centered initiative.