PLATTSBURGH — The Rev. Michael and Elizabeth San Soucie filled cardboard boxes with what he’s collected in 54 years as pastor of First Assembly of God in Plattsburgh. Two weeks later, it’s still a process.
He was 31 when he arrived, and he’s calling it quits at age 85. San Soucie preached his last sermon on July 7 at the church at 164 Prospect Ave. in Plattsburgh.
“I prayed about it and I said, ‘Lord, what do I say?’” he said.
“So I was looking around in the Scriptures looking for something. I came across the letters that Jesus wrote to the seven churches. There were two of the seven churches that he found no fault in. He found no fault in the Church of Smyrna and the Church of Philadelphia.”
This caused San Soucie to reminisce about his roommate, Jack Weinbrenner, at Bible college in Pennsylvania.
“He was an older gentleman, probably about 10 years older,” Michael said.
“I went through the Navy. Never got married. Later on I did. Of course, I’m a freshman and all that. He was a pastor at a local church 15 miles away. I’m thinking, how does this all fit together? The church was called the Church of the Open Door. It’s in the book of Revelation, chapter 2. I’ve been there a couple of months and he says to me, ‘How about you pray about this and see if it’s God’s will or not, I want you to come and be my youth pastor.’ I prayed about it, but I didn’t feel any hold back in my spirit. I came and then he made me an assistant pastor my sophomore year. Then over the years he made me an assistant pastor.”
San Soucie remained with the church until his graduation and would remain there.
“When I put those two things together, I thought, let me dig a little deeper into this,” he said.
“I preached a message about the Church of the Open Door. It gave me kind of a perfect introduction to connect things to the past and the present and so forth.”
SEVENTH SON
He was born the seventh child of William and Corina San Soucie of Schenectady. His surname is of French origin and means “without worries.”
William was a veteran of World War I who served on a Navy destroyer and was also a musician in the Navy Band. His mother was a Bombardier and her mother was a Trombley from Redford. William was a union carpenter and ran a small family farm, part of the Campbell estate.
In a creek on the farm, Michael nearly drowned twice. At age 4, he was rescued by his uncle Charles Goodrum. Four years later, his brother Norman pulled him from the flooding creek. Apparently, it wasn’t his time yet. God had plans.
FINDING GOD
When he was 12, San Soucie trudged back from the swamps to his family’s farm. As he walked through a farmer’s field, he heard the chiming bells of the 18th-century cobblestone Dutch Reformed Church.
“I stopped, looked up and said, ‘God, I don’t know if You’re real or not, because I don’t know anyone who knows You,’” he said.
“The reason I said that was because I knew a lot of religious people, but it confused me because I thought religious people were supposed to be good people. I see them do things that I wouldn’t even think of. We had a little gang and the leader went to the cobblestone church. I was the kid that you locked up when you saw me coming down the street because you didn’t want your kids to be influenced by me. It was where we lived and stuff like that.”
When Michael was in his late teens, he was trying to get his life together. After graduating from Mount Pleasant High School, he was determined to pursue a career in aviation. He learned the electrician’s trade from Joe Bezio, a contractor. Strong and healthy, he loved working and helping people. For three weeks, San Soucie worked as a lumberjack until he realized there was no future in it.
At the age of 19, he dated a very religious young woman who invited him to a First Assembly of God Church that was under construction. On March 25, 1959, a Sunday evening around 9:00, he went forward and received Christ into his heart and life. He advises young people to do the same to live their lives.
“The first thing is that we must seek God seriously,” he said.
“Seek it from God, because the Bible shows us that God has a will for each of us. We can miss that, but if you seek God, God will show you what to do. Look what God has done in my life. My goodness, I am the last man on planet Earth that anyone, well, even myself, ever thought I had nothing. From the moment I got up off my knees when I invited Jesus into my life, I didn’t even know what I was saying or doing. I just knew that this was what I had to do. This was the right thing. I’m echoing the pastor’s words. I don’t say them, but my heart was in it. That’s the main thing, because that’s real. Different people come in different ways, you know what I mean. Everyone is different in how they find that true spirit of the Lord working in their life and therefore the Holy Spirit.”
ON THE ROAD
After the Church of the Open Door, the San Soucies went to Oswego, Alaska, and returned to Schenectady.
“I got a job and lived on the farm with my parents,” he said.
“My girls were little at the time. We were waiting to see where the Lord would send us. It was late 1969. I took a job as an electrician to help support the family. One day I was working alone and the owner of the company, Ed Keeler, came. I got frustrated because I hadn’t heard anything for a couple of months or anything.”
San Soucie was hanging switches when Keeler approached him and said, “We’ve talked about you in our board meetings. We’d like to offer you a foreman position, but I know you have a different situation.”
“I said I would think about it,” he said.
“Of course I would pray about it. When he left the room, I looked up and said, ‘Father, I need to hear from you because I have something to tell him. I have to provide for the family.’”
Once home, Elizabeth told him that he had received a phone call from a minister in Olean in western New York.
“They just finished building a brand new church, which is growing nicely, a wonderful church,” he said.
“He heard about us. He thinks we should come over there. I think I prayed this morning, God if you don’t show me what to do, I’ll take this job.”
The location of the course was ideal, close to Elizabeth’s parents.
“Not only that, my former pastor from Schenectady, who had just built a new church in Wellsville,” he said.
“Because I went to preach for Ronald Kleinstuber, my pastor from Schenectady. I came to know the Lord through his ministry. They came from Ontario and started a church in Oswego. That was our first church.”
Because San Soucie had to go through Olean to his engagement party, he thought: how can this not be God?
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
“I said, wow. I’m going to go out there and preach to them. I’m out there, and I don’t have any of the Spirit here (points to his chest). I preached okay and all that kind of stuff. It wasn’t a lack of that aspect, but I didn’t have a testimony that this was God. That God was somewhere. I knew they were going to vote us out, which they finally did when we got home.”
‘THIS IS NOT FROM GOD’
Three-foot snowdrifts greeted San Soucie upon his return to Schenectady. The church council voted and he received a phone call.
“I told them I don’t know,” he said.
“I said call me back because I didn’t have time to pray. I always had to wait on the Lord. Sometimes I get a quick answer. Sometimes I don’t.”
In a state of great confusion, San Soucie searched for clarity as he cleared snow.
“At half past seven in the evening I get off the tractor,” he said.
“I’m angry. Tired. They called me back and I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’”
For three nights San Soucie could not sleep, but he managed to work every day.
“God wouldn’t let me sleep,” he said.
“I remember pulling back the covers and saying, ‘This isn’t from God. I’m going to call those people and tell them to get someone else.’ And I fell asleep. I collapsed.”
The Church accepted his decision with favor.
Not long after, he received a call from Paul Buckwalter.
“That man at our headquarters,” he said.
“He called on a Saturday night. One of his jobs was to provide pastors for churches that needed them. He said I was sitting in my living room praying for a church in Plattsburgh. I was thinking about closing it. He said, ‘Go over there, check it out. Preach to them. Pray over them. See what you think. Is this God or not?’ And he said, ‘It’s not like you’re going to stay there the rest of your life.’
“When he said that, I heard my angel, ‘Oh, yes, that’s you.’ To confirm that, I get this. (clap) A flat hand on the chest. I couldn’t see the hand, but I heard it and I felt it. It was God’s way of saying, no, you’re not crazy. This is me. I’m knocking on your door.”
NORTH TO PLATTSBURGH
In February 1970, San Soucie drove north to Plattsburgh.
“My wife didn’t even want to come,” he said.
“I was actually staying at Howard Johnson’s. When we got home from church, there was six inches of snow on the ground. I had to work the next morning. When I went down the Northway, I counted 50 cars, everything from Volkswagen Beetles to Cadillacs, off the road.”
San Soucie drove himself a $100 1957 Cadillac and eventually brought his family to the North Country church that had been founded in 1955 by a couple from his Bible school.
“The first year and a half or so, it was just a matter of getting everything together,” he said.
“It grew. It started. We came through the charismatic movement. The Holy Spirit, God moving in the world. The whole world had a great visitation from God. It affected the Catholic Church. It affected all these churches. People started getting filled with the Holy Spirit, and the gospel was preached everywhere and all that.”
During the church’s heyday, the congregation numbered 300 members.
“It’s scarce these days,” he said.
“We will see what God will do.”
During his tenure the church expanded, as did its reach.
“We have seen hundreds of people give their lives to Christ over the years,” he said.
“Hundreds. Hundreds. Hundreds. You look at the church today and you say, really? Yeah, but they’re not staying in Plattsburgh. They’re gone.”
San Soucie loved Plattsburgh from day one to this day, and so does his grandson, John Osborn, who is a minister.
“I miss the military,” he said.
“They brought culture. They brought education. They brought finances. Talent. Skills. They brought a lot of people who had experience with the Lord. We need everybody. Not everybody is going to be a civil engineer or a doctor or something like that. It was just great. It was nice to have all these people all over the country, because when we went on vacation, we could visit this one and this one over there. I had this old bus over there converted into a camper, so we could go anywhere we wanted to go.”
His legacy is the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who crossed the threshold of the First Assembly of God.
“Some of them obviously stayed to help us,” he said.
“They became part of the church.”
