Connie Sue Biggs

Connie Sue Biggs

Connie was born to Paul and Donnah Olson on September 25, 1945 in St. Joseph’s Hospital, Concordia, Kansas. She was the second child of this union. Her sister, Arden Kay, was 8 years older. Her father was a farmer and her mother a homemaker who fed many men who came to help with the crops. In January of 1952, Connie’s father decided to quit farming and he and his wife of 18 years went to Wichita which he applied and was accepted by the Beech Air Craft Company. He and Donnah returned to the farm and he went to feed cows. He returned to the house and told his wife he didn’t feel very well and laid down by their pot belly stove in the kitchen. He suffered a heart attack at the age of 47 and went to be with the Lord. Connie’s mother often told her that God had prepared for her a place to go. How would a widowed woman with two children run a farm?

Connie lived in Wichita only one year and then her mother and sister moved to a smaller community in McPherson, Kansa. It was there her mother met and married Charles Nelson. In1955, Connies Youngest sister Ann was born. Charles moved the family to Boulder, Colorado in 1958. Connie went through her Junior year of high school there. The summer before her Senior year, the family moved to Longmont, Colorado. She graduated in 1964. While attending the Evangelical Free Church she was introduced to students that were attending Rockmont College. Connie had always had an interest in missions and so she began her first year of college there. To pay for schooling she began working at a nursing home. She found her calling for life. Nursing. After one year she moved to California, living with her older sister for 11 months. While working in the small hospital in Banning, California she saw a sign in the nurses' station that stated Man Power Training Act looking for women to back into the work force. Although it was meant for older women, Connie applied and was accepted. In 1967 she graduated with her Licensed Vocational Nurse degree and went back to work at Banning Hospital. Connie’s desire always had been to be a wife and mother, but knowing her mother had no skills when her daddy died, she knew she had to have an education just in case she became widowed herself.

In 1973, Connie married Jerry Brown. They had been involved in a Bible Study and Prayer Group in San Diego. They had to daughters, Christine Michelle and Julie Lin. When their girls were 5 and 3, financially Conne needed to add to the income of their family. She went back to her nursing job.

It was in 1991, that Jerry died in a plane crash in San Diego. That still small voice so many years before had told her she needed a vocation in case someday she would be widowed. God had prepared her and she was able to provide for her girls and herself. Like her mother, she was married to Jerry, 18 years and she would have turned 47, then days after the accident. One of the highlights of the Brown home was hosting students that attended San Diego State University in English as a second language. in 12 years, they had over 50 students from 9 different countries. Some of those friendships continued for many years long after they moved back to their own country. Although Connie had wanted to go to the mission field, God chose to bring it to her family’s home.

In 1995, God had a surprise for Connie. His name was Verne Biggs. They had known each other for a number of years, but the new church she began to attend was what brought them together.

When she and Verne moved to Tucson, she began to have time to sew and crochet. She was awoken in the middle of the night by God and told to make a prayer quilt for their friend Clyde McGuire. Unbeknownst to Connie, there gifted quilters at Sabino Road Baptist Church and a prayer quilt ministry was begun. Prayer had always been Connie’s passion, and she loved to pray with and for people. She also loved to give away potholders she would make while watching TV with Verne in their evenings together.

Besides prayer, Connie loved to lead a women’s bible studies and help children in Awana to learn more about Jesus. Connie knew no strangers. She loved greeting people at church and meeting people in the store. The conversation often included Jesus.

She was well aware her life could have turned out differently as other women who had been abused as a child. She knew she had been blessed because she chose Jesus and also kenw He had never left her side. Just like you who are here today, God has a very special plan for your life and if Connie could speak to you personally, she would say: “Follow Jesus; put Him first and He will never leave you. He has the best plan for your life.”

2 Corinthians 5:8 says: “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” That is where Connie is now. She is in the presence of her Lord she loved so much. Her pain and suffering the world gives, she is now experiencing a life that we on earth “cannot imagine.”

She is survived by: Verne Biggs (husband), Christine nee Brown (daughter) and Perry Wyatt and their children Robert and Callyn; Julie nee Brown (daughter) Racich and her children Jonathan and Isabelle; her stepchildren Brian (Mary) Biggs and Sandra Plank (Brian) Joiner and her Children Brittany, Brooke, Brent, Bethany, and numerous great grandchildren; her sisters Arden (Lee), Adell and Ann Antillon; numerous nieces and nephews, and many beloved friends and family.

In lieu of flowers, Connie has requested that donations be made to Arizona Baptist Children’s Services.