The first missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints known to have died of the coronavirus is Allen Dee Pace, from Willard, Utah.
Pace, who went by Dee, contracted COVID-19 while serving a senior mission in the Detroit area. He was a much-appreciated retired theater teacher at Bear River High School in Garland.
He died Saturday at age 68 after battling the virus for weeks, the last three in an intensive care unit.
Why didn't the prayers, the fasting and the priesthood blessings heal him?
“We express our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Elder Pace as they mourn his passing,” church spokesman Daniel Woodruff said in a news release, “and we continue to pray for all who are impacted by this pandemic.”
Because offering prayers is effective...<facepalm>
It mentions that the church’s Beehive Clothing facilities in Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, the Philippines and Utah will temporarily shift their operations from manufacturing religious clothing to sewing masks (at all locations) and gowns (in Utah only) for medical workers.
The letter does not, however, spell out how much of the church’s vast “rainy day” funds — pegged in the tens of billions by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal — has been spent on these humanitarian efforts.
Why didn't the prayers, the fasting and the priesthood blessings heal him?
Because death was the result of the cascading reactions brought on by the COVID-19 virus and not from a psychogenic cause.
It’s important to remember that the telepathic energy of FAPing (Fasting And Prayer, thank you Mormon Talk) isn’t the only driving force. Don’t forget the power of audible bowel sounds of thousands of hungry Mormons reaching up to the heavens. Unfortunately, it would seem that the power of grumbling tummies also fell on deaf ears of the Almighty. Or did they? Perhaps the morbidity and mortality relating to COVID-19 would have been worse without the power of FAPing. This is where faith comes in I guess.
A wrongful death suit might be in order here for unnecessarily exposing this poor gentleman to the corona virus. I wonder when he caught it and if the church was sufficiently on notice of the potential harm, yet had him out selling anyway? Although going after the church in front of a Mormon jury would seem to be a waste of time.
If the church is quietly dipping into Ensign Peak to fund extra donations, then that’s great and it would be worthy of a nod.
Based on my conversations, however, this does not seem to be the case, and present donation efforts are being managed and delivered by the operating infrastructure and the LDS Philanthropies arm, which solicits and deploys member donations specifically for humanitarian causes.
I’ve not heard a whisper from my good friends at EP about the church drawing redemptions out in order to fund more CoV relief activities, but acknowledge that such a decision and information on a real time basis, assuming the amounts are small enough as to not be disruptive to portfolio managers, is above the pay grade of anyone in my circle.
Rightly or wrongly, I took Elder Holland’s confident “when we beat this, and we will” comment at conference to be a signal that church leaders are confident this is temporary, likely comfortable letting world governments print money and lead remediation, and do not likely deem Covid-19 as meriting a big Ensign Peak redemption. I could be totally wrong about that, but that’s my sense for what it's worth.