Dave Butler, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, recently started a fundraiser for the family of Thomas Jacob Sanford, the shooter and arsonist who last week killed four people and burned down a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Mich. It has raised more than $150,000 so far.
Butler has no connection to the church in Grand Blanc, he said on a GoFundMe page — “but James teaches us that ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.’ The purpose of this GiveSendGo is to do that. Every donation will go to help provide for the Sanford family daily needs, provide for ongoing medical treatment, and create some stability in a time of heartbreak and upheaval.”
Comments on the fundraiser are beautiful, full of prayers and Bible verses and the greatest witness of Christlike love imaginable. Hundreds of people have done, through their prayers and financial generosity, what Paul instructs in Romans: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
Sanford reportedly held deep hatred for the Mormon faith. He fell in love with a traditional LDS woman, felt pressure to convert, and ended up scorned. He said that Mormons would take over the world, and called them the Antichrist, according to his friends.
Those who Sanford so hated have now supported his widow and child after Sanford’s unspeakable act of violence. What an inspiring model of faith for those of us whose hearts may have hardened after Charlie Kirk’s assassination or the school-mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic.
(On that note: Sophia Forchas, twelve, was shot in the head during the Annunciation shooting in Minneapolis in August. The bullet was lodged in the right occipital lobe of her brain; doctors initially warned that Sophia was on the brink of death. Sophia now, however, shows promising signs of neurological recovery and she will be transferred this week from acute care to an inpatient rehab program, her family said in a statement.
“It is by God’s will that she has come this far,” her family said. “We are eternally grateful to our loving Father, who hears and answers prayers.”)
One more witness: Lisa Louis — the daughter of Grand Blanc shooting victim Craig Hayden — stared into Sanford’s eyes after he shot her father, Lisa wrote in a letter posted this week. Lisa “never took my eyes off his eyes, something happened, I saw pain, he felt lost. I deeply felt it with every fiber of my being. I forgave him, I forgave him right there, not in words but in my heart.”
“I needed to share this for Papa for Dad, for anyone who can set aside hate,” Lisa wrote in a letter posted Tuesday. “Maybe that time won’t be now for you, but maybe one day. What we say and do matters. Fear breeds anger, anger breeds hate, hate breeds suffering. But stopping the hate takes all of us.”