For other Latter-day Saint wards in Michigan, Sunday was traumatic, too: ‘A huge violation’

GRAND BLANC, Mich. — As a man shot at Latter-day Saints here Sunday, friends and fellow church members in other congregations of the Grand Blanc Stake were in the middle of routine church meetings.

The children of the Flint Ward, 12 miles to the north, were singing and speaking at their annual Primary program during sacrament meeting.

Thirty-two miles southeast of Grand Blanc in Rochester Hills, the Rochester Ward was holding its sacrament meeting, and the ward council of the Lake Orion Ward was discussing plans for this year’s Christmas activity.

The mind-bending minutes that followed were shocking and left a trail of trauma. This story is based on interviews with many church members.

News traveled north a bit faster because the Flint and Grand Blanc wards are inextricably bound in innumerable ways. The Flint congregation is led by Bishop Christopher Barnes, who actually lives in the Grand Blanc Ward’s boundaries.

“We were helping the kids have their little Primary experiences in sacrament meeting and cheering on the ones who were being brave when we noticed the bishop’s wife walked out,” said Becca Jones, a ward nursery leader. “Then the bishop hopped off the stand where he had been sitting with us, and he walked out.”

The other leaders followed.

“Oh, no,” Jones thought, “something must be really wrong.”

Meanwhile, in the meetinghouse gym in Rochester Hills, 10 members of the Lake Orion Ward Council sat in a circle of folding chairs planning Christmas. The ward’s Sunday services weren’t scheduled to begin until noon.

Ashley Mathie, the Young Women president, suddenly interrupted. She had just received a text from her husband, who is in law enforcement.

It said, “There is an active shooter at the Grand Blanc Ward.”

“Stop talking,” she said, a statement that sounds rude to her now.

She read the text to the group and said, “We need to say a prayer.”

They knew almost nothing, so they prayed a simple prayer for protection.

Back in Flint, Bishop Barnes returned to the chapel as the Primary program continued, gathered members of the Elders Quorum presidency and left the chapel again with them.

“My guess was that somebody had been in a car accident outside the building and was hurt and in our foyer,” a ward member said.

On the stand, Jones, the nursery leader, stayed calm and sat with the 3-year-old children in her class at the front of the chapel. Her husband Tim was in the foyer with some of their children but had agreed to swap places with Jones at that point in the program.

When he didn’t enter the chapel, she left the stand to find him.

“I walked out and saw his eyes were rimmed with red, and three of my children had shocked faces,” she said.

Bishop Barnes’ wife told her husband she had received a text from someone at the Grand Blanc Stake Center who said, “Someone is shooting here. We can’t call 911 from inside the building. Will you please call 911 for us?”

A woman next to her said her husband and some of her sons were in the Grand Blanc meeting. Her other son frantically tried to reach his brothers by phone.

Some ward members watched as one of Bishop Barnes’ counselors in the bishopric, Michael Hayden, learned that his father, Craig Hayden, had been killed by the gunman in Grand Blanc.

Someone also called 911 to ask for help there at the Flint chapel.

“We didn’t know,” Jones said. “We didn’t know if somebody was targeting all the buildings.”

The other adults steered everyone back into the chapel, then Bishop Barnes canceled the meeting and people began to leave.

He instructed missionaries to walk people to their cars. Ward members had to ask the police, who had parked cars blocking the entrance to the parking lot, to move so they could drive home.

In Rochester Hills, two wards were at a crossroads.

The Lake Orion bishop received a message in the ward council meeting instructing him to cancel all of the day’s planned meetings, then stepped out for a phone call, Mathie said.

“Shut it down” was the message, said Brandt Malone, second counselor in the Lake Orion bishopric.

By this point it, was after 11 a.m. The Rochester Ward’s sacrament meeting had ended, and the members left in an orderly fashion.

Mathie sent a text to the ward’s teenaged girls in the Young Women’s program, instructing them that their meetings for the day were canceled.

“What do you say to them?” Mathie thought.

Malone’s wife Ashley and their 11-year-old daughter had attended a youth fall festival activity at the Grand Blanc Stake Center the night before.

“It’s surreal,” Ashley said. “I feel like I’ve been going through the stages of grief on an hourly basis.”

Brant and Ashley grew up attending meetings and activities at the Grand Blanc Stake Center.

“To see it down to smithereens is just hard,” he said. “We know all of those people and see each other because they’re in our stake.

“I’m not really an emotional person,” he said as water filled his eyes and he looked off in the distance. “This hits home. This is a really tight-knit community. We’re a minority of a minority here, so we rely on each other.”

Mathie recalled crying during the ward council meeting when news of the shooting reached her.

“I know it was much worse for so many people than it was for me,” she said, “but even where we were, we were devastated. It was something I don’t think anyone should have to go through.”

Her stake family was facing the worst, and it hurt.

“I feel traumatized,” Mathie said, “but I know people have gone through far worse than me.

“It’s a huge violation.”

Malone agreed.

“It feels like a security blanket was taken away,” he said.

The Lake Orion congregation long ago scheduled a temple trip for Wednesday night. Ward members still plan to travel together to the Detroit Michigan Temple in Bloomfield Hills.

They also are looking forward to watching a memorial service Wednesday for President Russell M. Nelson, the church’s prophet who died Saturday at 101, and the church’s semiannual general conference on Saturday and Sunday.

In the meantime, they help as they can.

Malone, who works for GM, has taken several days off work and leaps at any opportunity to support friends throughout the stake.