Twenty-five years after a special fast of Church members in the U.S. and Canada, participants recall how it helped expand Church aid.
The feeding camp in Makalle, Ethiopia, housed 120,000 people in tents.But it was the 30,000 people outside the camp — those who had arrived at the gate after traveling hundreds of miles to find relief from starvation, only to learn there was a waiting list to get in — who captured the hearts of two visiting officials from Salt Lake City.
Elder M. Russell Ballard, then of the Presidency of the Seventy and now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Elder Glenn L. Pace, then managing director of the Church's Welfare Department and now of the First Quorum of the Seventy, were in Ethiopia to determine how best to use $6 million raised by Latter-day Saints in a special fast, Jan. 27, 1985.