On the morning of Nancy Guthrie's disappearance,NBC's "Today"reported she was supposed to join friends at a neighbor's house to watch an online church service of Good Shepherd New York.
Michael Rudzena, the church pastor, said he met with Guthrie when she visited New York. The visits took place after her daughter Savannah Guthrie began attending the church 10 years ago, he said. After the pandemic hit and the church began to stream its services, prayers and sermons, Guthrie started to watch.
Guthrie was also part of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church community near Tucson. The church said she had been "in the church family" a long time.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, wasreported missingon Feb. 1. Authorities believe she was abducted from her Catalina Foothills home near Tucson. The Pima County Sheriff's Department initially had said her absence was noted because she had failed to show up for church, not for a virtual service viewed from a friend's house.
Guthrie had connected with the pastor, who described Guthrie as strong and "fiercely loving."
"Over the years, we've gotten to know what makes her tick, in some ways, from a faith perspective. The songs that mean something to her, the scriptures that are meaningful for her," he said.
On the "Today" show, Rudzena discussed how to use prayer to bring in hope when facing loss or tragedy.
"Leaving the door open for hope is a way to fight against that sense of fatality, or fatalism," he said. "Prayer is a way of channeling that feeling toward God with a hope that God will meet us in it and get us through to the other side. And that's the confidence of faith."
In Good Shepherd's digital service for Feb. 1, the day that Nancy Guthrie disappeared, a prayer said by Rudzena before communion described how the death and resurrection of Jesus showed the "power of this love to overcome the worst forms of evil and violence."
Sarah Lapidus covers southern Arizona politics and issues for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at sarah.lapidus@gannett.com.
Republic reporter Richard Ruelas contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic:New info emerges on where Guthrie planned to attend church
