Archive for Bill & Sue's Journal
Tuesday evening, February 10, 2009
I’ve had a lot of contact with cops these past ten days. Church was broken into during the night on Saturday, January 31. Colleague Tim Blazer discovered it when he arrived to teach a class on Sunday morning, and called me to get in touch with the alarm company, and then come over, since he didn’t know if anyone was still in the building-– thankfully, no one was.
Sue and I and the police arrived within ten minutes. The alarm company was another story, taking three hours of phone calls before even talking to anyone in charge as they’d changed their phone numbers and never advised us. After destroying the main alarm communication box and cutting wires to the sirens, rummaging through all the classroom cupboards and leaving things around the auditorium, the thieves ended up stealing an LCD monitor for the main computer (and wrecked the keyboard), a laptop computer, cd players, dvd players, and-– of all things-– six new Bibles-– hopefully, they’ll read them, repent and bring everything back! Ha! We were still very thankful as it could have been sooo much worse considering all the equipment and instruments around the building. Any locked doors were broken as we figured they were looking mainly for money, which we never leave at church.
The general thought was, they’ll be back, and sure enough, Monday evening-– it wasn’t even dark out yet-– they broke into the Ministry of Education building next door. Someone saw them going up the stairs inside the building and called the cops. It is about a yard jump to get from that building’s roof to ours. So back I went, this time entering the building with six cops with their guns out. My wife’s telling me to make them go in first, while they were pushing me ahead as we went into the building-– making a good shield for them! Thankfully, we found no one inside.
Then came Tuesday night…and once again…but thankfully by then we had a guard inside the building-– through our insurance company-– watching the place. This time, they stole several computers from the Ministry of Education building next door as well as breaking into an electronics store just down the street.
We figured that they had to be watching the comings and goings during the day, since Monday-– well, pretty much every day last week-– I was in and out of the building with repairmen, insurance investigators and claims agents all day as well having a mission meeting during that afternoon. Again on Tuesday I was there with more workers and investigators and a pastors meeting, and that evening I closed up after the last folks from prayer meeting left about nine-thirty, and by ten-thirty, the thieves were back! We kept a guard inside the building each night through Sunday. We figure it had to be someone who had visited the church at some time or maybe even workers for the alarm company since they knew where the main communication box was – in an upstairs storage room.
It’s not all bad news though. That Sunday, Feb.1, after the robbery, we had our communion service, giving the right hand of fellowship to nine new people. And this past Sunday, we had a baptism service where two more were baptized. New small groups have also started-– ours are two groups on Thursday (morning and evening) and another on Saturday-– plus starting another two couples’ discipleships on Monday and Wednesday, and Sue’s ESL classes on Mondays as well. Tim and I have been preaching on the ’09 church theme-– All Things New. I preached on the New Covenant the night of the communion service and New Heavens and New Earth this past Sunday-– everyone had to do a test of what they thought heaven would be like, and then we looked at Scripture to find the answers-– it turned into a fun learning experience! (You can see pictures on my blog at http://spoelhof-brazilnuts.blogspot.com/ )
This week is working out the final details for the Organizational meeting this coming Sunday.
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