Kooky crooks and coincidence

Things must have been going too well.

Yesterday morning, when the bus crews went to head out on visitation, they found that someone had broken into a church outbuilding and stolen a case of motor oil (10 quarts).

When one of the crews went to take the church van out on their route, they found that someone had all but destroyed the ignition, apparently trying to jumpstart the van.

Stealing in general is bad enough -- but stealing from a church? That's pretty low. And apparently not the work of a terribly smart person, either. First off, the van is one of the most recognizable, worthless things on four wheels in the county. It's a two-tone -- blue and rust, and it's nearly 20 years old. Not only that, but it has the church name emblazoned across the sides -- you can't NOT recognize that van anywhere. (There was a church member's pickup truck, tool box and all, parked behind the church, visible from the van. That wasn't touched. Neither was the brand-new, really nice air compressor in the same room as the case of oil.)

And the real beauty of it is, that when said supervillain bent down to pick up the case of oil, he apparently dropped his wallet. We found it on the floor of the outbuilding. We don't think there was any ID or any credit cards in it -- but a dope-smoking pipe was in there, as were receipts with signatures on them.

Fortunately, when he broke into the outbuilding, he only went into the first room -- the next room held the equipment for the radio station (some of which isn't portable at all, and some of which might have really zapped him had he tried to take it, but some of which could have taken us off the air and cost a fair chunk of money to replace). Also fortunately, although repairs to the van's steering wheel column and ignition would probably cost more than the van is worth, it can still be started -- if we couldn't run it, we couldn't run one of our bus routes.

So if this isn't coincidence that we had this break-in right after the week of salvations that we've seen (and a new family joining the church), I'm thinking it might not be coincidence either that the church's actual ministries were left completely operational.

I will find this truly ironic, though, if he should be caught for that break-in, and then Pastor Gibbs and I get to go witness to him in jail because of it.