Last Saturday night was one of the craziest in recent memory for me and Shelly. No, I’m not talking about the fact that BYU scored three rushing touchdowns, although that did cause us to rub our eyes in disbelief. There’s an even better story about thugs and car crashes that keeps having ramifications in our lives.

Saturday night after Priesthood Session of General Conference, the Church piped the BYU-Colorado State football game into the church building (yet another great reason to be a BYU fan—when the game isn’t on national TV (which is more often than not these days), you can just go watch it at church!), and I stayed with a select group of guys to watch it. Shelly, being the best wife in the world that she is, joined us and brought me Wendy’s food. The game started at 10pm, and didn’t end until around 2am.

At about 1am, Paul, the gentleman from our ward who looks after the building, was done cleaning up and told us to turn off the lights and pull the doors shut behind us when we left. They would, he said, lock behind us. So when the game was over, that’s just what we did. It so happened that the rest of the group exited from the front doors, but Shelly and I used the back door. When we pulled it closed behind us, we tested it to make sure it was locked. It wasn’t. We went back inside and tried for a few minutes to get it locked, and thought we had it. But we were on the inside and needed to try it from the outside. So we walked through the completely dark church building, hands stretched out in front of us. Shelly said she kept reminding herself we were in the church, and therefore no evil man would jump out and grab her. We exited the front door, which did lock behind us, and proceed around the building to the back door.

It was then that Shelly noticed that there was a guy standing on the other side of the street. He was wearing a dark grey hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and was either barefoot or wearing flip-flops. He was pacing back and forth along the sidewalk by our car. Very spooky looking. We quickly decided not to go toward our car till he was gone. As we got near the back door, Shelly whispered to me that he had crossed the street and was walking in our direction. I had already started veering toward the door to check whether it was locked, but I pulled back onto the sidewalk with a tingly feeling all over, and we just walked down the street as fast as we could. I looked back and saw him behind us, at about the corner of the church. We took off down another side street, and I kept periodically looking over my shoulder for the thug. I didn’t see him. We went full circle around the block, and came back to where we could see our car and the church. He was nowhere to be seen. My first thought was that we had successfully evaded him, but Shelly astutely pointed out that he probably saw me heading for the door of the church, and might have gone and tried the door himself. He might be in the church!

We still weren’t sure if the church was locked or not, but first we got into Shelly’s car for some measure of safety. After a while, she drove up right in front of the door, and I got out and tried it. It opened. Shelly screamed for me to get into the car. I did.

The only person who could lock the door, we knew, was Paul. He had gone to bed at least an hour ago, but we had to call him. Of course, we had to go home first to get his phone number. I didn’t tell Paul about the thug, but I did tell him that the door didn’t lock. I asked him if we could meet him there, but he insisted that he’d take care of it himself. Still, we were a little worried about Paul. He uses a cane and isn’t the kind of guy that could take on a thug by himself (unless, maybe, he swung the cane at him). So we decided to go back to the church anyway and make sure Paul was OK.

As we waited on the curb by the church for Paul to arrive, three young men came stumbling down the road. They didn’t look very dangerous, but they did look very drunk. By this time, it was about 2:45am, and we weren’t in the mood to take any chances. We got in the car just as they were close enough to start yelling “Hey! Hold on a (hic!) second!” at us. We drove around the block, let them pass on down the street, and parked behind them, across from the church. Paul pulled up. He went into the building, turned on a lot of lights, and stayed in there for a very long time. We got out and tried the door, and it was locked now. We hoped the thug wasn’t in the church with Paul. We decided he didn’t really need to know we were there, so we got back into the car and watched the drunk guys down the street hailing and stopping another car, and eventually getting in!

Paul walked out of the church and drove away safe, and we thought our adventure was over. The church was locked, the thug was gone, and whoever picked up the drunk guys had to deal with them. We drove toward home.

Stopped at a red light, we were singing hymns to try to bring a little bit of the Spirit back after what had been an emotionally taxing experience. “I feel my Savior’s love / in all the world around—” CHUNK! It took both of us a few seconds to realize that we’d been rear-ended. By a taxi. The driver didn’t even apologize, but was very helpful in exchanging information. Shelly’s car, which already had a crack in the bumper from a previous rear-ending, now had a large hole in the bumper. It was just too much. We went home, called the insurance company, and went to bed. The security of our comfy bed never felt so good.

I don’t want to make this story too long, but there’s an epilogue. Since driving home from the accident, Shelly’s car hasn’t started. We therefore realized my car is going to be the only available option for the next week or so. To make a long story short, early Monday morning, I got rear-ended. My car still works, but it’s got a nice dent in the trunk, and now we have not one but two claims being processed by our insurance company. Two rear-endings in 30 hours have caused us to re-evaluate our priorities. We’re now praying a lot harder that no harm or accident will come upon us.