One of those missionaries has a form of autism and is living at home while serving locally in the Bishop's storehouse, so while we packaged the others in boxes for mailing, we put his in a gift bag to deliver on our way home from the church.
As we walked out of the church into the dark, cold evening, the girls were running and screaming in every which direction, as only young teenage girls can do, and we leaders were trying to shepherd them into cars to make sure we didn't leave anyone behind.
As a rush of girls ran to my car I clicked the unlock button on my key ring and they piled in before I even got there. As I climbed into my seat I noticed that my middle consul was wide open and with a little irritation I closed it remarked, "quit playing with things, guys."
As I pulled out of my parking spot I noticed the car next to me had the back hatch wide open and I absently wondered what activity they were doing to have the back of a car open.
We drove a few streets over and delivered our package.
And played a few rounds of hands up stands up in a light rain, and I then we began taking girls home.
I dropped off two extras and took my three home with me.
When we pulled into the driveway I went to grab my backpack off the floor of the passenger seat and noticed it wasn't there.
And I got grumpy. "How could you guys not notice that it fell out? It's big and heavy, I don't understand. You guys really need to pay attention, I need that stuff."
So we retraced our steps, looking at the places we had stopped to see if my backpack was on the ground.
We made it all the way back to the church with no luck, but a group of people were standing around the car with the open hatch in the parking lot. One being my friend and fellow Young Women leader. She walked over to my car and my first thought was maybe one of them picked it up and she's coming over to tell me.
Instead, "Did your car get broken into too?"
"My backpack is just missing. I wondered if it fell out."
"Your car probably got broken into, ours did." I learned that the car with the open hatch had thousands of dollars of tools stolen from it. It began to sink in.
My middle consul had been wide open. I opened it. All of our gadgets (two GPS's) and CD's and movies were gone.
I began to look around the car.
Cali's scriptures, gone.
And my over full backpack.
I'm sorry I got upset with you, girls.
Who would do this?
And of all the things that were taken from my car, I wanted my backpack back. There was nothing of worth to anyone else in that bag. Except maybe the $200 textbook. But the notes, the flashcards, the cheap calculator. What frustrates me the most is my final is in three weeks. They took an entire semester of math notes. And I know they're just going to throw it all away while I now have to work double time to recover the information to study.
Luckily I know a guy in my class and he let me borrow his notes to copy over the weekend.
I posted on yard sale sites on Facebook that I was searching for a textbook and why. A stranger offered me his old textbook free of charge. The lesson I'm taking from this is this: yes, there are bad people around who want to make life miserable. But there are also very good people around who will do what they can to help someone out, even if they don't know that person.
Today I'm very thankful for a kind stranger.
The rest is just whatever.
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