Our church building was on fire when members began arriving for meetings this morning. The bishop of the ward we share a building with was the first to arrive and called the fire department.

I couldn’t get a parking space by the time I got there because the fire engine was sitting across about 6 or 7 spaces! Luckily, the lack of parking spaces didn’t seem to affect attendance any as we had a full crowd for the two wards today, especially our ward, which is usually very sparse in August when everyone is off on vacation. The fire was out when I got there (yes, I was a few minutes late to Church) and everyone was surprisingly attentive to the lessons (I taught in both Elders Quorum and Sunday School since I was subbing for my wife in there who is traveling). Still, the police, fire, and CSI presence outside dealing with the crime scene did provide for some distraction for any who were bored by my lessons!

Some of the prayers in our meetings were touching. For example, my second counselor opened priesthood meeting with a prayer asking a blessing on us not to allow this act to ruin our Sabbath even if that was someone’s intention.

We have a nice, brand new, and quite large building right in the heart of this section of the London area. It has an interesting design in which the (large) chapel is on the second story of three stories in the building. There is an entrance right into the second story where the chapel is from the main road in front of the chapel. The main entrance from the parking lot, however, is actually to the ground floor of the building because the parking lot behind the church is at a lower elevation than the road in front of the church. The third story has the primary and nursery rooms, five classrooms that are usually used as Primary and YM/YW classrooms, and the bishop’s office and clerk’s office for our ward (and a bathroom, the library, and the elevator entrance). The second story has the chapel, a large overflow room adjacent to the chapel and also adjacent to the kitchen, mother’s lounge, bathrooms, and a classroom that is adjacent to the baptismal font, all of which surrounds a large lobby space. The first or ground floor where the main entrance is from the parking lot has the Relief Society room and Elders Quorum room (where priesthood opening exercises is also held), the high priest group room, two other classrooms, the other ward’s bishop’s office and clerk’s office, a bathroom, and a large lobby area.

An arsonist broke the glass door to the main entrance from the parking lot and threw a petrol bomb in, attempting to burn the church down. Although the fire brigade was able to extinguish the fire before it spread to other areas of the building, the entrance was damaged, with the one glass door broken by the arsonist and some melting on the others and damage from the fire itself. We’ve had piles of poop in front of those doors, and a broken door once, but not anything like this before. I tried to take a picture of the damage with my cell phone to show the damage to my wife but the CSI people wouldn’t let me. Not sure how that could compromise an investigation but I didn’t push the point.

Then, during Sacrament Meeting, during the talk just after the Sacrament, a shabby-looking man went up to the front and started yelling at the second counselor in the bishopric. A member of our ward who is a counselor in the stake presidency happened to be there today so he was sitting on the stand next to the second counselor (the bishop is out of town so it was just the two of them) and the two of them stood up trying to talk the man into airing his grievances out in the foyer so as not to disturb the meeting while the whole congregation including the speaker looked on. The man continued disrupting and the speaker shrugged and sat down. The man ignored the two who were trying to calm him and remove him. He continued to yell that we all needed to be Catholic and that the Latter-day Saints were not going to be saved. He was using a bunch of Baptist rhetoric but kept saying that about being Catholic. It was really weird. Our member of the stake presidency left the stand to call the police (a couple of community support officers, i.e. like our volunteer deputies in the US, were downstairs standing watch over the crime scene of the arson to make sure no one crossed the police tape). The man kept yelling at the second counselor and the congregation.

A few of the guys in my Elder’s Quorum and a couple of high priests were starting to approach him so I quickly went up to diffuse the situation because I was worried these guys would try to get physical with the man. I didn’t go up on the stand but I reached over and tapped the second counselor on the arm so he would turn away from the man and I tried to send a signal to keep away to the three or four guys who were gathering (the Church could get sued even though it seems perfectly justified to grab someone like that and throw him out on his ear — I didn’t want anyone to lay a finger on him). After I had signaled the guys in my Elders Quorum to keep back, a thought came to my mind and I simply said to the man, “Are you the one who tried to burn our church down today?” He went rigid and immediately started to make a hasty retreat from the stand. To do so he had to come down into the middle of me and the gathered members of my Elders Quorum (the rest of the congregation was still seated watching, I presume, in horror or at least amusement). I kept asking him the same question every time he yelled at me about going to hell etc. He was quickly making his way out of the chapel as I repeated this question.

Once in the foyer, he continued to berate us and tell us we were going to hell, that Latter-day Saints weren’t saved, and that it was just an American church.

A community support officer came up from watching over the crime scene downstairs. At that point, with a representative of the police right there, the man sat down on the planter by the door and wouldn’t look at anyone. She got his name and details and asked why he had disturbed the sermon and he went off again about LDS not being saved and needing to be Catholic. I interrupted him and said “Why is your hand cut? Did you break the glass door and start the fire downstairs?”, at which point everyone noticed his cut up hand. The officer called in for support at this point saying she had detained a suspect in the arson and that he was agitated but not violent at the moment. Within a few minutes a van with police officers pulled up. I ran down the outside stairs to show them how to get up to the main level without using the main stairs because even they couldn’t cross over the crime scene. The police searched him and found a can of WD-40 on him which was used as flame accelerant apparently, even though you’d think a petrol bomb wouldn’t really need that. They arrested him on the spot for arson.

Then we all went back in and listened to the next talk.

I wasn’t able to tell if the incident shook up our recent converts and/or our investigators who were in attendance. I think the potential is definitely there but I think there was also a nice feeling of solidarity and calmness, despite the arson and the abusive behavior from the man who stormed into Sacrament Meeting. Maybe next Sunday’s meeting will be more standard.