Small congregation dealing with ‘lowdown’ oil theft from tiny Middleton church

A small church congregation in Middleton is grappling with the weekend theft of hundreds of dollars worth of heating oil.

“I think it happened Friday night,” said Theresa Character, a missionary who has been serving in Nova Scotia with the Have Christ Will Travel Missionaries from Philadelphia for the past 46 years.

“I didn’t notice it until Saturday afternoon when I went over to the church to actually decorate it for Christmas and turned the furnace on and it didn’t come on,” Character said of the North Street Chapel, a non-denominational church in Middleton, an Annapolis Valley town of about 1,500 people.

“I went outside to see what was going on with the oil. I knew we had some.”

What Character found was an abandoned jerry can and several pieces of plastic tubing used to syphon oil from the tank.

“All that stuff was sitting there by the oil barrel so I knew that something happened.”

Character, who has been working with the church for about four decades, said she called the RCMP, who arrived about an hour later. She said she was told by police that there were a lot of similar type thefts going on in the Valley area.

“He sort of had an idea who might have done it but of course he couldn’t say,” Character said.

Wind out of sail

“It blew the wind right out of my sail when I discovered what had happened,” Character said.

Gail Smith, deputy mayor of Middleton, said the church has existed for more than a century, adding that the theft is “pretty devastating” for a small congregation.

Smith said people will donate but “there is not a lot of money floating around,” to have oil that would probably take the church though a good part of the winter stolen.

“We understand that,” Smith said of people stealing because they are in desperate straits.

“This is kind of a desperate situation for them (church) right now,” Smith said.

Character, raised in the state of Georgia, isn’t buying any poor excuse.

“Folks have been stealing from Day 1 and we know they don’t care,” Character said. “It’s not in them to care because Nova Scotia certainly takes care of everybody in Nova Scotia financially. That’s just a lie that they are feeling all that poor and all that stuff, they are no poorer than anybody else.”

Character says there was probably about 500 to 600 litres of oil stolen, the replacement cost of which would be well over $800.

“I am going to use a good Southern word, it’s lowdown,” Character said of the theft. “It’s a terrible thing to steal from somebody to serve your purpose when you are putting an expense on us. Our mission house, which is two doors down from the church, it was targeted in late August and early September. Twice, somebody broke in there and just ransacked the house, looking for money or looking for whatever. It almost made me sick to go in there and to see that. It took me three weeks to clean that house up because some thief broke in through the back door and had the nerve to take a shower and go to bed and everything at the mission house.”

The mission house is used by the Have Christ Will Travel missionaries when they come to Nova Scotia to help Character out.

Every other Sunday

The church holds services on the second and fourth Sundays of each month and about 10 congregants usually show up. Special anniversary services and Christmas and Easter gatherings attract much larger groups but Character maintains the church is “very local.”

The theft could not break the spirit of the small congregation Sunday.

“We had a great time singing Christmas carols and all the good stuff that we do,” Character said.

“We came to church and gave our tithes and offerings yesterday like we usually do. That’s what we’ve been buying the oil with and I guess that’s what we’ll keep on doing. We haven’t thought about it in any other way, really.”

The church is usually heated for the two services a month and a lower level of heat is maintained throughout the winter months to prevent pipes from freezing.

Character and the church were awaiting a call from Merit Heating Services on Monday to assess any possible damages before planning next steps.

Character said people are more than welcome to donate to the church but the group is not doing any additional fundraising.

“The Lord provides,” Character said. “We really have faith in him and he provides for us. We are not in debt to anyone. We’re good.”

Character said the Middleton area seems to be a target of thieves.

“Another church that I know of has been targeted and stolen from. This is terrible here in the Valley right now. All of us are putting on lights and installing cameras and doing all kinds of stuff to our properties. But the police also told me that when you do get them (accused thieves) in front of a judge, that’s a whole other story again. They put one of the thieves in jail for two days so we’re not looking for too much to happen to them, either.”