Burglars make mas in La Brea church

Pastor Sharran Ballosingh of the Southern Revival Church at Chinese Village, La Brea, believes the church was broken into sometime between 5.30pm on Sunday and 2pm on Monday.

Ballosingh said after the usual Sunday service, church members were moving back and forth between the church and Station Beach up until 5.30 pm in preparation for a day of fellowship that was held on Monday. On the way back from enjoying a day at the beach as a church family, Ballosingh noticed something was amiss.

“I saw one of the windows was open, so I told one of the members to go and close it.

When the member went to close it, he noticed a board that covered a hole in one of our walls was missing. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, so he told a brother to fix it the next day. It is when that member went on Tuesday to fix the board that they looked inside and saw what happened.” The office was turned inside out with files strewn about, boxes smashed in and, most uniquely, leftover paint from Christmas redecorating was poured all over the desktop computer.

“It looked as if they were really angry, perhaps because they didn’t find the kind of money they were looking for.” A set of keys were also found on the ground outside the office door, but the keys were not church keys. “People are saying sometimes one key works on more than one lock, so they probably tried to break in that way at first.” Only $600 in petty cash was stolen. The filing cabinets, however, were smashed in and a laptop, speakers, and cameras, together valued approximately $17,500, were stolen.

The size of the haul, she said, indicated that it most likely was the work of more than one person.

Ballosingh said her congregation, which is comprised of about 100 people, has been in the community for 27 years. It was founded by her husband, Mark Ballosingh, who left her in charge of the church ten years ago in order to set up a second branch in another community.

“We are very concerned, because this is the third time we’ve been robbed.

The first time, a man in a mask pushed our secretary around and broke her glasses. She was very traumatised. The church has a lot of families and we have programmes to help people in the community, so it is very disappointing that this would happen to us.” Asked if the incident would affect the running of the church, Ballosingh said it would affect it in practical ways as the laptop and cameras were used heavily in their services and the weekly programmes, but she has not lost hope. “If I let this affect the running of the church, the people will get fearful.

We are concerned but if I show fear and close down services it will affect the church and the families. It would take some time before we can start putting things back in place, but we will continue to do what we have to do because that is the work of the church.” Ballosingh was set to hold a meeting yesterday afternoon to prepare for a crusade the church would be hosting in the community next week.

La Brea police are investigating.