A set of original bibles stolen from Christ Church National Historic Site last month have now been returned.
The artifacts were left at Joshua Lemmens house last Thursday at about 2 a.m. After hearing a loud knock, he opened the door to find an old leather satchel filled with the bibles sitting on his doorstep.
“When I found out about this a month ago, I put the word out to some marginalized people in the community,” said Lemmens, who is part of the ministerial team at Northwest Harvest Church and the vice-president of Trails Crossing Friendship Centre.
“Basically I said to them all ‘when you’re stealing bibles and religious artifacts, that’s bad Karma and it’s going to come back to you.’ Somebody felt obliged to return them.”
Lemmens returned the bibles to Christ Church on Thursday morning.
“The sense of relief in walking in and seeing them sitting there on the desk was phenomenal,” said site supervisor Darla Dickenson, noting that the bibles had very minimal damage.
“To have such an essential piece of history returned means a lot to not just Christ Church as a national historic site, but to the community of Hope. There’s a thankfulness throughout the whole community that they’ve been returned.”