No church today!

I did the usual rushing around to get ready for church this morning and made it to the bus stop just in time. On bus, my friends and I were chatting, and then we noticed some flashing lights ahead near the church building. As we got closer and closer, we realized the flashing lights (three fire trucks) were AT the church building! There wasn't a fire, though. What we found was this:



It's hard to see from the picture, but the steeple had blown over in the wind and was now sitting very precariously on those bricks.

Originally I guess the Bishopric was told that we could have church anyway as long as we only had meetings in an area that wouldn't cave in if the steeple fell down, so they set up the gym (located in the back of the building) for Sacrament Meeting and canceled all the other meetings.


But THEN, about 10 minutes before church started, the fire warden showed up and said we all needed to evacuate.

I've had church canceled because of snow or ice storms plenty of times. Another time it was canceled because of a tornado warning, and once we only had Sacrament Meeting because we needed to spend the rest of the time sandbagging a river. Once when I was a teenager, we had to evacuate our building because a little kid sprayed mace into the air conditioning vents and gassed everyone. But this was the first time I've had church canceled because the steeple might fall over and kill us.