Carjacked!

To Sabbath School teachers: This story is for Sabbath, August 3.

By Andrew McChesney

A

s Beverly got out of her car at about 11:30 at night, someone pushed her back in. He pushed her across the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s seat. At the same time, someone got into the back seat and put a gun to Beverly’s neck.

“Now we’re going for a ride,” said the man in the driver’s seat.

He backed the car out of Beverly’s yard on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, and the trio rode in silence.

Then Beverly spoke up.

“Are you going to kill me?” she said.

“If you don’t see us, you won’t be killed,” the driver said.

Beverly had seen that the driver was wearing a hoodie. She didn’t look at him again.

“Do you know how long we have been following you?” the driver asked.

Beverly didn’t answer. Two and a half hours had passed since she had left the University of the Southern Caribbean, the Seventh-day Adventist institution where she worked and simultaneously was studying for a master’s degree in psychology. She had driven a university friend home, and the two had stopped to eat on the way. After dropping off her friend, she drove to her own house.

“Who was that girl you dropped off?” the driver said.

“A classmate,” Beverly said.

“We have been following you for a long time,” the driver said.

The man in the backseat pulled Beverly’s hand behind the seat and tried to twist off her wedding ring.

“Leave it,” the driver said.

The man released Beverly’s hand.

The driver asked Beverly if she had heard about a recent series of murders on the island. He said that a friend had been killed, and he planned to use Beverly’s car to get revenge.

“Can you let me out of the car?” Beverly asked.

“No, you’re going with us,” he said.

But a moment later he seemed to change his mind.

“Do you have someone we could call?” he said.

“My husband.”

“Call him and see if he will pick you up.”

Somehow, the man in the backseat had gotten hold of Beverly’s purse. He opened it, took out Beverly’s cellphone, and handed it to her.

Beverly called her husband, but no one answered.

The man in the backseat snatched back the cellphone and expressed doubt that she had called her husband. “She doesn’t even have this number saved on speed dial,” he said.

The night-time drive continued.

“I’m feeling scared,” Beverly said. “Can I play a CD?”

But when she pressed play, there was no CD in the player. She couldn’t understand why. That morning, she had listened to Christian music as she had driven to the university. She had sung along to the song, “Jesus, take the wheel.”

Now Beverly wondered if the disc might have fallen to the floor. She felt down with a hand and found a disc. “It’s here on the floor,” she said. “Let me put it in.”

A song began to play. It was not the disc that Beverly wanted. She didn’t know where this disc had come from. Someone sang, “Jehovah, I trust in You.”

The man in the back groaned.

The driver was all business. He said, “We’re going to change your license plate, and tomorrow the police will find your car.”

He wanted to let Beverly go. But Beverly didn’t want to be dropped off penniless in the dark. “I don’t have any money,” she said. “How will I get home?”

The driver told his partner to give Beverly some money.

“How much? $20?” the partner said.

“I have $1,000 in my purse in the back,” Beverly said.

That day, she had withdrawn her savings from the bank and was taking it home to make a major purchase. She was sure that the man in the backseat had found the money, and she wanted the driver to know about it.

“Give her $100,” the driver said.

Beverly received the money, the car stopped, and she was ordered out. Then she crossed the road and hailed a taxi, which took her home.

To this day, Beverly does not know why God allowed the terrible ordeal. But as she has looked back on what happened, it seems like God was trying to get her attention, saying, “Trust Me with your life.”

For one thing, the morning before the carjacking, she had sung, “Jesus, take the wheel.” But then she had spent the whole day as she had spent many other days, seeking to control all the details of her life without God’s help.

This also was the third time that she had lost a car. The first time, her car was stolen in front of her house. The second time, her car was destroyed in an accident.

It seemed more than a coincidence that, riding home in the taxi after the carjacking, a song had played on the taxi’s speakers with the words, “How many times must I pass you through the same things to show you how much I love you?”

The police never found Beverly’s car. But she is not complaining. She said the carjacking was a turning point in her life. Now she has decided to trust God in all areas of her life. “Many people whose cars are stolen are killed,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m alive. As Christians, we need to trust God in every circumstance.”

This mission story provides an inside look at life in Trinidad and at the University of the Southern Caribbean, which received part of a 2018 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering to build a university church. The university, where Beverly works today, also received part of a 2021 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering to open a center of influence to train missionaries. Thank you for your Thirteenth Sabbath Offerings that help teach people to trust God in Trinidad and around the world.