Pastor Phil Johnson of Osoyoos Baptist Church says he won’t let two people determined to live a life of crime bully others. (Richard McGuire file photo)

It took just a couple of bad apples to end Osoyoos Baptist Church’s season of helping fruit pickers with a sour taste.

A 20-year-old male and 19-year-old female, both residents of Quebec, face multiple charges including possessing stolen property and fraudulent use of a credit card, said Sgt. Jason Bayda, area commander with the Osoyoos RCMP. Additional charges of mischief and uttering threats are also pending.

A tent camp behind the church is now closing for the season, but Pastor Phil Johnson said the closure was planned at this time anyway and wasn’t related to recent problems.

A series of incidents involving the Quebec couple culminated last Tuesday with the man seizing Johnson’s cellphone and attempting to destroy it when Johnson tried to call police.

The man twisted and bent the phone, pounded on it and threw it into some trees. Miraculously, the phone still operated when the man was finished with it, except that the SIM card connection was broken.

To the deeply religious pastor, the survival of the phone was a message from God.

“I was amazed,” said Johnson. “I looked at it and said this is God telling us that when we are confronting things like this in spiritual warfare, He is with us and He can protect the phone as He can also protect us.”

Johnson also emphasizes that most of the pickers who have camped behind the church during the cherry picking season are good kids. These two, and a handful of others, he says, are the exceptions, representing about one per cent of those who camp, shower and eat at the church.

Johnson said problems began at the church with a number of thefts of cellphones and other items.

It’s unclear the extent that these involved the Quebec couple, and in one case a local couple was caught on a video camera stealing a phone.

In the first month, Johnson said, the campers felt safe at the church and would often leave their cellphones charging overnight on a table outside the back door.

But then the phones started disappearing.

Osoyoos RCMP became involved with investigating the Quebec couple on July 1 when a wallet with debit cards was stolen from an employee-only area of a store on Main Street.

The thieves then used a debit card at a local business, said Sgt. Bayda, and after investigation they were identified.

Two weeks later, on July 14, the suspects were located at the church and were arrested.

Johnson said he and a couple people from the church’s leadership team then told the couple they were no longer welcome.

“This is to be a safe place,” Johnson told them. “When you do that, you make this unsafe, so you need to leave.”

The woman began crying and saying that their car was broken down and they couldn’t do anything about it on a weekend.

Johnson agreed to let them leave their car until the end of day Monday, but insisted they needed to be off the property with their stuff immediately.

When Monday came and the couple hadn’t removed the vehicle, Johnson told them he had a tow truck lined up. They could either tell the driver where to take the vehicle, or it would be impounded. But the couple got it pushed off the property in the meantime.

The next day other campers reported that the couple had returned to the church and were camped behind a hedge.

Johnson and three others decided to move the couple’s tent and gear off the property, without harming it, and they put it on the road allowance.

That night, as Johnson was heading to bed, he got three phone calls in quick succession.

One was from the police saying they’d received a report of a rock through a window at the church. But police were too busy dealing with a homicide in Willowbrook and weren’t able to get to the church immediately.

It turned out the window was on the back of a vehicle and this incident didn’t involve the Quebec couple.

But the third call was from one of the people at the church saying the Quebec couple had returned and were yelling and screaming.

When Johnson returned to the church, he was told they were hiding in the portable toilets. He resisted the temptation to back his car against the toilet to keep them locked in until police could arrive.

When the couple emerged from the toilets, they yelled at Johnson for moving their tent. He reminded them they were not allowed on the property. As the situation escalated, Johnson tried to call police and that’s when the man grabbed his phone.

Johnson recalls other incidents involving the couple, including one time when a farmer came by to pay several of the pickers he’d hired.

The Quebec man told the farmer he owed him for 15 buckets. He tried to get a European picker to back up his story, but instead the European quietly told the farmer not to trust the man.

The farmer then asked the Quebec man to describe his farm. He turned to some other Québécois in French and asked them to tell him about the farm. But the others didn’t help him and he was unsuccessful in cheating the farmer.

Johnson is philosophical about the experience with this couple and some of the other Québécois who misbehave.

He confronted one young man for using the sacrilegious curse word “tabernac.”

“It just hit me,” he said. “That spirit of anger towards God. That’s what these church swear words are.”

Johnson said he hates to paint the Québécois pickers with the same brush and he insists that others are fantastic. But behind his words, there’s a sense of frustration with the few bad apples.

Johnson notes that other pickers were willing to stand up against the mischievous couple.

“We’re not going to let evil bully people,” he said. “We can’t let two people, who are determined to live a life of crime, bully us.”

RICHARD McGUIRE

Osoyoos Times