MN - Beau Shroyer, Wife of Detroit Lakes missionary killed in Angola arrested in connection to his death

[Kemug]

Maybe it went like this:

She: "I just can't take this ....... place any more! I'm leaving!"
He: "No you're not, don't be so silly."
She: "Don't you tell me not to be silly! I'm sick to death of you telling me not to be silly, and I'm sick and tired of us all having to do everything you say, all the ..... time, and I'm not doing it any more! I never really wanted to come here in the first place! I'm leaving, and if you don't like it, tough! I'll be making the arrangements in the morning."
He: "Oh, suit yourself, you ..... woman. And don't forget to take the kids too, I'm certainly far too busy to cope with them."
She: "You ... you ... !"

Well, who knows? Just a bit of fiction perhaps, but who knows?

 

[airportwoman]

RSBM
And a pretty big one.

What does "RSBM" mean?

 

[Kemug]

What does "RSBM" mean?

Respectfully snipped by me.

 

[AppleTreeGreen]

I had such a weird reaction to this photograph....
The picture of all the boys is quite serene and beautiful...

But all of a sudden, Jackie looks like Shanna Gardner to me! Oh NO!!!!
View attachment 542997

These kids don’t even look like they want to take this picture. You can even see a few roll their eyes or look away from the camera. I don’t know why but for me this comes out as exploitative or like crossing a line.

JMO/JMT

 

[Elley Mae]

These kids don’t even look like they want to take this picture. You can even see a few roll their eyes or look away from the camera. I don’t know why but for me this comes out as exploitative or like crossing a line.

JMO/JMT

It’s a public place, can see ppl in background. Looks like bags of doritos and containers of juice.

Its like she just walked up and sat down for a picture.

Jmo

 

[Cryptic]

My understanding from other missionaries is that they go back for substantial stretches to do fund raisers at churches. The fund raisers pay their "salary" while in the mission country. No fund raising, no mission.

That is a common format for smaller missionary groups. Lets call that format "A". There is another comon format "B". So:

Format A: As you pointed out, missionaries are self funded The length of mission trips associated with these smaller, self funding effort is usually short. I believe most assignments are in the US.

As the effort is self funding, many type A missionaries have "day jobs" to make ends meet. A common format can be presentations to college students in the evening, and passing the hat. Then working as a waiter / waitress.

But there is another format:

Format B: Career or semi Career Missionaries sponsored by either a large church, or evangelical denomination. They receive salaries from the church / denomination. Assignments are overseas and will last years. Sponsoring organization also kicks in benefits like use of a rest house when rotating back the US for few months etc.

Format A training maybe limited (Meet Joe. Follow Joe's lead- you"ll be fine!). But, I think training with Format B could be pretty comprehensive and include Reality 101, Realistic Expectations 202, Cultural Dos and Dont's 303 and.... Intro to Portuguese. In the field mentoring could also be the norm as well.

The family's church organization seems large enough for career missionaries replete with training and mentoring. But... several aspects seem to be "amateur hour". Its hard to figure out.

 

[sasha17]

These kids don’t even look like they want to take this picture. You can even see a few roll their eyes or look away from the camera. I don’t know why but for me this comes out as exploitative or like crossing a line.

JMO/JMT

It’s a public place, can see ppl in background. Looks like bags of doritos and containers of juice.

Its like she just walked up and sat down for a picture.

Jmo

I felt this way about a lot of the photos on her Instagram. It looked like the kids were being used a props and the photos set up to use in their fundraising campaigns. JMO.

 

[Cedars]

This is a few audio/video recordings by the Shroyers about their mission, dated from this summer.

Missionaries to Angola Africa

sermons.logos.com

The first and 2nd audio are identical, a presentation of a slideshow. Unfortunately very low audio. I listened with earbuds, but it's tiresome the sound is so low. The 3rd item, a video, is also low audio, I turned it off and looked at subtitles. 4th item - video - is good audio.

At any rate, in the audio, Jackie goes into exhaustive detail about what they were doing after they'd got settled in the city, with outreach to primarily street children or others they met who weren't going to school and she felt weren't being supported by others, including other churches. She particularly talks about 'shoeshine boys' who spend all day outside a store hoping for customers.

The second part of the audio with Beau is a more detailed explanation about the rural project, that came out of a government donation of land to SIM. It wasn't what they went to Angola to do, but were taking it on. Their initial goal was to build a well because people had to walk far for water and it wasn't clean, which was causing the deaths of children. Can't see the slideshow but he introduces pictures of many named local individuals and their personal stories of how far they have to walk and how many children have died, versus some individuals who had access to clean water and have not had children die.

So, might fill in the blanks about what the family were doing with their time.

JMO

 

[Cryptic]

Maybe one of them went off the rails, did not adhere to the principles both would claim to have, causing terrific tension. .. I meant specifically, religious conflict between the husband and the wife, ...it does cause trouble all over the world!..

Though true religious tension is possible, I am leaning towards the possibility of "softer" religious tension that went off rails.

Maybe....

- Wife was raised as nominally religious. Went to Church on occasion at a moderate and sedate Methodist church- her father selected it specifically for well....., its short services.

- She then marries husband. Husband either actively attends an Evangelical church- or maybe later develops an unexpected interest in them.

- Church attendance with long services is now weekly. Wife accepts to support marriage- but simply does not have the same zeal at heart. "Recommendations" by husband to attend long Wednesday night Bible studies are accepted with alot of reluctance-. Wife quickly starts looking for excuses not to attend when ever possible.

- Tensions increase when the husband starts joining special groups at the church- requiring still more time commitments. Wife is not hostile- just not interested and getting tired and frustrated.

- Husband then announces that he is "volunteering" the family as missionaries in remote Angola. In marrying, wife simply did not buy into missionary activity of any kind to anywhere- let alone Angola. She, however, "agrees" to join husband to salvage a teetering marriage.

- Wife then arrives in Angola with alot of stress and with a form of a religion that she never truly accepted. Even worse, the family is poorly prepared for reality in Angola. Tensions then boil over?

 

[Herat]

Hadn't they been going to Anglola for 3 years? It doesn't really sound like it was really working out for the family.

I wonder if she wanted a divorce and he denied her and then threatened to keep the children.

Maybe she thought this was the only way to save the children from her husband's mission and control over their lives.

 

[cujenn81]

Holy smokes, reading the interview with the wife in the article linked above, she sounds extremely enthusiastic and supportive of the sudden move the family made to do their mission, which makes it all the more surprising that she’s been accused of his murder. I am assuming the move was more his idea, since he worked as a pastor in the US before the family moved to Angola.

Her instagram makes it look like the family was thriving there (I don’t know if it is strange or not, but most of her posts feature her and the kids, not so much her husband):

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

I don’t know a thing about the legal system over there, but I hope there is some solid evidence backing up the mother’s arrest because it’s left five American kids/teens alone to fend for themselves on a not-completely-protected piece of property which the mother and late father described (in the article shared above) as being constantly under siege by desperate people looking to steal food from the grounds or trying to break into the family’s home.

I also wonder if there was any local animosity towards the family, given that the apparently-large property they lived and worked on was given to them by the Angolan government. Or if local folks were displeased/discomfited by the family’s insistence on treating Angola’s “street kids” with kindness, generosity, and respect (see Instagram for examples). I am by no means uncritical of missionary work in general, but insofar as I can see, the family’s efforts to feed and encourage a sense of self-worth in these “throw-away” kids seem pretty benign/not particularly coercive.

IME, 99 times out of 100, people who write these sorts of lengthy, contrived narratives on social media are doing just that—creating a narrative—to make it seem it like they have the perfect life when it’s anything but. Happy people don’t need to prove they are happy. They just are happy. Confidence is silent and insecurity is loud. And all that jazz.

 

[sunspun]

The picture of the mother w/all their children in the airport looks like an entirely different person from the woman in the pic in Angola where she's sitting w/a group of local boys.

 

[cujenn81]

I found the SM posts very saccharine, glossy. They reminded me of Jennifer Hart and her wife's post. She was the woman who drove her family off a cliff. She posted about her lovely family, and photographed them being lovely. In reality, they were starving and none of it was true.
I also read between the lines on the articles.
Being helpless at a German airport—and mentioning they had no way to communicate with Germans—seems like a step in the direction of "this family is going to find it very difficult in a foreign environment". Unresourceful. FWIW most Germans speak English. It's a required subject in school, and if your plane gets delayed, you flag down an airline employee or go to the ticket counter to get it handled. No need for German. Par for the course.
IMO DV or an affair. Garden variety except for the Angola angle.
It could have been a gun, a knife, or, I'm thinking, a machete. They are more common elsewhere than in the US.

BBM
Exactly!!! My first thought as well.

 

[RickshawFan]

If photoshooting photos is what's been going on...perhaps no missionary work was happening. What were they really doing over there? Did the wife want the fake life to stop and to return home , while he wanted to continue things as usual? Very strange case indeed

It is indeed hard to pin down whether any missionary work was happening. I think you would expect committed programming. No signs of it. Just a few photos, even, with local kids, and at least one of these, to me, looks to be doctored by adding kids to it.

 

[RickshawFan]

Maybe it went like this:

She: "I just can't take this ....... place any more! I'm leaving!"
He: "No you're not, don't be so silly."
She: "Don't you tell me not to be silly! I'm sick to death of you telling me not to be silly, and I'm sick and tired of us all having to do everything you say, all the ..... time, and I'm not doing it any more! I never really wanted to come here in the first place! I'm leaving, and if you don't like it, tough! I'll be making the arrangements in the morning."
He: "Oh, suit yourself, you ..... woman. And don't forget to take the kids too, I'm certainly far too busy to cope with them."
She: "You ... you ... !"

Well, who knows? Just a bit of fiction perhaps, but who knows?

IMO there must have been a much more savage explanation, since this could result in life imprisonment in Angola.

 

[RickshawFan]

These kids don’t even look like they want to take this picture. You can even see a few roll their eyes or look away from the camera. I don’t know why but for me this comes out as exploitative or like crossing a line.

JMO/JMT

The photo looks like a one off, too, not some kind of programmed event. It's like someone went to the mall, paid for junk food at a little shop, and invited the boys over, so she could take a photo. And, IMO some of those boys have been pasted in.
I am very cynical.

 

[Panniniclaus]

The photo looks like a one off, too, not some kind of programmed event. It's like someone went to the mall, paid for junk food at a little shop, and invited the boys over, so she could take a photo. And, IMO some of those boys have been pasted in.
I am very cynical.

I thought I was cynical. I doubt these kids have had many photos taken in their lives...

It could have been a chance for a photo op, I'll give you that.

 

[RickshawFan]

I thought I was cynical. I doubt these kids have had many photos taken in their lives...

It could have been a chance for a photo op, I'll give you that.

I doubt the boys have any way to see a photo after it's taken.
Yep, the purpose of the photo is for FB...IMO

 

[starlightstarbright]

The picture of the mother w/all their children in the airport looks like an entirely different person from the woman in the pic in Angola where she's sitting w/a group of local boys.

I think that’s because that woman is Ziggy, the Namibian woman they found to help them who speaks German. Jackie is the one taking the photo, I believe, so not in it.

 

[Kemug]

If guns are very limited there, would Americans moving there have to declare their weapons then? My only experience was moving to Hawaii with the Army and while they have more restrictive rules there it's still part of the US. We hand carried ammunition on the plane (checked under the plane, but declared and inspected pre-flight) and we shipped the guns with our house hold goods (also declared, serial numbers noted, listed on high value sheets with the moving company). When the weapons arrived with our household goods we had to register the with the military base AND the local police department. So this is why I ask if they are bringing even a single gun in to the country that is very restrictive, then I feel like it was likely documented including serial number and there was some type of approval process??

So is it more likely that the weapon, if there was one, was not a gun?