(CP) Beau Shroyer, a pastor and former police officer from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, who began working along with his wife Jackie, and five children as missionaries in Lubango, Angola, for SIM USA, was “killed while serving Jesus” last Friday, months after his family raised concern at an area church about ongoing security issues they’d on the mission. He was 44.
“On Friday, October 25, I received a phone call informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now along with his Savior,” Randy Fairman, president of SIM USA, said in a press release released Saturday on the previous pastor’s death.
SIM USA is an element of a longtime global missionary organization that focuses on doing missionary work in places where it’s difficult to share the Gospel.
The organization didn’t immediately have any additional updates to offer about Shroyer’s murder when contacted by The Christian Post on Tuesday but said of their statement on Saturday that Fairman was on his approach to Lubango, which is Angola’s second biggest city by population.
“Beau and Jackie Shroyer, along with their five children, were among the first missionaries to start service with SIM USA after the COVID lockdowns eased. They have brought a faithful, energetic, growing, loving aroma of Christ into our family,” Fairman said in his statement.
He continued: “From our perspective and the attitude of Jackie and the children, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to provide us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith. I even have not yet spoken to Jackie, and plenty of details are still unknown.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church where Beau Shroyer and his family are longtime members and had last visited only three months ago, said while the circumstances across the missionary’s death stays complicated, he confirmed he was “killed in an act of violence.”
“Yesterday, Friday, October 25, we were notified by Mark Bosscher, the Chief Personnel Officer & General Counsel of SIM-USA, that our dear brother and friend Beau Shroyer was killed in an act of violence while serving Jesus in Angola, Africa,” he told congregants Saturday.
He said the church had been involved with the pastor’s wife and she or he and the kids were protected and being cared for.
In a presentation on their missionary work in Lubango to Country Faith Church in June, Jackie Shroyer revealed that she and her family moved to Angola about three years ago. It was their first time as a family living overseas and their first time working as missionaries.
She explained that of their first yr in the town, they focused on learning Portuguese and the culture and always battled malaria and security issues.
“We battled many other sicknesses. We had lots of security issues. Mistrust with guards. We went through so many guards and we had several break-ins in our home in the course of the night while we were at home sleeping,” Jackie Shroyer said.
“On top of every thing else, attempting to work out how one can live on this culture, we had so many changes, so many difficult experiences that caused lots of fear and trauma,” she added.
Jackie Shroyer said at points it made them query what they were doing in Lubango, but they held on to their faith and continued to serve out their first term as missionaries.
“It’s really encouraging that now that we’re here, we accomplished that first term. We went to our organization headquarters and did our debriefing and all seven of us can say with certainty we cannot wait to return and proceed working,” she said. “There’s not one doubt in any seven of our minds that that is where we’re speculated to be and just so excited to get back and proceed our work.”
Beau Shroyer would later explain in the course of the presentation that the federal government of Angola had given the ministry a parcel of land next to an orange farm that was always under attack from criminals which affected the property they were attempting to develop.
At the highest of an inventory of needs for the property he presented to Country Faith Church, was the necessity to construct a fringe wall and hire more security.
The late pastor said the orange farm next to the property of the youth ministry installed an electrified, 10-foot high razor wire fence and hired about 50 guards to guard the farm day and night but they still struggled with crime in an area where hunger is taken into account an enormous problem.
“These guys are here day and night guarding against thieves who will are available in to steal the oranges to sell,” Beau Shroyer said. “It’s so bad, actually, that they’re shooting at people, and about per week before we got here [to the U.S.], … one among the thieves was shot and killed in a machete fight. So it’s desperation like Jackie was saying. They’re so hungry that they are risking their lives to get a stack of oranges.”
The most up-to-date travel advisory on Angola issued by the U.S. State Department in September, only a month after the Shroyer family returned to Angola, ranks the southern African nation at a Level 2.
“Violent crime, resembling armed robbery, assault, carjacking, and homicide, is common,” the State Department warns. “Local police lack the resources to reply effectively to serious criminal incidents.”
