Just your normal missionary week...

Or maybe not.

So wow. Where do I start? Sorry if parts of this don´t make sense. There´s probably a lot of background information I have to leave out but I´ll do my best to make it understandable. Just know that I am safe and okay where I am.

We got mixed up in some child (and adult) abuse being done to our investigator, Ana Bela and her children by her boyfriend, Bruno, who was also our investigator. We showed up at their house Tuesday night right after he had just walked out (he didn´t see us going to their house) after beating them all up and breaking a broom over the 7 year old daughter´s wrists among other things.  So we called the Branch president who came over with one of the members, our branch mission leader who was also a policeman before, and then they called the police. But then the word got to Bruno that we missionaries had called the police. Needless to say it was not safe for us to walk around Beja anymore with Bruno still out on the streets (they can´t throw him in jail yet as there were no witnesses, just the poor child´s broken body, if we had got there 10 minutes before we could have been witnesses but I don´t know if that would have been good or bad) and now he thinks it was us that called the police. He sent us a scary threatening text and everything. But things are okay now with Ana Bela and her daughters, they went to the hospital and now they are in hiding and only the police know where they are, and we can know how they are doing through the branch president who can phone call them. We received an emergency transfer to Olhão, a city 3 hours away which is were we are now and will be for the next week to finish out the rest of the transfer until we hear where we will be going permanently (or at least it will be our area for however long, right now we are pretty much on splits with the sisters that were already here that know the city). They have to close our area in Beja for the sisters now, which will be the second time it closed for sisters, the first time being because of the gypsies. (I don´t know the story). Sister Almeida and I are SUPER sad. She has been there for three transfers (4 months) and has definitely had hard time with this. And I LOVE Beja too, but I´m not as attached as she is. We already miss our amazing members and another girl we have been teaching that the Elders took over since Thursday is going to be baptized. We hope we can get permission to at least go to the baptism and say goodbye to our members and recent converts.

Sorry for this lame email, besides the fact that we aren´t in Beja anymore I´m doing fine. Prayer works everyone. It´s crazy how immediately too. I´ve definitely seen that this week.

I love you all but unfortunately my time is up. I´ll let you know when I know where I will be living.

Beijos,

Sister Shumway

 

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.