Funny Furlough Moment
Shane Latham, Brazil
Recently, I was in the United States on furlough and running errands in Ankeny, Iowa. I was taking some books on CD to the post office to be mailed to New Jersey when I accidentally walked into the bank building next to the post office. I realized I was in the wrong building, so I retreated to the street and proceeded to the United States Post Office building next door. After mailing my package, I got in my car to drive away. But as I pulled out of the post office parking lot, sirens went off and four police cars stopped all traffic on the busy street and pulled me over.
The loudspeaker from the police car told me to lift my hands and back slowly away from the vehicle. After my hands were cuffed behind my back, my rights were read to me, and I was placed in the claustrophobic back seat of a police car for about fifteen minutes as they searched my car.
I tried to explain that I am a missionary in Brazil, which accounts for why my car is registered in Texas and my driver’s license is from Montana and me being in Iowa and mailing stuff to New Jersey. But the police did not understand this. They saw me walk in and out of the bank, and I perfectly met the physical description of a guy who had just staked out the bank for a possible robbery.
The officers wanted to know what the metal straw was in my car. It is used for the south Brazilian tea chimarrão. After many attempts to explain what a missionary does and why I was traveling around America, they asked unbelievingly, “So where do you speak next?”
“At Pastor Todd Still’s church here in Ankeny,” I said.
The man who had read me my rights said, “That’s my church!”
“I guess I’ll see you Sunday then,” I said. That’s when they removed the handcuffs.
Paul wrote that he was, “in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren” (2 Corinthians 11: 26).
To most of that I say, “Amen,” and now add, “in danger of being mistaken as a bank robber.”
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