Brazil experience shapes former missionaries’ outreach to refugees and immigrants.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
OKLAHOMA CITY — In the late 1980s, as four buddies neared graduation from Oklahoma Christian University, they talked about moving around the globe.
Their hearts told them what they needed to do: Tell the story of Jesus Christ.
God, they said, showed them where: a South American city where nearly half the population lived in poverty, many in flat-roofed slums built on the side of mountains.
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“Just somewhere along the way, when our Bible class teachers said, ‘Go out in all the world,’ we said, ‘OK,’” said Taylor Cave, one of the buddies.
Cave, David Duncan, Terry Fischer and the late Rick Sandoval persuaded their sweethearts not only to marry them — but also to learn Portuguese and raise children in a foreign land.
The couples gathered financial support from Churches of Christ, sold their belongings at garage sales and kissed their mothers goodbye. Two hundred well-wishers prayed with them as they tearfully departed Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers World Airport in 1992.
As their airplane touched the clouds, reality struck.
“We all looked around and said, ‘We’re all alone,’” Duncan said.
I first shared the above details in a front-page story in The Oklahoman in 1999. Then in my early 30s, I traveled to Vitoria, Brazil, that spring to report on the mission team.
Now in my mid-50s, I was reminded of that team when Carly Akard, director of communications for Catholic Charities in Oklahoma City, made a connection I hadn’t.
This column appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.
Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.
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