Oklahoma
Sharing love — and Christ — with refugees
OKLAHOMA CITY — The chaos at the end of a long…
They were the foreigners
Brazil experience shapes former missionaries’ outreach to refugees and immigrants.
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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.
The Brazil mission team is pictured 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.
Catholic Charities has coordinated the resettlement of 1,800 Afghan refugees in Oklahoma. I contacted Akard while working on a story about the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City sponsoring 40 refugee families.
As a child, Akard attended the South Walker Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, where Cave served as the youth minister before leaving for Brazil.
Afghan refugee Shirkhan Nejat, left, talks to his 2-month-old son, Ansar, at the family’s Oklahoma City apartment in April 2022. In the background are Joseph Pham, left, a refugee case manager for Catholic Charities of Oklahoma City; a translator, center; and Carly Akard, director of communications for Catholic Charities.
Akard remembers gathering at the airport for the 1992 send-off.
“It was no surprise to me that Memorial Road answered our call for support,” she said, noting that Fischer — one of the former Brazil missionaries — is the congregation’s community outreach minister.
Speaking of the Vitoria team, she said, “It seems as though their experiences living in a foreign land lent them the empathy to welcome such a large number of families.”
I asked Fischer about Akard’s assessment, and he agreed with it.
Besides empathy, he said, living in Brazil afforded the team “some skills and patience to understand and assist the Afghans with the cultural adjustments they faced as well as the practical physical needs they had.”
Duncan, another of the former missionaries, preaches for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston.
Earlier this summer, I wrote about that congregation’s thriving ministry to refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Julia, right, holds her son Mark as she visits with Ukrainian refugee Oleksandra Hmyria and daughter Milana at the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston.
“I would definitely say our missionary experience made all of us sensitive to the refugees,” Duncan told me. “We know what it is like to be alone in a foreign country.”
Cave preaches for the South Walker church, where he served before spending a decade in Brazil.
Until a few years ago, that congregation was predominantly White.
Increasingly, though, it better reflects the diverse nature of its community. The change started when the church put up a sign that said, “Free English Classes.”
“It wasn’t even that big of a sign,” Cave said. “But we are in the heart of south Oklahoma City.
“There are so many Hispanic folks here, and they may have been here five to 10 years … but they’ve never really learned English,” he explained. “And so they started coming to us, and we’ve had hundreds of students representing 24 different nations.”
Spanish is similar to Portuguese, so picking up the third language did not prove too difficult for Cave.
Now, Hispanics make up roughly 35 percent to 45 percent of Sunday attendance at the 120-member church. Cave preaches in English but summarizes key points in Spanish.
“So definitely, as we see different people come here — however they got here — we have some empathy for them because we’ve been in their shoes.”
As with Fischer and Duncan, Cave’s missionary experience shapes his ministry approach.
“Our team that formed at Oklahoma Christian all those years ago, we were individuals that had that compassion or drive or feel for the evangelism to go to a foreign land,” Cave said. “But then when you live in that foreign land, you are the stranger. You are the foreigner.
“So you know what it’s like to walk into a store, knowing, ‘I need to buy paper clips, and I don’t know how to say paper clips in Portuguese,’” he added with a chuckle. “So definitely, as we see different people come here — however they got here — we have some empathy for them because we’ve been in their shoes.”
Deuteronomy 10:19 declares, “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”
That verse resonates with these former missionaries, except that they’d replace Egypt with Brazil.
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at [email protected].
