🇺🇦 Faith And Friendship: A Ukrainian-American Thanksgiving 🔌
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join nearly 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
HOUSTON — Finally, I scooped David Duncan — and with news involving his own church.
Duncan, who preaches for the 1,000-member Memorial Church of Christ in this diverse Texas metropolis, frequently claims credit for my stories.
Truthfully, my close friend, with whom I text multiple times a day, has provided me with a whole bunch of outstanding ideas over the years. That’s not to mention a truckload of suggestions I smartly ignored, but we’ll save those for another column.
However, the tip for my latest feature came not from Duncan but from a member of his congregation.
Yulia Merchant, a Russian immigrant, leads the Houston church’s ministry to Ukrainian families, which I first wrote about last year. She texted a few weeks ago to let me know about a special Thanksgiving dinner the refugees were organizing for their English-speaking brothers and sisters.
It sounded like a terrific story, especially during the holiday season.
Yulia Merchant, right, holds her son Mark as she visits with Ukrainian refugee Aleksandra Hmyria and daughter Milana at the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston in June 2023. (Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.)
But when I contacted Duncan to see if someone might pick up a reporter from the airport — at the time, I wasn’t certain I could make the trip myself — he replied, “I’m sure we could find someone. Funny thing is, I didn’t know they were having a celebration.”
So there you have it: My friend can’t claim credit for this story, even if he played a key role in launching the ministry itself.
Duncan and I both attended Oklahoma Christian University — where he now serves as vice chair of the board of trustees — in the late 1980s. My friend Steve Lackmeyer, an award-winning journalist and history author enshrined into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022, roomed with Duncan one semester, and we became acquainted.
Yulia Merchant, far left, poses with refugees wearing Ukrainian outfits at the special Thanksgiving meal at the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston. (Photo provided by Yulia Merchant)
But Duncan and I didn’t become close until 1999 when we traveled together on a mission trip to Vitoria, Brazil, where David and his wife, Barbara, had spent a decade as full-time missionaries. We bonded over late-night Cheese Nips and McDonald’s, where my new friend helped me order plain Quarter Pounders with Cheese in Portuguese. Have I mentioned that I’m a picky eater?
After we returned to Oklahoma, I wrote a front-page Sunday feature for The Oklahoman on the dream that led Duncan and three fellow Oklahoma Christian graduates to move around the globe.
The next year, I did a follow-up piece on the nightmare endured by Duncan’s former missionary colleagues as they found themselves suspects — wrongly implicated — in a murder investigation.
David and Barbara Duncan, far right, were part of a team that served as missionaries to Brazil in the 1990s. (Photo provided by David Duncan)
In the summer of 2001, Duncan and I drove to the small town of Woodward, about 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, to visit his mother, Avis, then 72 years old. She recounted surviving an April 9, 1947, twister that ravaged the western Oklahoma community and killed 104 people.
In the debris, Avis found a green ceramic squirrel — a dime-store trinket that she bought on her honeymoon the previous year — and it became a priceless keepsake that she still treasured a half-century later. I wrote about it in my weekly religion column for The Oklahoman. (Avis died at age 83 in July 2012, and my wife, Tamie, and I were honored to attend her funeral).
When I baptized my oldest son Brady, then 8 years old, on a Saturday night in September 2001, David Duncan was there. Three days later, when terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he was one of the first people I called.
I wrote four 9/11-related stories that day — although the 9/11 designator didn’t come until later — and in one piece I quoted Duncan’s words at a special prayer service.
“We have seen that Satan and his angels are alive and working,” he said. “Tonight, we are here to gain strength … to remind him and ourselves that we will not be defeated. Buildings may fall, our economy may be shaken, but we will remain faithful.”
Later, not long after I returned to Oklahoma after three years reporting on religion and politics for The Associated Press in Nashville, Tennessee, and then Dallas, Duncan left for Houston.
In 2009, I joined him and a few others on a trip to South Africa, where the Memorial congregation supports a minister training school. And I quoted Duncan in my Christian Chronicle piece on the African nation’s post-apartheid era.
David Duncan and Bobby Ross Jr. in Houston in summer 2023. (Photo by Barbara Duncan)
In 2017, after Hurricane Harvey dumped a record-breaking 52 inches of rain on Houston, I covered the massive faith-based relief effort. That included visiting the Memorial church, where Duncan preached an emotional sermon on the Sunday after the storm.
In 2021, I struggled with how to approach the first anniversary of COVID-19. I was excited about the potential for ending the pandemic that newly developed vaccinations offered, but I didn’t want to ignore the heartache and grief that so many people had endured.
“Celebrate,” Duncan urged me, and I quoted what he said. “People need hope.”
I could cite other examples — a missionary celebration in Guatemala, a family wedding in Oklahoma, a $50,000 donation after a Texas Panhandle wildfire (that was another story I discovered independently) — but you get the point.
Bottom line: I value Duncan’s insight, even if I regularly lament that he rejected his first love, the Texas Rangers, in favor of the Houston Astros. I pray that God can forgive him for that.
Seriously, Duncan isn’t just a source. He’s a dear friend. We and our wives enjoyed a vacation together on the beach in Galveston, Texas, this spring.
But my latest visit to Houston almost didn’t happen.
My daughter, Kendall, a 2021 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, is a fiber artist whose I’d Knit That page on Instagram boasts nearly 150,000 followers.
Kendall Ross, right, appears on the Paycom Center big screen as she discusses the special shirt she designed for the Oklahoma City Thunder. (Photo by David Hartman)
The same day as the Ukrainian/American Thanksgiving dinner, the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder unveiled a special shirt featuring a design by Kendall — with the tagline “Every story starts with a single thread.” I really wanted to be at the Paycom Center with the rest of my family.
But ultimately, I decided the story of the refugees’ heartfelt gesture needed to be told, and the colleagues I asked to fill in had conflicts. So, with my daughter’s blessing, I booked my flight.
I couldn’t miss an opportunity to scoop my friend.
Inside The Godbeat
Religion Unplugged earned 14 Eppy Awards in competition sponsored by Editor & Publisher magazine.
The winners were announced this week.
Congratulations to Executive Editor Clemente Lisi and the entire team!
The Final Plug
Let’s talk turkey.
I plan to eat some next week. I hope you do, too. As we celebrate Thanksgiving, Plug-in will take the week off. I hope to see you back in this same space in two weeks.
Shutterstock photo
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.