Pastors Dan and Barbara Duncan

  Here is a story about Pastors Daniel and Barbara Duncan. It was presented in honor of them as they retired on Sunday, October 28, 2001, from Sandhills Assembly of God in Southern Pines, North Carolina. (This story was written in October 2001.) 

  Pictured are the late Pastor Dan Duncan and Pastor Barbara Duncan. Behind them are (from left) their children: Donald R. Duncan, Bradley Duncan, Danette Duncan Harrison, and Bryan Duncan.  

  Following the Great Director

 “I was born in Durango, Colorado, on September 22, 1933,” says Babara Forney Duncan, a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors who has served 16 years as a pastoral counselor. An Assembly of God minister with a specialized license in counseling and teaching, she is the wife of Pastor Daniel Duncan of Sandhills Assembly of God in Southern Pines, North Carolina. She and Pastor Dan plan to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary on June 7, 2002.

 “I was ten when we moved to Grand Junction, which is just 40 miles from Delta where Dan grew up. All the Western Colorado towns are small,” continues Barbara.

 “My folks were Pennsylvania Dutch (the Pennsylvania “Dutch,” or “Deutsche,” are actually from German ancestry). They moved from Pennsylvania to Illinois and then to Kansas. My mother, Anna Bursk, married my father, Charlie Forney. Martin Kenny says there are still a lot of Forneys up in Pennsylvania.”

 Barbara’s parents met in Garden City, Kansas, where her mother lived, and moved to mountainous Ridgeway, Colorado. They soon moved to Durango where Barbara’s father worked as a railroad man.

 “Dad also sold insurance for a while and once worked during the Depression years for the WPA, filling up prairie dog holes on a golf course.” Her parents “received Christ” when a neighbor asked if she could have her pastor pray for Barbara when she was under two years old and sick with blood poisoning, she says. 

 “I was miraculously healed. Our family saw a lot of miracles,” says Barbara. “We attended a Foursquare church. I’m the oldest daughter, and I have an older brother. There were six children. I have three sisters and two brothers. After my folks came to the Lord, we never missed a church service.”

 “I was born in Austin, Colorado,” says Pastor Daniel Ray Duncan Pastor, who celebrated 50 years of ministry in 2001, “way out in the country on March 24, 1932. My family moved to Delta when I was two or three. There are about 5,000 people in Delta now.”

 Dan’s mother, Ella Lee Bradshaw Duncan, who passed on July 9, 2001, was, before her death, the last living charter member of Delta Assembly of God in Delta, Colorado. Dan was carried to the church as a baby, and he slept under the pews. The Delta church celebrated its 75th anniversary on September 9, 2001.

 “We didn’t have a lot of other activities except church,” Dan remembers. “That was the excitement of the times—revivals and fellowship. Our youth group was always doing something. In the winter, we’d go ice-skating. The whole group would go. If the church door was open and they were having service, we were there. The only excuse for not being there was to die,” he says, laughing.

 “My dad, Ervin E. Duncan, was a farmer when I was growing up. Then we moved to town, and he took different jobs. He worked for the city of Delta water department. Then he worked in a sugar beet factory and became a night marshal for the city. He was the long arm of the law and once ran for city mayor. And he was a deacon for as far back as I can remember. I have one older brother and three sisters. I’m in the middle.

 “My grandfather and his family moved from Mannington, West Virginia, to Colorado and then to Idaho. They looked around and went back to Delta,” says Dan, who relates that his Aunt Esther, who is the last living member of his father’s generation, has a weath of information about his family. “My grandfather was, apparently, quite a wealthy man. There were 14 kids in my grandfather’s family—nine boys and five girls. My father was near the last of the boys.

 “They were all singers and musicians, and they’d go out in the fields. They had to raise their own crops. My Aunt Esther said you could hear those boys singing harmony as they just walked along the road. Right out there in the field, they’d be singing and rejoicing.

 “And lots of them had a big sense of humor,” adds Barbara.

 “My dad was born in 1902,” says Dan. “They got out to Colorado in about 1910. They moved in wagons. My grandpa’s wealth was inherited. He was a boxer and a fighter for a while. The reason he quit boxing was that they did a test punch before one boxing match. Grandpa tested out with a 1500-pound hit, but the other guy tested out with a 1700-pound hit. Grandpa decided to quit—that was the wiser and smarter part of valor.”

 Dan laughs. Barbara laughs. The story sounds questionable.

 “Well, they (the old folks) have always told that. Now they wouldn’t lie or prevaricate, would they?” asks Dan, chuckling.”Grandpa was a better farmer than he was a boxer, I guess.

 “My recollection of my conversion to Christ occurred when I was about four or five years old. We had a lot of revivals back in those days,” says Dan. “There came a real change in my life in about the fourth or fifth grade. When I was in the eighth grade, I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I remember my buddy—he hadn’t been there that night, but he had heard about it because his dad was there. I was going down to Industrial Arts class, and my buddy was coming up the stairs. We met at the corner, and he stopped and looked at me, and I looked at him. This was my best friend in the world, and I said, ‘I received the Baptism last night.’ He said, ‘I heard about it.’ And he looked that look I’ll never forget. It was a look like ‘I’m hungry; I wish it had been me; I’d like to have been there, but I got to go to class!’”

 As a tenth-grader, Dan felt the call to ministry solidified. “I saw no lightning flash,” he says. “I heard no thunder booming, but there was a deep, settled peace in my spirit.”

 Dan served as student body president during his senior year at Delta High School when the school had 88 seniors. Pastor played on basketball teams that won the Western Colorado championship two years in a row. He also excelled in art and graduated in 1950.

 “One of my English teachers said she thought I had more fun in high school than anybody she’d had in any of her classes,” says Dan. “I never did get in trouble at having fun.”

 “Our lives revolved around church,” says Barbara, who graduated from Grand Junction High in 1951. She met Dan at a tent camp meeting in Grand Junction when she was eleven and he was thirteen.

 “We saw each other at regular monthly youth rallies sponsored by about eight churches,” says Dan. “In the summers, we’d go to Christian youth camps sponsored by those and a few other churches. Very little was permitted in those camps, except brief handholding.” 

 They both laugh.

 He was 17 when he used his family’s car to travel the 40 miles to Barbara’s home. Before that time, they had only seen each other at youth and camp meetings,” says Dan.

 “I don’t think we ever really dated. We just saw each other at church meetings. Our joke is that my mother held the torch for him,” says Babara. “No matter who I went with, she’d say, ‘Oh, he’s nice, but not as nice as that Dan Duncan.’”

 Barbara started playing piano at nine or ten years of age. “I just picked it up,” she says. She didn’t take piano lessons until she was in college.

 Dan’s mom gave him some piano lessons, although he was more interested in playing basketball, he says. “Mother had a friend who played Hawaiian steel guitar, and she wanted me to play, so they bought me an old steel guitar that I think was solid steel. I learned to play ‘He’s Coming Soon,’ which sounds Hawaiian. She made me play that song in front of the whole church when I was in junior high.”

 The guitar wasn’t electrified and was adapted to be a Hawaiian guitar, so Dan quit and then learned to play a regular guitar by himself. “I’d watch somebody play and pick up what I could. And we (his family) sang at camp meetings,” says Dan. “Barb thought we were conceited. But I told her we weren’t conceited, we just knew what we could do.”

 After high school graduation, Dan enrolled at Southwestern Bible School, operated by the Assemblies of God, in Waxahachie, Texas.

 “If you could spell the name of the town, they let you into the college,” says Barbara.

 Dan laughs and continues, “We didn’t write. She wouldn’t write letters.”

 “It wasn’t like we were going steady,” explains Barbara. “I did write to him, but then he wrote and said that Yvonne wrote seven letters to my one. So, I wrote back and said, ‘Tell her to write eight, because I’m not writing anymore.” She laughs.

 Dan completed one year at Southwestern before traveling to Ogden, Utah, to work as an associate pastor in the summer of 1951 at the Assembly of God Church. “I had done some preaching at ‘outstations,’ small churches within a 20 or 30-mile radius from the Bible school. My brother Oran, who is a preacher, and a friend of his were holding a revival in Ogden, and I went to help by singing in their evangelistic services and working as a pastor’s assistant. When my brother left, I stayed on at the church, but I had no paid position, so I also worked at a civil service job with the U.S. Naval Supply Depot in Clearfield, Utah, just outside of Ogden.”

 After Barbara graduated from high school in 1951, she attended one year at South Central Bible School in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She and Dan had both taken Bible courses that would lead to ministry, though neither of them was aware of what the other was doing. “When I came home for Christmas, Dan asked me to marry him.”

 “I went home to Delta and met with Barbara again at a big youth rally in Grand Junction, where she lived. Two or three days later, we got engaged. We were married on June 7, 1952, at the First Assembly of God Church in Grand Junction, Colorado.

 “I received my ‘Christian Worker’s Permit’ (the first step toward ordination with the Assembly of God Fellowship), and we lived in Ogden while waiting for an opening to serve in a church,” says Dan.

 They worked at the church in Ogden, Utah, for 11 to 12 months before moving with their 6-weeks-old baby Bryan to work at a very small church in Meeker, located in the northwest corner of Colorado.

 “When we left Ogden,” says Dan, “we were pulling a little two-wheel trailor with all of our worldly goods and driving a little old 1941 Plymouth. At night, we left Vernal, Utah, just crossing the Utah State line, when we ran into a snowstorm. And I had a couple of tires on the back—one was a gonna-blow and the other was a maypop. And snow in the mountains made for very hazardous driving. We got out in that Midwest storm and couldn’t see anything. We were going slower and slower, and all of a sudden, one of those tires blew. It was about 8:30 at night, and we had our six-weeks-old baby. I had to get stuff out to get to the tire and that with the snow just a-coming down. One car came by, and I flagged him down and asked if he’d take my wife and baby to the Assembly of God church (where I was going to be the pastor) while I changed the tire. I wouldn’t do that now for all the tea in China. Anyway, I knew she got there because the then-pastor’s son came out to help me. I had just gotten the tire changed when he came.”

 At Meeker, a mountain town with a population of about 1440 where 30 degrees below zero was common in winter, Dan pastored the Assembly of God church and worked in roofing and painting.

 “Hard work,” says Dan. 

 The church had eight people when the Duncans arrived. Five of those eight were from the same family.

 One Sunday when a rodeo was to be held in Meeker, the Duncans who had been 165 miles away at a camp meeting in Grand Junction, returned for church service.

 “One little girl came to church that day,” says Barbara.

 “They didn’t have any church on Sunday evening, and I thought they ought to have church on Sunday evening,” says Dan. “So we opened the doors and turned on the lights, and nobody came. So she’d play the piano, and I’d sit on the front row, and we’d both sing. And then we’d trade places, and I’d preach to her, and then we’d go pray, and that was the Sunday evening service.”

 “Later on we had people coming,” says Barbara.

 “We were there 13 months,” says Dan. “When I had learned all I thought I could, we became iternerant evangelists in Eastern Utah, Western Colorado, and New Mexico. We found out quickly that we were not in our calling. I wasn’t supposed to be an evangelist. (They stayed with pastors, church members, or with Colorado relatives.) We did that less than a year, and were given an assignment to a small church in the coal mining town of Dragerton, Utah.

 “Then I took a church called Dragerton Assembly of God,” says Dan. “That coal mining town’s no longer in existence. Spanish people held a service there too. We let them use our building. We were there four years. I worked at Dragerton at the Union Supply Company Store. It was the only store in town, and they served only miners. You’ve heard that song by Tennessee Ernie Ford that talks about ‘I owe my soul to the company store’? Well, that’s the way it was there.

 “If the workers got a raise, all the prices in the company store went up that same night,” says Barbara. Everybody had little books to keep track of their debts to the store. Money wasn’t exchanged. “If you gave them money, they had no idea what to do with it.” 

 “We were there for four years and had some good revivals with the church growing from one hand full of people to two hands full. But our daughter Danette was born there one beautiful Sunday morning in 1955 at Permanetti Hospital,” says Dan. 

 “There were three little towns together there,” says Barbara.

 After four years, Dan thought his time at Dragerton was over, so he asked his district to find another pastor for the church. “Finally, I figure the only way they’re going to get another pastor is for me to move. We moved to Price, Utah, about 30 miles away. I also worked for a while with the Dragerton Roofing Company in Price. We put on a lot of flat roofs. It was the hardest work I ever did.”

 We just stayed there a couple of months,” says Barbara.  

 “I enquired about a church—Quincy Valley Assembly of God—in Washington State,” says Dan, “in a small town called Quincy (wheat farming country). We were invited to present our ministry and accepted the pastorate. During our four years there we saw greater responses to our ministry, with a very good revival and growth and miracles, setting new records in attendance. I drove a school bus while there. We were there four and a half years. Our second son Don was born during that time in 1959. He was born on Halloween. We called him ‘Spook’ for a while,” laughs Pastor.

 In 1962 (when Donnie was two and a half), the Assemblies of God started a new church-planting program. “The Fellowship selected three cities, and we volunteered to move into one of the areas and build a congregation. So, with the Assemblies’ approval, we hooked up a U-Haul trailer and moved to Kinston, N.C., in 1962. Starting with just our little family, the Oliver Smith family in Kinston, and another close minister friend, Walter Wheeler and his family, we worked together on this project. Walter’s wife Genevieve kept the Wheeler and Duncan children while Barbara worked as an inspector at Kinston Shirt Factory, a factory that made children’s clothes.

 “We couldn’t believe the wages in North Carolina. The wages were nothing,” says Barbara. “We all worked at something.”

 “I painted. Walter painted. Barbara worked in the shirt factory, and Genevieve kept all our children,” says Dan. The Duncans, who often sang together as a family, had three children. The Wheelers had three children of their own, plus two small boys.

 “We lived in a great big 3-story house,” says Dan. “Because of our two families, we had Sunday school teachers for every class.”

 They rented a church building “that the Baptists had moved out of.” The church bought that property later. 

 “There was one family there who helped start the Assembly church,” says Barbara.

 “Oliver Smith worked for the Dupont Corporation and was a Sunday school superintendent for a long time for a church in Madison, Tenneesse, but he lived in Kinston,” says Dan. “They helped us find a house and told us about the empty Baptist church. He was a really nice guy. We saw a very exciting move of God as he sent new families into our church—Glad Tidings Assembly of God. In that first year, we had 125 people in the formative congregation.

 “After a year or so, in July 1963, we left the church for Walter to pastor and went to Charlotte to work with Pastor Charles Cookman at First Assembly of God,” says Dan. “I was just a helper there. We were Sunday school teachers. I worked at a floor covering company there.”

 Barbara adds that it was in Charlotte that Bryan’s piano teacher called one day and said that Bryan, who started taking music while they lived in Quincy and could “play by ear,” had done something special. The teacher said, “I just thought you’d like to know. Today, Bryan finished the 'The Unfinished Symphony.'”

 “We thought about starting a church there,” says Barbara. “Bradley was born in Charlotte. We were there three years. We decided not to start a church in Charlotte and went to High Point, N.C.”

 “There was a small church there—Calvary Assembly of God—with 24 people,” says Pastor. The church was 24 feet wide and 40 feet long with a full basement.”

 The church was small—although Dan helped build a new sanctuary on to the structure while there—, but Dan was a full-time pastor, working no secular job.

 “They offered us 25 dollars per week, at first, and we had four children,” says Barbara. “But the Lord had told us he wanted us to work full-time at the church.”

 “The parsonage was a 100-year-old house. Every room was on a different level,” says Dan. “Finally they agreed to pay us forty dollars per week with a food-pounding (food shower) every other week.”

 “Dan told them, ‘We’ll sacrifice, if you will,'” says Barbara.

 “I told them, ‘I don’t mind sacrificing as long as we’re not doing all of it,’” says Dan, speculating that “average” wages at that time and place were about 75 to 80 dollars per week.

 “They said, ‘Now if you need something, you’ll let us know, won’t you,’” Dan recalls. “And I said, ‘No. You just keep in touch with God, and he’ll tell you, because I’m going to talk to him.’ So, I never had to ask for a raise.”

 “And we had the most miraculous surprises,” says Barbara. “That was kind of like our first church. God did teach us we could trust him.”

 “At High Point, one time in particular,” says Dan, “we were out of money, just didn’t have anything, and we got a letter in the mail addressed to us from somebody in California who we’ve never seen to this day. We needed money to pay a doctor bill because Bryan had fallen and broken his arm. The money they sent was enough to pay off the bill and a little more.”

 “Almost everybody at the church, except the orginal 24 or 25, got saved while we were there,” says Barbara, “so it was really a close-knit group.”

 The group (the church grew to 150—175) grew close as they worked at adding to and expanding the existing church building during the 10 years the Duncans were in High Point. At about their eighth year at High Point, the Duncans worked with their first foster child. They had seen articles in the newspaper concerning meetings being held to discuss adopting Vietnamese children. The notices mentioned that foster parents were needed also.

 “So we decided to go to the foster parent meeting,” says Barbara. “But we decided after the meeting that because we were talking about moving, that we wouldn’t pursue foster parenting at that time. So, I threw the papers away and said, ‘Lord, if you want us to have foster children, you’re going to have to do it.’”

 “They had said it would take a few months to get a child if you signed up,” says Dan.

 The next week, the foster parenting agency called. 

 Barbara recalls: “They said, ‘We have this boy that we just think would fit into your home.’"

 “I said, ‘I didn’t even sign up.'"

 “They said, ‘You didn’t?’"

 “I said, ‘No.’"

 “Anyway,” says Barbara, “We had him within a week. They told us it took three months. His name was Jimmy Doyle, and we had him from the time he was eight, almost nine, years old.”

 “He always called himself ‘Jimmy D.,” says Dan, “because he didn’t want anybody to know his last name was Doyle. He wanted to be called ‘Duncan.’ He was with us the longest of any—from when we got him until he was 22. He’s been down to see us here.”

 Barbara says that in High Point, the church voted every year on the pastor. When that voting took place, most of the children didn’t come to church. When Jimmy learned about the vote, he decided to take action.

 “We didn’t know it, but Jimmy was on the front steps of the church, asking everbody to vote for his dad,” says Barbara.

 Dan laughs.

 “We were so humiliated,” says Barbara.

 Eventually, the Duncans parented 15 foster children, often housing several at one time. They continued foster parenting as they moved to Greensboro.

 “When we first moved to Greensboro, Bradley and Jimmy were almost the same size, and we wouldn’t tell people which one was ours,” says Pastor. “They knew we had foster children.”

 “They decided Jimmy had to be mine because he had blonde hair and always sat next to me,” says Barbara. “Our own kids were a big help with the foster children.

  "Dan had to go see the school principal quite often. And I always knew who was in trouble, because when the school would call, they would call me by that child’s last name.”

 “Ha, ha, ha,” laughs Dan, adding, “They knew me by name at the principal’s office.”

 All the Duncan’s foster children were boys.

 “One child took pills in trying to commit suicide twice,” says Barbara.

 “One time, he took an overdose of medicine and was in a comma for a week,” says Dan. “They filtered his blood with charcoal to get the poison out of his system. Every single child accepted the Lord before he left our home.”

 “I’m not ashamed of any of our kids,” says Barbara. 

 After ten years in High Point, the Duncans moved to Northside Assembly of God in Greensboro, where they spent eleven years.

 “It was a growing church,” says Dan. “We started with 25 or 30 and grew to over 350 at one time. We had a good crowd and a good strong group of people.”

 A friend called Dan from PTL (Praise the Lord) television near Charlotte and asked Dan about coming to the counseling department of PTL.

 “I have a lot of work to do here in Greensboro,” replied Dan.

 “This is a good opportunity for you here,” the friend countered.

 In 1984, Dan joined the counseling department of PTL, working mainly in the “Upper Room” where he conducted communion services and counseled by appointment. Visitors came from all over the world to PTL, which employed over 2,000 workers.

 “We had a communion service with preaching, and then we prayed for the sick,” says Dan. We had about five services a day. We worked in eight-hour shifts, five days per week. We gained experience with multi-racial people and various denominations. It was very broadening. We said that if we ever went back to church minstry, we’d like to have a church with all kinds of people.”          

 “I wasn’t doing anything,” says Barbara. “There were ten counselors. Vi Asvedo called me and asked what would I have to do to become a counselor.”

 Barbara, who took Berean courses and courses in counseling from Emerge Ministries, soon became an Assembly of God minister with a specialized license in counseling and teaching and began counseling at PTL. 

 The demise of PTL wasn’t totally surprising to the Duncans.

 “I had a dream before we went to PTL,” says Barbara. “I was worried about going there to work. I knew something was going to happen.

 “In my dream, there were people standing everywhere at PTL, and a huge flood of mud started washing everybody away, and there was nothing left.

 “Before we went to PTL, I told Dan that I didn’t know all of it, but there was going to be a terrible scandal that would destroy PTL."

 Dan said, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”    

 “After we arrived at PTL, I kept watching for it to come, and I later told Vi Asvedo about the dream," Barbra says. "I would hear about one trouble or another but think, 'No. That’s not it.' When it finally hit, I said, ‘This it it.’

 “After the scandal became known, it was a terrible time at PTL. I really think God took us there to be there during that time.”

 The Duncans continued living in the house they had built near the PTL property and continued counseling—often counseling disillusioned staff members.

 “I saw fellow staff members fired,” says Dan. “The new management would come to someone’s desk and say, ‘You have one hour to get your stuff out of you desk and get off the property.'”

  

 Dan and Barbara stayed at PTL after the scandal became public.

 “We’d move us from one duty to another. They’d close one thing down and move us to another to work,” says Dan. “We were in the middle of an inner healing workshop involving about 500 people, and they came in and dismissed all the people responsible for the workshop, and there was no one left to take the workshop but us.”

  

 “But I still think God had us there,” says Barbara. “They put us over the girls’ home (home for unwed mothers). After the final girl had her baby, they asked us to still stay in the home so it wouldn’t be totally empty. We stayed there another six months.”

 The Duncans stuck it out for about a year after the announcement of scandal.

 “Before they could lay us off,” says Dan. “I began sending resumes to various churches.” He “filled in” for a Charlotte church before Kay Beard, a founding member of Sandhills Assembly, called, asking Dan to speak at Sandhills Assembly in Southern Pine, North Carolina, in the fall of 1988. The Duncans visited and Dan spoke at the church.

  

 “They said, ‘If we need you, we’ll call you,’” says Dan, who received a call three weeks later from Kay Beard to come and “just fill in” for a Sunday. “The next time she called, she said, ‘OK, we want you to come and be our candidate for pastor.’ So, I came and preached for the third time and was voted in.”

  The Duncans moved to the Sandhills in February 1989.

 “Without a doubt, Sandhill Assembly has been a wonderful gratification as we’ve seen God work with people, building a loving and caring body of believers,” says Dan. 

 “We were seeing so many good things happening, that I knew God was at work, and I felt I could pastor for many more years, but we have felt the need of considering retiring for quite a while. These almost 14 years have been much to our benefit. We have made so many close friends and acquaintances that have enhanced our relationships. And the joy of the Lord is ever with us.

  

 “God definitely has other plans for Barbara and me. We are taking a short temporary retirement to go back to Colorado, where Barbara can help care for her mother who has just turned 93. Some ministry doors are beckoning, but we really need some R and R — rest and relaxation time. I never really planned on getting older — it just crept up on me!

  

 “We have both greatly loved the work of the ministry, and the mandate we received from God. We plan to return to Southern Pines after a time in Colorado. Our home is in Whispering Pines, and we love this area.”

 “God has really blessed us,” says Barbara. “Every place we’ve ever been, when we go back, it’s like family.”   
                  

  Comments from the Duncan Children

Danette Duncan Harrison remembers . . .

   (Danette Harrsion, Pastors Dan and Barbara Duncan’s second child, who is married to Kirk Harrison, has two daughters, Marie and Kerri Shelley. Danette remembers her foster brother Jimmy Doyle joining the Duncan family when he was eight or nine. “He currently lives in Greensboro and is married to Penny. We don’t see him often enough, but I truly believe he thinks of Mom and Dad as his parents,” Danette says. She says that she remembers Richard Spurlin, who lives in Greensboro and is married to Peggy. They have four children. And she remembers Ricky Delk who lives in Greensboro.) Danette says…

   These (listed above) are the ones I remember most because they lived with Mom and Dad the longest,” says Danette. “However, Jimmy was the only boy who lived with us for any length of time while I still lived at home. I always said that I must have been really awful because Mom and Dad never got foster GIRLS!

 Looking back now, as an adult, they probably knew I could not have shared my parents with another girl. I'm sure I would have been jealous, being the only daughter. I was born on Father's Day, and Dad named me Danette, which made the "special one.”

  

 I must say, Mom and Dad had a great influence on these boys' lives. Mom and Dad taught them not only about Christ but also about family life, responsibility, and love. I think they gave all the boys a sense of self worth from the unconditional love they gave. They did not treat them differently because they were foster kids, they truly kept them because they cared. I'm sure that it wasn't always easy, but they never gave up!

 My parents seemed to be soul mates from a young age. I remember them telling about meeting at a church youth rally. Dad talks about how beautiful Mom was and how he could not forget her. Since they lived 40 miles or so apart, they began writing letters. In an effort to get Mom to write more often, he wrote to her and told her that another girl wrote seven letters to her one. Mom replied by telling him to have the other girl write eight because she was finished.

 A note about their wedding: Dad sang to her during the wedding. I think he sang "I Love You Truly." He also pushed her down the street in a wheelbarrow instead of driving off in a car.

  

 Being a girl, I remember the emotional side of them and things they did. I like knowing that after 50 years, they are still in love. To know someone that well and still truly love them says volumes. They always treat each other with respect and were quick to say, "I'm sorry; forgive me; I love you." For me, this set the foundation of the meaning of marriage and commitment.

 Life as pastors has not always been an easy road. Parenting four children plus the 13 or so foster boys would be enough to deal with, alone. To also have the responsibility of a congregation as well was a task they learned to balance.

  

 The heartaches they have to have experienced were kept between the two of them. I'm sure there was more reward than heartache, though, or they would have given up. It has meant a great deal to me for them to be at Sandhills Assembly the last 13 years. This church has cared for them in ways I have never seen. I think the people in this church are a sample of the good things God has in store for them in heaven—a reward on earth for standing strong in their faith in God and for setting an example for everyone. I will be forever grateful for the many, many times this group of people made things easier for Mom and Dad.   ###  

Bryan Duncan remembers . . . 

   (“I have survived in Christian music as a singer, songwriter, and recording artist for over 30 years,” says Bryan.) 

 My grandparents were dedicated to the purpose of God in their lives and provided me with a foundation to be proud of and the courage to represent them well into the future.

  

 My parents have been the inspiration to me to pursue a relationship with a personal God, which has been key in keeping me from completely self-destructing in the many hard times I’ve faced. The fact that they’ve kept their marriage together has inspired me to weather the many storms of my own relationship. Their determination to stay the course has been a reassurance that it can be done.     

Bradley Duncan remembers . . . 

   (Brad and his wife Angel live in Burbank, California, where he owns a “small swimming pool business.” He says, “Angel and I have been married 12 years. Dad tied the knot himself.”)

  Bradley Duncan says: Here’s the way I understand it: (Bear in mind that I, as the youngest, have seen the least of my parent’s early years.)

 Mom and Dad met at camp in Western Colorado when they were 12 and 14 respectively. They grew up in towns about an hour apart and were childhood sweethearts off and on through high school.

 Dad followed his brother to Southwestern College of the Assembly of God, married Mom, did some evangelical work (the two of them used to sing together), and then went to work starting A/G churches in the Western U.S. They came to North Carolina in ’61, I think. I once read an article in an old copy of “The Pentecostal Evangel” with a picture of my Dad and some other people. The story was about a program for starting churches in the South. It mentioned Dad by name. He may have a copy stashed away in a drawer somewhere.

 So, anyway, they started the church in Kinston (still there, as far as I know), took some time off from pastoring and lived in Charlotte where I was born in ’63 (the only Tar Heel among the Duncan children), took the church in High Point (Calvary Assembly) in ’65 or ’66, and then went to Northside Assembly in Greensboro in ’75. That’s where they were when I left home, and I haven’t spoken to them since. (OK, the last part is a joke. We speak occasionally.)

  

 The most important things my parents gave me were a love of God and a good sense of humor. The dinner table, growing up, was really a meeting place for “one-ups” and “make me laugh” (unless, of course, you weren’t eating your peas, in which case Dad would thump your head).

 Mom’s dad, Charlie Forney, was a railroad man who worked the Denver and Rio Grand Western Railroad for 35 years or so. He would never miss an opportunity to testify of the love of Jesus, at least until he could no longer speak through the tears. He was in a railroad accident once where he was badly burned and probably shouldn’t have survived but was miraculously healed. He died 15 or so years ago. Mom’s mom still lives in Grand Junction.

  

 Dad’s dad, Ervin, had many jobs, mostly working for the city of Delta, Colorado. Ervin served as constable for a while, as he was a big man and didn’t abide much guff. (Dad is fond of telling how his dad would point to his razor strap and say, “I use that to sharpen my razor and my boys.”) Ervin and his wife Ella, who died only recently, were founding members of Delta Assembly of God.

 The foster children (Dan and Barbara Duncan’s) started with Jimmy. You may know him as JD. He was nine. I was 12. He liked to break my toys. We fought steadily until I was 16.

 We, the family—Mom, Dad, JD, Danette, and me, and a very young Marie and Kerri (Danette’s children; Marie, the older, was four years old)—drove to Colorado (from North Carolina) in Danette’s husband’s van. As you can imagine, two young children were a constant source of aggravation to two teens. Finally, on the trip home, we stopped to eat sandwiches in the truck, and Marie and/or Kerri spilled another can of soda only moments after JD predicted she would. And he and I laughed so hard that the kids started crying, and Dad made us get out. JD and I were pretty friendly from then on.

 There were other foster children—Ricky, Richard, Tim. Several came for a week or a month. One little guy just came once a month so that his foster parents could have a rest—sort of like Grandma’s house. But JD stayed until the end. The system kicks’ em loose when they turn 18. JD was the first and the last. He grew up to be a pretty decent guy.   ###

        

Donald Ray Duncan remembers . . .

    (Donald “Donnie” Duncan is married to Sherry Snouffer and they have a son Daniel Ray, who was born on August 20, 1985. They live in Greensboro, N.C.) 

 Mom and Dad were childhood sweethearts. They moved from Colorado to Utah and had two children there—Bryan and Danette. All the kids were born around holidays. Bryan missed St. Patrick’s day by one day. Danette was born on Father’s Day, so that’s where her name came from. Me? I was a spook born on Halloween. Brad came last and late in the year, four days after Christmas.

 Mom and Dad moved from Utah to Washington State, pastoring in a small town called Quincy. That’s where I came in. I've seen pictures but don't remember anything. We moved to Kinston, N.C., when I was two in 1962 or 63. The thing that I remember Mom telling me about this was that she went and told her best friend Genevieve Wheeler that Dad had resigned his church and was moving to North Carolina to take a small church. Mrs. Wheeler said that they were going with them. Genevieve told her husband, Walter, and he resigned his church in the next city, and, indeed, they moved with us.

 The three thousand-mile journey combined with us living together in a giant 3-story house in Kinston made us life-long friends, more like family than anything else. They both worked hard at the church in Kinston, Walter taking over the church when Dad felt the Lord leading him to go to Charlotte. I don't remember much. I was four when we moved to Charlotte. One thing I remember about Kinston is that we had a pecan tree right in front of the church. The branches extended over the building. I loved to climb the tree and eat the pecans. Mom tells me that I would tell people that we went to church where the nuts are.

  

 The Wheelers were an overwhelming influence on our lives. Ministry was an all-inclusive thing for both of our families. It was who we were. My earliest memories of church are of singing as a family. I stood on a chair to be as tall as Bryan and Danette.

  

 In Charlotte, Brad came along. Shortly after that, we moved to High Point on my fifth birthday. We lived in High Point for 10 years. Mom and Dad have lived by faith for years. I started learning about faith and healing in High Point.

 Maybe it was the fact that I was getting older, but time after time I learned that God is faithful. Mom and Dad always put God first, often giving when they really didn't have it. They helped people in need, even if they themselves were in need. They trusted God to meet our needs and he always did. I remember Dad being told by an IRS auditor that he could not support his family on what he had left after his giving to the church. But I don't remember having to do without.

   

 Dad started a building program in High Point. It was a giant step of faith. We had around a hundred people and were growing. We saw time and time again that God supplied just when we needed it. I remember when we had to have $1,000 on Monday to continue the building. We took special offerings and just didn't get the money. Monday morning came and Dad wasn't sure what we were going to do. He went to the mailbox and there was a check from another church with a note saying that God led them to send us $1000—just at the right time.

     

 We also trusted God as Dad had two heart attacks while we were there—the first coming as he was finishing a sermon and started having chest pains. He would later be healed of the heart problems.

    

 High Point was also the start of a new adventure in the Duncan household. Bryan left to go to college, never to come back to live. Danette got married and had Mom and Dad’s first two grandchildren.

     

 The biggest change started by Mom and Dad opening our home to a teenage boy who had been thrown out of his home by his dad. The boy, a junior in high school, lived with us until he graduated. Danny Addington was unofficially their first foster child. Danny and Bryan went to opposite high schools in the same town. Both graduated the same year.

     

 After Danette got married, Mom and Dad went down and signed up to be foster parents. Jimmy Doyle came to live with us. He was nine. He lived with us until he graduated also. Jimmy's real mother would not let us adopt him. He often used our last name. Jimmy is now married and living in Pleasant Garden.

     

 In 1975, we moved to Greensboro. The number of foster kids grew large. The ones who stayed for a long period of time are Richard Spurlin, Ricky Delk, and Terry Woods. Each stayed two or more years, finishing out high school. Mom and Dad were also an emergency home for children with no where to go. They kept children until the children could be placed. By their count, the total number reached around 19. We also had kids come over on holidays to spend the day with a family.

    

 Besides the kid factor, Mom and Dad gave all their energies to the church. They only know one way to get involved and that is totally. Mom and Dad spent many hours doing church work and I am sure that sometimes they feel like they missed some of our growing up, but I never felt that way.

     

 In high school, I was on the wrestling team. Although I had never been very good at wrestling, my senior year I made the finals of the city invitational tournament. I will never forget the pride I had after winning the championship and running to my father’s arms. That was the best hug. I am thankful that he was there to share that moment with me.

     

 In June of 1980, I married Sherry. Dad couldn't be my best man as he performed the ceremony. I remember being so nervous that I had Sherry put the ring on my right hand and argued with Dad during the ceremony that it was my left hand. We whispered, of course. Shortly after this, I believe in 1981, Dad had a bad heart attack. Mom called me—we lived a few trailers away from them—and said that Dad was having a heart attack. I called a friend who was a paramedic living in the park with us. He met me at Dad’s house, along with the rescue squad. Mom shared with us that Dad he sat up in bed, grabbed his chest, and then fell back lifeless, with his fingers drawing up. Dad said that the only thing he remembered was that he felt as though he left his body and could look down at himself. But the main thing he said was that there was a peace like he had never felt before. He told me, "If that is what dying is, there is nothing to fear."

     

 The paramedic told mom that Dad’s fingers drawing up was a sign that his heart had stopped and that the blood circulation was what pulled his fingers up. He also said that it sure was lucky that Dad’s heart started back up on its own. We know that luck had nothing to do with it. One week later Dad walked out of the hospital completely healed, with no medication needed. Once again I had seen God’s healing power up close.

    

 I like to joke with Mom and Dad, telling them that when grandkids come along, they run away from home. They moved to PTL just after we found out Sherry was expecting. They worked in the counseling department at PTL and later in the home for unwed mothers. Upon leaving PTL they took positions at Sandhills Assembly in Southern Pines. 

    

 Mom and Dad have always opened their home to help others. In Charlotte, and since moving to Southern Pines, they have allowed people to move in with them. They have given to people time and time again, never expecting anything in return. Everywhere they have been, people have loved them greatly. Leaving was always the hard part.

    

 Retirement will be no different. They have only known one speed, and that is wide open. There have been many good times, having people over after church. Playing games and telling jokes and stories are cherished memories. Everywhere they have been, people feel like they are adopted children. Mom and Dad have always been the type of people whom you can trust and depend on. Sometimes sharing them has been hard but rewarding. I have learned a lot from them—mostly, an example of how to serve and live for God. Parents are truly a gift from God, and I think I got the best.

### (This article was compiled by Barbara Alpeter and Larry Steve Crain.)