Oi from Brazil

(written a few days ago--a more current update is forthcoming)

I write looking out over Sãn José dos Complos! The Denhams have a set of beautiful windows which provide a wonderful view of the city.

The view out my window

I arrived at the airport (as most people do) yesterday afternoon. I looked for Ellie, but instead I found a gentleman holding a sign with my name on it. I spent the next few minutes trying to recall the little Portuguese I had learned, finding out if roaming service would cost me an arm and a leg, and texting Rick to make sure all was kosher with this new gentleman who didn’t seem too familiar with the name Rick Denham. Oh, and I also made a valiant attempt to remain polite while I checked that I wasn’t being abducted. 

All was well, as it turned out, and I was soon meeting the three lively Denham children. After about five minutes, the youngest began pulling me around and asking me to come see her room (the camaraderie continued this morning when she knocked on my door: “are you ready yet?”). Their home is absolutely lovely. Rick designed it himself, and they spent a couple years building it. As I found out that evening, it is a real live museum housing a map from the 1500’s, vases several thousand years old, a Russian icon hidden from the Soviets during the Cold War, pieces from the Berlin Wall, gold milestone records from Rick’s days in the music industry—DC Talk, Third Day, and others, blue china from a shipwreck still with the remnants of barnacles, a stone engraving done in the Valley of the Kings by their descendants, ironwood jars from Africa—it’s a wonderland, and all very tastefully orchestrated to look and feel like a home. Oh, and I think there were a billion candles.

Looking out over the valley below.

Shortly after I arrived, Kimberly and I and the children left to run an errand in the city. While we were out, she received an invitation to a friend’s house for café de tarde. Except afternoon tea turned into an evening affair. Compared to Washington summers, the skies darken quickly here. On the way, we stopped at a panadería to buy some bread, meat, cheese, and a few other things, including mini churros.

When we arrived, I was informed that the correct way to enter a Brazilian home was with the comment licença—a way of asking permission. Our host had made a cake, and she wanted to invite friends over to try it. The next several hours were filled with laughter, a table of Brazilian food (pão de queiju, chocolate and vanilla sheet cake, café con leche, and our purchases from the panadería), halting conversation as I attempted to learn Portuguese and not make a nuisance of myself, and a Youtube of a Brazilian who tried to order French fries at a McDonalds drive-thru and ended up holding two mocha frappes. Our hosts were warm and cheerful—the wife was delighted to learn that hers was the first Brazilian home I had entered since my arrival.  She and her family were Christians from the church that the Denhams attend, and her husband had traveled to Seattle several times.

We returned home around eight, and ate dinner while Rick regaled me with stories: the way Fiel has grown and developed over the years, how he worked to transition the ministry to transition it into a new era and, more recently, his work with 9Marks; how his father bought land here, then subdivided and sold it to support the ministry, how his boyhood home was modeled after a picture his dad found and turned out to be nine years in the making, how he and Kimberly dreamed of building their own home off a picture in the States, but his dad became ill and they moved out here. They sold property from a cattle ranch (land is the primary investment here), and eventually bought the lot on which they now live—flanked by the hills of São José dos Complos, and looking out over the skyline of red-roofed houses and grey office buildings.

This morning, after being introduced to people at the office, I sat in on a meeting between the marketing and finance department, Rick, and Carl (an intern from Capitol Hill). Carl has been quantifying the sales and profits from Fiel’s ebook sales over the past couple of years. It was incredible to see the data from different authors—John Calvin is the top author, with his Romans commentary as Fiel's most-read book and his commentaries as their bestsellers.

R.C. Sproul holds second place, with a huge increase over the past two years. The Portuguese Ligonier page has 40,000 followers now, and a growing presence in the country. Next up in authors are John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, Paul Washer, and Mark Dever. Fiel sells ebooks in eleven different countries, and print books in six. Interestingly, after Brazil and the United States, Japan is the fastest growing market for Portuguese books (though it’s not a close margin).

In the front lobby of Fiel

This afternoon included lunching at a small café along the main road, trying Guaranó--a soda served over ice and orange--catching up with Tiago on his family, familiarizing myself with the three websites and Facebook pages that Fiel operates, playing around with a full frame camera, discussing church membership and the 21^st century shift in church polity with Rick, hearing about a new French publisher working from Quebec who wants to learn from Fiel’s model, getting my own desk space, listening to the street noise through the open window, and learning about my coworker’s interest in comics and Senhor dos Anéis (or Lord of the Rings).

The main street we walk to lunch each afternoon

 

My first day at the office finished off with a meeting in the marketing and media department about the logistics of the Olympics outreach. How will the ten distribution zones communicate with each other? How can surplus materials be transported between zones? How can people contact a zone leader to ask questions or volunteer to help? What kind of information ought to be up on the web? How should the download cards be presented? How can the material be organized by language for ease of distribution? In short, how can the distribution be maximized? A central command station is needed, and Rick is in his element with establishing exactly this. We’re planning a trip to go check out the zones, map the routes, and envision the format. Rick plans for some materials to be handed out with other things—for instance, a bus schedule, to increase interest and be helpful to those attending the games.

From the office we drove to a friend’s birthday dinner, where I met a host of smiling people, made friends with a chubby little baby named Natali, and received yet another invitation to come and live with a Brazilian family. It seems my days of quiet evenings and being able to communicate with those I live with are numbered. I gotta find a vocabulary book soon here. . .