December 4, 2008,

Dear Friends,

As I start to write this, it is springtime. You wouldn’t know it from the temperature. We have had three winter days in a row. That meant it got below 60 at night. Then there were a couple of summer days, in which it got over 90 in the daytime. Then there were more winter days. When I was new to Brazil and the weather was like this I concluded that the very idea of seasons was meaningless here. But that was before Linnis and I started to notice the trees. She knows more of them than I do. The acacia trees, which had lost their leaves during the winter, have produced new foliage—first light green and now bright green. Soon there will be little points of yellow on those trees, the tiny blossoms. In a few weeks there will be larger yellow blossoms on another tree, the yellow ipê. Right now another type of tree is full of blossoms of a delicate lavender color. It’s a rather big tree called a jacarandá mimoso and known for its hard wood. A very different tree will have purple blossoms in the fall, but Linnis and I will be leaving Brazil at about the time that tree (the “Lenten tree”) comes into bloom. The seasons are definitely part of God’s creation here, too.

We are also aware of seasons in the produce market. The thick-skinned tangerines have gone out of season, and the really good mangoes won’t come into season until it is high summer. I keep my eyes peeled for a fruit called jabuticaba, which has a very brief season.

Following the seasons in São Paulo, Brazil, over a period of 22 years has been one of the unearned pleasures of being here as a missionary professor. It is with both pleasure and sadness that I watch this season pass before me for the last time. My next spring will be in Georgia and the Middle Atlantic region.

As seasons have come and gone, people have come and gone also. Brazilians who became dear to us have died. Fellow missionaries who became dear to us have died. Other missionaries have gone home to the United States. They tell their own stories. Former students have a way of showing up and surprising me. One is now a trustee of the Independent Presbyterian seminary (well, something like a trustee). Another is provost of a university. One is teaching in Louisville. One is teaching in Mozambique. Another has founded a graduate program in biblical studies at a Catholic university. Some are taking time to find themselves.

The person I am thinking about the most right now is a fellow professor. He was one of the first people to welcome me to Brazil 22 years ago. I decided to root for the same soccer team he roots for. It’s called “Corinthians,” and it’s still my soccer team. We were fellow professors together for a few years while he got his master’s degree. Then he received an opportunity to study for his doctorate in Europe. Some people wondered whether this was a good idea, but an opportunity is an opportunity, and he was soon gone. I next saw him two or three years later when he came back for a visit. I was in the seminary library classifying books when he walked in, and it felt like I was seeing a ghost. A few more years passed, and he was back, with his freshly earned doctorate, ready to work. It was hard to arrange for someone who had been away, and the arrangements that were made then would be even harder now (saving a job for someone doesn’t mix well with competitive hiring practices). He made valued contributions here for a year or two, but opportunity knocked and he was offered a job in Europe that anyone in his situation would have taken. He has stayed in touch, and our Brazilian institutions have benefited from being in touch with someone at the center of the European scene. But one of the best and brightest of Brazil is enriching the intellectual life of another country.

This has everything to do with what I have been here for. It’s hard to write home about my work, but it really is a mission priority: building up a first-rate graduate school in Brazil so that future seminary professors in Brazil (and the rest of Latin America) can get doctorates, good doctorates, without spending years in North America or Europe at the risk of not coming back. In the past, funds earmarked for “leadership development” have been used for doctoral studies (typically for five years) in First World countries. I’d like to say that graduate school in Brazil is cheaper, but it’s not really cheap. What I can say is that most Latin Americans with Brazilian doctorates are in their countries, making contributions.

In the meantime I will make my own fall season as colorful as I can.

In mission,

Arch Woodruff

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 276