Imagine leaving home and moving to another country where the culture, language and customs are different from your own.

That’s just what David and Cindy Cox did when they answered the call to be missionaries in Brazil.

The Coxes were in Seymour last month to speak to Seymour Middle School students and share some of their knowledge about Brazil. It also was a homecoming for Cindy, a Seymour High School alumnus.

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“Cindy’s roots come back to Seymour,” said Chris Kleber, a history teacher at the middle school. “We were very fortunate to have them here from Brazil to speak to the students, and Cindy happens to be my sister-in-law.”

David and Cindy began their ministry together in 1983 as interns at Midlothian Bible Church in Texas. After David graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1986, he joined the church’s staff as an associate pastor before he and Cindy moved into full-time service in Brazil in 1990.

The Coxes have lived in Brazil for about 28 years and are missionaries serving with Word of Life Fellowship in the city of São Paulo. The couple have four grown children, Timothy, Michael, Elizabeth and Jonathan.

Cindy is a registered nurse and has worked at a number of hospitals in the past, including Schneck Medical Center in Seymour. She currently teaches diverse classes at the Word of Life Seminary.

At the middle school convocation last month, David said they wanted to share a little information about Brazil but also were hoping to broaden the students’ world view a little bit.

“Our goal is to help the students learn to appreciate some differences in other countries and differences in us as people,” David said. “Culturally, Brazil has hundreds of differences than the United States, but we want to share just a few.”

Difference in customs

Two eighth-grade volunteers, Zac DuBois and Lexi Morris, were called up from the audience to help demonstrate how the people of Brazil greet one another.

In the United States, the normal greeting is a handshake, but in most of Brazil when men greet women and women greet women, there are two air kisses. The greeting can vary within Brazil from place to place.

“Men do not kiss each other but greet with an open hug,” David said. “We use one hand to shake hands and the other to grab the man by the shoulder for abraco, which means hug.”

DuBois and Morris both have Kleber as a history teacher, and neither have ever been to Brazil, they said.

“I would like to visit Brazil someday because I think it would be interesting,” DuBois said. “I think it would be pretty cool to see Rio, but the language would be extremely hard.”

DuBois said he thought it would be difficult to adapt to living in another country because it’s such a different culture compared to ours, but it definitely would be possible.

“I want to see the Amazon River one day,” Morris said. “I feel like adjusting to the language barrier would be the hardest part of moving to another country.”

Another difference in Brazil is that people usually stand pretty close together to talk, and the distance of personal space is closer, David said.

“I am American, so sometimes, when I’m talking to a friend in Brazil, my American roots come in,” David said. “If I stand a little farther away to talk, then the person keeps stepping closer.”

Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world with a population of about 200 million. The main language spoken there is Portuguese. Brazil also is home to the Amazon River, which is the largest river but not the longest. The Nile River is the longest, Cindy said.

“Something that was a little hard for me to learn is that you must not put toilet paper in the toilet,” Cindy said. “Instead, you place it in the wastebasket, and there are signs posted in English at airports, hospitals and hotels.”

David said people in Brazil use electric shower heads and will sometimes take showers with flip-flops on to reduce the risk of shock.

“If you’re barefooted, this is electric, and usually, you’re fine,” David said. “You aren’t going to get electrocuted by the shower, but sometimes, you feel a tiny little shock when you turn on the water.”

A diverse country

Brazil is very diverse because it’s so huge and many different nationalities of people live there.

“A large number of the population is Japanese,” David said. “The largest number of Japanese that live outside of Japan live in Brazil.”

Cindy said Brazil is diverse in wealth with the extreme rich and extreme poor. One example is an apartment building that has a swimming pool for each apartment on every floor and a tennis court, then next to that is a slum with only a wall separating them.

“Brazil is also very diverse in geographical features, such as in the north we have the Amazon River, a huge river basin and the rain forest,” David said. “But in the southeast, we have very dry conditions and sometimes droughts that last for many months or years at a time.”

David displayed a photo of a mountain called Black Needles, which he climbed a few years ago with his son and a few others.

He said it was quite an experience.

“Brazil also has some very beautiful waterfalls, like Igauzu Falls,” David said. “We have Niagara Falls in the United States, but this is much, much larger than Niagara, and it’s amazing.”

Cindy said there are many types of produce in Brazil, including coffee, sugarcane and the fruit of the jabuticaba, which are berries that grow off of the trunk of the tree. The tree also is known as the Brazilian grape tree, which makes jelly and is sort of bittersweet.

“Then you have the jackfruit, jaca in Portuguese, which is the world’s largest edible fruit,” David said.

The jaca fruit is not native to Brazil but is one of Brazil’s most characteristic fruits and has been known to reach a length of up to 3 feet and weighing 80 pounds or more, he said.

“The fruits either hang from the branches of the tree or can sprout directly from the trunk of the tree,” Cindy said. “If one of those jacas fall on your head, it could kill you.”

Three major cities

The three main cities in Brazil are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia.

“São Paulo’s population is about 12 million, but if you include the metropolitan population, it’s approximately 23 million,” David said. “To compare that to Indiana, the whole state has 6.7 million people total with all the cities in Indiana together.”

Cindy said another city most people have heard of is Rio de Janeiro, which is more famous as a tourist destination.

“Rio is home to one of the seven modern wonders of the world, the Christ statue,” Cindy said. “Rio also has Sugarloaf Mountain and gorgeous beaches. It’s a very lovely city that people love to visit.”

Brasilia is the federal capital of Brazil, located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country’s center-western region. It has bold architecture and beautiful structures, such as cathedrals, soccer stadiums and governmental buildings, David said.

Interesting animals

Brazil has the largest rodent in the world, the capybara, Cindy said.

“We think of rodents like a rat, but this looks almost like a baby hippo with fur,” she said.

Capybaras stands about 2 feet tall at their shoulders and sometimes are referred to as giant guinea pigs. Fully grown, they may weigh as much 140 pounds.

David said there are piranhas found in the Amazon about 2,000 miles north of where he and Cindy live. The piranhas aren’t very large, but they are vicious and travel in groups or schools, and they can do quite a bit of damage.

“In Brazil, we have leaf cutter ants by the thousands, and they can do quite a number on bushes and trees,” David said. “We can go to bed one night and wake up the next morning and the jasmine bush outside of our house could be totally stripped of the leaves.”

David said the ants are busy all night chopping and chewing leaves, and there are so many of them, they leave a path where they go back and forth, taking leaves from the bushes and trees to the hole in the ground where they live.

Differences are a blessing

Differences are fascinating, interesting and opportunities to learn, Cindy said.

“There are differences in ways of living, in customs and in climates, and that is a blessing from our Lord,” she said.

Cindy said God has created us all in different ways not to make fun of one another’s differences but to appreciate the vast variety that we have in this world and each other.

“Sometimes, we get a little threatened when there are differences, and Brazil has lots of differences,” Cindy said. “It’s a different culture there, but you guys have a different culture here, and you’re all different from each other.”

David said if people never get out of Seymour, their worldview is not going to be very broad.

“The more that you travel, the more you get to see different cultures, different people and different ways of doing things will help us learn to appreciate others more and value what we have,” David said.

David closed the convocation with this quote from Saint Augustine: “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

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For information about David and Cindy Cox and their ministry, email [email protected] or visit mbcchurch.com/cox.

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David and Cindy Cox’s oldest son, Timothy, a naval officer, and daughter-in-law Ingrid, enjoy their new home near Washington, D.C.

Second son, Michael, a medical physicist, and daughter-in-law Vanessa, with their children, Sophia, 3, and Thomas, 1, just started a new job with the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Daughter, Elizabeth, a physical therapist, works at a major hospital complex in Dayton, Ohio, and is preparing to minister to an unreached people group.

Third and youngest son, Jonathan, a soon-to-graduate mechanical engineer, and daughter-in-law, Laura, will move to Seymour next summer to work for Cummins Inc.

Cindy, a nurse homemaker and Seymour High School graduate, teaches and disciples students and staff at Word of Life Fellowship in Atibaia, Brazil.

David was born in New Jersey but grew up in Brazil from the age of 5.

David and Cindy met at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.

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