"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."
Matthew 28:18-20 KJV
It only makes since before getting into something like this to have the history behind it all.
My wife, Liz, and I have a pretty cool story of how we met. I will, at some point, try and post it on this blog. To keep a pretty detailed story short, we met, became engaged after the first 2 and a half weeks, and were married about 3 months later. It was pretty crazy, but crazy is what it takes sometimes- especially when big plans are involved. Liz and I understood from the very beginning that we needed to be in Brazil. The original plan was to migrate to Brazil shortly after getting married, but as we started looking into things, it would take us a year before making the move.
We came down to Brazil originally as NICS missionaries in 2010. The visa process for Americans to get into Brazil is as hard as it is for Brazilians to get into the US. We were not able to stay long on our first trip due to visa issues. We did not let it stop us though, and allowed the time to be used to better prepare. Once we got all the visa stuff straight, it did not take long to head back down and continue establishing the foundation for the work God would do through us in Brazil. The story of how all of that worked out was nothing short of God's amazing providence. None the less, we were not well accepted once we arrived. It took a couple of weeks for us to understand why people gave us the immediate cold shoulder, but in hindsight, it does make some since.
Liz was teaching at a Christian school in Belem and I was working with a few different missions organizations based out of the city, focusing on outreach in the interior. What a need those people have: no access to medical care, no access to education, no access to clean drinking water. OK, so here is where a lot of people will divide and take sides. The two sides? Those who say these people have lived here thousands of years and we should not interfere or interrupt their culture, way of life, etc. The other side is those who are driven to meet "needs" these people have. I am not going to argue either point. I am however going to simply say this, I have spoke with these people before in person. They told me they have gone to the government for help in three main areas: medical care, education, clean water. This, to no avail. Churches have come leaving them with Bibles proclaiming that the Word of God will meet all of your needs. They cannot read, and a short term missions trip by a church evangelism team does not establish a strong enough foundation for the purpose of their trips to sustain the people they are reaching out to. Here are the facts: The government nor the church are meeting the request of these people. The question for me then was, how? How then if the government is not willing and the church is not able (or arguably not willing as well) to meet their requested needs will those needs be met?
This is where the major transition happened. Liz and I sat down one night and prayed about what we ought to do. How we ought to meet these needs. After all, that is why we felt led here in the first place. We knew the response was going to be drastic. At that point a lot of the churches, families, and organizations that supported us through NICS had either limited or cut out their support totally. Some of the reasons were economic, others were simply the fact people do not support tough stuff they do not get warm and fuzzy feelings over. Neither Liz nor I had the physical resources to meet anyone's needs, barely our own. The response was pack up and go home or stay and trust God to provide. We simply asked and the vision laid out that night on an Excel spreadsheet and Word document.
It was March 2012. I was excited. The big plan started coming together. I could not describe to you in words or actions the excitement of such an endeavor. The idea was to create a business model that would generate the funding necessary to not only continue the outreach projects we were introduced to during our time as supported missionaries, but to take it global. This is no new idea by the way, although to speak about it in some church circles leads to some pretty distraught folks. Simply a business as missions project, slightly tweaked, that could be reproduced in almost any country in the world. In short, we would use English education to generate profits to fund outreach projects in the areas of education, healthcare, clean water and church planting. Thus, we created Global English.
As a lot of great businesses our name did not start off as originally planned. In order to start a business in Brazil as a foreigner you must first partner with a Brazilian. The search began and we found someone we decided to start the partnership with. For the sake of confidentiality we will not use names. CNBC recently released an article about the top 10 most difficult countries in the world to start a business in, Brazil made it to slot number 8 on their list. Originally, we operated under the name Elite English. We began cutting through the indescribable amount of red tape required to get going here, especially in Belem.
It did not make it easy that we wanted God to be a partner in the company. I mean a literal part of the government recognized, operating contract of the company. Divided up, 33% was named under Liz and I, 33% to a Brazilian partner, 33% to God, and 1% to an investment partner. We made it about 60 percent of the way to being a functioning entity. We had a lease on a pretty nice building located in a comfortable part of the city across the street from a park, an approved name, a foundation ready to get this thing off the ground. Then we got some pretty gauntlet news.
A friend of ours overheard a conversation our Brazilian partner was having with one of his friends. Essentially, our partner was in it for all the wrong reasons. He was overheard saying that when these Americans were finished making their investment in the company, he was going to use his government contacts to take them for all they were worth. I confronted him immediately about it. He was speechless, he knew he had been caught red-handed and there honestly was no response to be made. There was nothing left to do but trash all the work we put into it and start again.
This is where the construction of a well developed, well thought out contract comes in hand. During our time with the lawyers, we emphasized the necessity of an easy “escape route” if something like this were ever to arise. Easy it was, and before anything could have been done the company never existed.
This is hard. This is the point where you give up, but we couldn't. My time at AVA opened doors for me to meet some pretty incredible, international business men. I called a gentleman up shortly after our huge catastrophe with Elite English. I asked him if we could meet up sometime soon as I had a business idea I wanted to run by him. I am pretty certain that my approach was far from this gentleman's typical presentation he is used to. I asked him if I could take him to dinner, and we scheduled for lunch the following Saturday. I had put a business plan together. It was small and largely incomplete as starting a business here is far from predictable. I had already learned through being a part of the development of an NGO called Project Horizon that you are more than welcome to put a business plan together, but the odds of sticking to it are impossible. Anyway, the plans and projections were there and after a 2 hour lunch meeting I was certain my new friend was in. R$41,000 is what we needed. Within the week the money was there.
We went back to the lawyers, this time better equipped and informed. Our new partner had passed some contact information along to us with the details to Theobald and Vogel. These guys are great, but I hadn't planned on the expense of an accounting firm or lawyer fees this early in the game. The key to successful business is the ability to think on your feet. We pulled out the old barter system and offered our services for theirs. They agreed and we began building the new company, Global English.
Before we could even get started though, we had to have an address. The address has to be suitable for the type of operating license you are applying for. We also had to have a new business partner who was Brazilian. Our first building was gone, leaving us with no address in Brazil usable for a new business. And well, the old partner was gone, leaving us with the ability to raise the percentage of God's portion to 50%.
On a particular day, I ran into my buddy, the same guy who informed me of the conversation our original partner was having with his friend. My buddy was a night-shift manager at a hotel, a pretty solid position for a guy still working on his business degree. I trusted this guy and asked him if he would be interested in kicking off Global English. The next day, his position with the hotel was up for grabs and we were walking the streets of Belem looking for a new location. It is pretty hot here 40 miles south of the equator. We walked all day and about the time we were ready to give up, the building stood there like a holy grail in the sky. Haha, we knew that it was the one!
There turned the page to the new chapter. God had given us what we needed. A name, an address, the money, and a place to lay our head- even if it was a future classroom!
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