After Nearly Two Decades in New England, Brazilians Are Using Creativity to Advance the Gospel as Missionaries in Portugal

Silvio Simões dos Santos (center) brought joy to children at an orphanage in Cambodia in 2023. He tells simple gospel stories while dressing as a clown.

Creative ministry comes easily to Silvio Simões dos Santos and Vera Lucia dos Santos, missionaries in Portugal, who use their talents in numerous ways to present the gospel—he as a clown and she as a creative artist.

The couple, who are natives of São Paulo, Brazil, opened their ministry center—called the “365 Family Project”—in Viana do Castelo, fifty miles north of Porto, on April 4, 2025. They sell high-quality, secondhand clothing; teach Brazilian jiujitsu; and offer Japanese origami paper folding classes. They also visit and provide a variety of activities at orphanages, schools, hospitals, and nursing homes in their adopted region and in several other countries.

From New England to Portugal

Simões and Santos began their pastoral ministry at Baptist churches in São Paulo and Sorocaba, Brazil, before being called to First Brazilian Baptist Church of Orlando, Florida. Then, for seven years, they were church planters of Celebration Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, before being called again, this time to Portuguese Baptist Church in Saugus, Massachusetts, where they served for more than a decade. The Boston-area congregation is recognized as the oldest Portuguese-speaking Protestant church in the United States.

After nineteen years of church ministry in New England, they miss their friends, but Santos said, “We already feel like here [in Portugal] is the place we have to be. It’s not about being comfortable, but being obedient” to God’s calling.

Simões and Santos were church planters of Celebration Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, before being called to Portuguese Baptist Church in Saugus, Massachusetts.

In June, Simões was invited to become pastor of Igreja Evangélica Baptista de Viana do Castelo  (Evangelical Baptist Church of Viana do Castelo), with the goal of revitalization. By September 7—the Sunday they baptized eight people—they had welcomed twenty-three new members and a short-term mission team of seminary students from Brazil. The church has grown to more than sixty members since Simões has been their pastor.

The church was founded in October 1962 and is affiliated with the Portuguese Baptist Convention and the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance. The couple have been making connections with some of the 4,000 students of the University of Viana do Castelo Technological Institute, and with numerous children and adults at community centers.  

They render social and spiritual encouragement when their customers and neighbors visit the store and linger to talk. “Portuguese like to talk and they are never in a rush,” commented Santos. “It is easy for them to speak for one hour, or even one hour and a half, and this is a very good opportunity we have to explain the gospel.” A man named Victor, who is 71, visited their retail store over several months before he developed a relationship with the missionary pastor, who eventually discipled his customer and then invited Victor to attend worship services.

Outside the doors of their strategically located ministry center, they give away fruit, energy bars, coffee, and gospel literature to and engage in relationship-building conversations with pilgrims who walk the Camino de Santiago, or “Way of St. James,” that passes by their door. On a recent Friday, they met and served thirty-three pilgrims from thirteen countries.

The Apostle James was a son of Zebedee and Salome, the brother of John, and one of the three disciples closest to Jesus Christ. According to historical and ecclesiastical accounts, he travelled far and wide after Christ’s resurrection, even preaching the gospel in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal).

Roman Catholicism, which is deeply engrained in Portuguese national and cultural identity, venerates “James the Greater” as the patron saint of Spain and honors James’s remains, which  they believe are interred in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, a pilgrimage site that has become one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in the Christian world, attracting many pilgrims, a million of whom are said to pass through Viana do Castelo each year.

Simões and Santos serve the pilgrims and others they meet with, as they said, “the purpose of attracting Portuguese families [to Jesus]. Through excellent service, we build healthy, gospel-centered relationships.” They approach gently and creatively those whom they meet “with the same love for Jesus” that they learned from the “very solid church in São Paulo” where they were married. The pastor and Bible teachers there “were very nice,” and the couple benefited from their self-effacing way of presenting the gospel.  

Gospel-Centered Clowning

Simões (center) and Santos started their “Clown and Arts Ministry” in the 1980 in Brazil when they saw the necessity to minister to children in hospitals and orphanages. 

Rather than preach what many will recognize as a traditional sermon, they tell simple Bible stories that attract attention, communicate the love of Jesus, and bring joy to others. That’s why, unlike virtually every Baptist pastor in the world, Simões prepares himself to communicate  Scripture by applying makeup including a bright blue oversized smile. He dons outrageously red, white, yellow, and blue clothing; a giant yellow bowtie; oversized shoes; and a stringy wig.  

They started their “Clown and Arts Ministry” in the 1980s because, he said, “We saw the necessity to work with kids in the hospital or in the orphanage. We saw that no other ministry was working with these kind of people.” While he is engaging children with Bible stories, she shapes balloons into animals and creates other crafts that entice her audiences.

He prepared for the creative-arts ministry by studying at the University of Campinas and the Baptist Theological Seminary of São Paulo. They also spoke with professional clowns to learn the details of clown makeup because, she said, “each clown has a specific makeup” style.

When asked how he transitions from having fun with children to presenting a serious-minded  gospel message, Santos pointed to the simple way Jesus told stories. One of the favorite passages Simões uses to communicate faith is found in Mark 2 and Luke 5 when Jesus was teaching in a crowded house. A paralyzed man being carried by his friends could not get in to meet Jesus, so they made an opening in the roof and lowered the man on his mat directly in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus forgave the man’s sins and commanded him to walk, which he did.  

Sometimes a church will invite Simões to speak dressed as a clown since adults enjoy that presentation as much as children do. The adults, Santos added, are reminded of their own youth.

While they are praying to receive invitations from Catholic churches in Portugal, their creative ministry has paved the way for invitations to bring the joy of the clown to Cambodia, Chile, China, India, England, Thailand, and other countries.  

In March 2021, they began “a season of prayer and preparation” to serve as missionaries in Portugal; they were inspired by training led by Sam Taylor, who is the Global Missions Mobilizer for the Baptist Churches of New England (BCNE). They applied to and were accepted by the International Mission Board, but those plans were sidelined for administrative reasons, at least for now. In the meantime, Simões and Santos are BCNE-endorsed missionary partners. BCNE is developing a partnership with European Baptists.  

“I’m delighted to see that our Brazilian churches here in the greater Boston area, and others around New England, are partnering with Silvio and Vera and trying to support and work with them,” said Taylor, who previously coordinated the BCNE churches in Greater Boston. “As New Englanders are going to Western Europe on short-term mission trips, on vision trips, they’re seeing the lostness. In that environment, God, the Holy Spirit, is drawing some of them to the mission field. That is a very frequent way that, in today's world, missionaries are being called to the field,” he added, mentioning Simões and Santos as examples.

A Ministry of Laughter

Joe Souza, the BCNE Associate Executive Director and Boston Area Regional Coordinator, called Simões and Santos’s creative ministry “the ministry of laughter.” He said, “Both of them are very creative and they’re a great team. While visiting the couple in Portugal in September, Souza noted that their church in Viana do Castelo had experienced “explosive growth”—increasing from twenty-four to more than sixty members in about eight months.

Simões (left) and friends at the 365 Family Project store. 

On the same September trip, while visiting the 365 Family Project store, BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett heard that Simões and Santos’s volunteers offer to carry the backpacks of spiritual pilgrims across a nearby bridge. When asked to explain why they would offer to carry heavy backpacks across a bridge, Dorsett said the volunteers reply: “‘because a friend of ours carried our heavy loads for us’, and then they would share the gospel of Jesus and tell how he carried their sin loads for them.”  

Dorsett explained that the BCNE does not directly support their missionaries in Portugal from the budget because BCNE is “not an international mission organization,” but the BCNE Administrative Committee last year approved the transfer of church gifts because of the still-developing partnership with European Baptists.

As an example of financial partnership across cultures, Dorsett mentioned a small congregation in rural Vermont, New Creation Fellowship in Chelsea, that is giving a financial gift each month to Simões and Santos’s ministry. “I think that's kind of cool,” he said.

As the latest expression of the BCNE-Europe missions partnership, 162 people from several countries attended a BCNE-cosponsored Reverse Missions conference September 19-20 in Porto, Portugal. BCNE President Lierte Soares Jr. organized the conference and was a principal speaker, as was Dorsett.

For more on “reverse missions,” see the New England Baptist News Service story: “Passing the gospel back” to Europeans: understanding and practicing reverse missions and contact Soares, the pastor of two Massachusetts churches and co-director of the BCNE Multiplication Center training ministry.