Following the departure of Chaplin Grant Hamilton who left to join his local team Dumbarton, we appointed 28 year old Davi dos Santos to the role. Davi is an enthusiastic guy who has made Dumfries his home after moving from Brazil.
Davi was born and spent his early childhood in Recife in the North East coast of Brazil before at five years old along with his parents moved to live as a family in Portugal. While there, although Davi can’t remember how, his Dad made a connection with Pastor Mark Smith of the River of Life church in Dumfries and two years later they moved to the town.
On arrival, Davi took part in a bible course that the church were running at the time “I don’t remember too much about it but I went to the church where I learned English and connected with Dumfries. After three years I headed back to Brazil and stayed in my home town where I went to school and then onto university to study music in the State of Pernambuco where I’m from. While at university I exchanged emails with Pastor Mark Smith and he wondered if I fancied taking a gap year to do some voluntary work for the church. They own the Kings coffee shop in town and needed help so I through about it and thought why not. So in 2010 we started the difficult process of passports and visas and I finally arrived in 2012 – the plan was to stay for a year but I ended up staying and got more involved with the church and their community work and to this day I’m still working in the coffee shop. I also got involved with the River of Life youth work and through the church got involved in chaplaincy work with Dumfries High School and St Joseph’s College”.
Although heavily involved in the local education side of chaplaincy work Davi admits sport chaplaincy is a new thing for him “It is going to be a challenge as I’ve not done this before, all the work I have done is with youth and young adults so it is a new role but an exciting challenge and I want to get it right. It was just before lockdown Mark Fleming who oversees sport chaplaincy in Scotland as part of sport chaplaincy UK contacted me. It’s a fairly new organisation and I hadn’t heard about it before but it was him who linked Grant with QOS six years ago and when Grant was needing to leave he reached out to my Pastor to see if there was anyone who would be up for the role so I took the training, did a lot of reading and learning about it and that’s when I met up with Grant. I had the opportunity to meet with Grant a couple of times and he was telling me about his experience. It is really sad to see him leave because he seems to have built such a beautiful relationship and connection with the club but it was good to catch up with him and hear about his story and all the things that he has been doing with the club. He explained to me the way forward as chaplaincy work is new to me”.
It may be new to him but he can’t wait to get involved “I am looking forward to working with the club. I am really excited about this because I am very passionate about football and people and about Dumfries. I know the importance of Queens in the community, it’s massive. I have been to some of the games as Pastor Smith is a big fan. This year has been challenging for everyone and now QOS are going forward while we battle against coronavirus it is a massive privilege for me to be involved and to be of help in any way possible. I am happy to provide pastoral help or any other help to club staff, players or anyone else at Queens who needs help. The role is an interesting one because it is really similar to a befriender but it has the whole spiritual sense but also it’s very human. The players have so much pressure; they are under pressure all the time to perform and to bring results. You know how it is in the world of sport, it is a very tense one – so it will be an honour to see the guys at a different level, the emotional side of things and to see how they are as humans”.
While Davi believes it will be hard to follow on from Grant, he is relishing the opportunity to make the role his own and the chance to bring new things to it “that is exactly how I see it and Grant said the exact same thing to me. I was asking a lot of questions and he said the best thing was for me to be myself and that I would find it would be a lot easier than I expected because it would be natural. We all have a passion for football and we all speak the football language which makes it simpler. It is important to be there for the players and others and build up my own relationships”.
Davi is pictured with his wife Joanna who he married last April.