One of the families took us in with our weak Portuguese skills. The Monteiro extended family numbered in the hundreds, although I didn't know it when we first moved to Campo Grande in western Brazil. For the first year, I'm sure we gave them oodles of hilarious phrases, hundreds, probably, things they had never been taught about in school, but which were a more than serious attempt to murder the wonderful linguistic cadence inherited from Portugal.
Over the years, we had dozens, perhaps scores of pleasant encounters with various family members. I remember the day when I came home and told my wife, "Do you know that so and so is related to the person we had a meal with yesterday?" I was only beginning to understand the complexities of family extensions in South America. Oh, how much I had to learn! And how many mistakes I made!
Time passed and we moved to Brasilia. I received an invitation to be a speaker at a family gathering. To my surprise, 219 out of 263 persons in the extended family arrived for the five-day event over Carnaval. I spoke on family relationships in the book of Genesis: the first generation - "Abraham: How faith comes into a family"; the second generation - "Isaac and Esau: how conflicts come between brothers"; the third generation - "Jacob: how long-term patterns separate people"; and the fourth generation - "Joseph: how reconciliation brings relatives together."
I did an exceptionally un-Brazilian thing the last morning of the retreat. It was still early morning when I asked people not to come to the front; instead, they would stand and make a prayer request, and people around that person would pray in a low voice while we sang choruses. I expected this to take about 15 minutes. Then the next person would make a request for prayer.
I looked up at the end of the first chorus, opening my eyes, and there were several people standing at the front of the massive lean-to that had been built on the ranch/farm for the event.
What followed was amazing. For several hours, the Holy Spirit fell upon that wonderful extended family. Broken marriages were healed, distant relatives brought together, commitments made to live in harmony, fathers reconciled to their children, and children repented of wrong-doing. I didn't know any of the family secrets. Thank God, I didn't need to know. It was the third time I witnessed such a blowing away of the cob-webs from the dark places of the soul. Those people did not quench the Holy Spirit.
Oh, how I came to love those dear people! The family made a commitment to go back to the fifth generation, 957 persons, and it was discovered that with the sixth generation, a total of 5,005 persons were descended or married into that family! Each of twelve children of the fourth generation gave enough through the donation of cattle each month over the course of a year to provide for a "family missionary" to travel throughout Central Brazil, locating each of those persons and bringing the message of God's grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, healthy relationships, and light in the face of Jesus Christ. Having been reconciled, they simply could not stop telling the good news of Christ's grace.
Thirty-four years later, I'm sure the family is well into the eighth generation of this family. Originally, the first man and wife came from elsewhere in Brazil. And now, they are scattered, usually because of work opportunities. Yes, I continue to hear precious things from family members through social media. Churches continue to multiply in Campo Grande one of the largest patterns of church growth I've ever heard of. May the name of the Lord be praised and uplifted for what those dear, humble people did in letting the Holy Spirit do his everlasting work.
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