Brazilian Salad Bowl

United States has long been considered the melting pot. . . more like the “Salad Bowl” observes one author, because so many cultures find themselves mixed together in our free and diverse country, yet retain their cultural distinctives. Brazil is interesting to me for the same reason. In one place, you may find people who look black, white, Asian, European . . . and they will all be Portuguese-speaking Brazilians. The other day I witnessed in a poignant way the interesting culture collision here. I had the opportunity to attend a worship service at a Chinese Presbyterian Church with Tom (our field director) and family, as he was preaching there that morning. I was asked to say a few words of testimony because I had been to China for a month on a short-term mission trip in 2000. Behind me, there were two other bodies on the platform: Tom (a Portuguese speaking American), and a Chinese-born Brazilian woman named Alice who spoke some English, Portuguese, and Chinese. As I told one of the more memorable God-tales from that trip (in ENGLISH), Tom would often translate it for the Chinese-Brazilian woman in PORTUGUESE and then she would spit it out for the congregation in CHINESE. I thought, “Lord, this would be much easier if you would just give me the gift of tongues.”

Incidentally, every church should follow this church’s model of having a meal after the morning worship . . . with Chinese food . . . sheer genius.