What is “Congresso”? For some, it is the Portuguese word for an assembly of politicians to discuss and pass laws, like the English word Congress. However, for the church here, it means a yearly event that provides the brethren with an opportunity to spend four days together in fellow-ship with loved ones they don’t see often due to the geographic distance between them.

This event rotates from city to city around the expansive Northeast region of Brazil. Each year it is held in a different city or town. Due to Recife’s central location in the region, it was our fifth time to host the event. This past week we celebrated our 25th annual Congresso. The “Silver Anniversary”, for this precious event!

The theme this year was “Be like Jesus”. All the messages and seminars were drawn from the eight beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12. Each of the eight speakers came from a different congregation, and all gave inspiring messages.

God blessed us with a wonderful site, the best to date, and good food both for our bodies and our souls, great fellowship, and many stories. It gave us a little taste of how wonderful it will be the Day that we all will be together in our Father’s home.

The Recife church worked very hard in hosting this event. There were 309 saints representing 28 congregations who slept at the site. Many of these traveled hundreds of miles to get there. Several others came from nearby congregations to share the day. 550 were present for the Sunday worship assembly that concluded the event.

Everyone I talked to had only good things to say about the event. It was well worth all the hard work that went into it. Most of all, God was faithful and blessed all who made the sacrifice to come.