POMPANO BEACH, Fla. —“I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.”

Maikon Borba, a leader of the Southeast Florida Church of Christ, spelled aloud for his 4-year-old daughter, Joanna, as she practiced writing. 

It’s a familiar task for the 40-year-old Brazilian immigrant. 

Both he and his wife, Tatiane, taught English as a second language for almost 15 years in Novo Hamburgo, Brazil.

Life there was familiar. 

The Church of Christ they attended was modest — 50 attendees on a good Sunday. The Borbas participated in the congregation’s Let’s Start Talking class and welcomed mission groups from U.S. churches and Harding University in Searcy, Ark.

They never expected to become missionaries to their people in a foreign land. 

Yet three visas and almost 10 years later, Maikon Borba had graduated from Harding with a degree in Bible and missions and moved his family 36 miles north of Miami. 

“It’s not that we didn’t have faith,” Maikon recalled. “It was just so far out of reach, you know?” 

‘God gave us this mission’

The Borbas joined more than 475,000 Brazilian immigrants living in the Miami metro area, according to the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2021.

A 2022 U.S. Census Bureau survey reported only 105,000 Brazilian immigrants living in Florida. Official counts often miss undocumented immigrants. 

“God, he was speaking to us and making everything fall into place,” Maikon said. “We wanted to come to a place where we felt like God could use us.”

The need for their ministry arose from a simple issue: Americans tend to think of missions outside of the U.S. rather than to specific groups or cultures already within its borders. 

“Less people are interested in doing mission work,” Maikon said. “And then people don’t even think about domestic missions much. When they think about being missionaries, they always think about going to a foreign country — Africa, Asia, right?”

While they work in ministry legally on a religious visa, others in the community are undocumented.

Some immigrants dream of a better life, Maikon said. 

Others flee abusive situations. Regardless of their legal status, the Southeast Florida church serves all who seek help.

“We talk a lot about how we need to be careful and not promote illegal stuff,” said Junior Lira, who preaches in Portuguese for the congregation. “We try to encourage the proper course.”

Lira and his wife, Patricia, immigrated from Brazil to serve alongside the Borbas. Like the Borbas, the Liras never planned on coming to the U.S. as missionaries.

Junior Lira followed in the footsteps of his father, who planted five churches in Brazil. The son had an established ministry in ​​Brasília, the South American nation’s capital. 

He had served as a domestic missionary for 14 years when his contacts at Great Cities Missions, a Texas-based nonprofit associated with Churches of Christ, connected him to the ministry in Florida. 

“We are here just because God gave us this mission,” Lira said. “Because if we tried to do this ourselves, it’s impossible.

“God put all the pieces together — the sponsors, the people, everything,” he added.

Embracing a multicultural approach to church

But starting a bilingual Portuguese and English congregation in Florida presented a unique challenge. 

The older generations of Brazilian immigrants embrace an insular mindset, shopping at Brazilian grocery stores, eating at Brazilian restaurants and attending Brazilian clinics, Maikon Borba said.

Many never need to learn English once they immigrate because of the well-established Brazilian communities in Florida. 

However, first-generation Brazilian Americans prefer English, accepting their dual heritage.

Pleasing both demographics is hard but necessary, Tatiane Borba said. 

“The church has to be bilingual. Otherwise it is doomed, in a way,” Tatiane said. “You’ll only get older people.”

To bridge the cultural gap, the mission team devised an outreach plan: Expand the leadership to include a third family — ideally, natural U.S. citizens with an interest in youth ministry and immigrant populations. And return to the Borbas’ roots in Brazil by offering Let’s Start Talking English classes to Portuguese-speaking immigrants. 

On Wednesday and Thursday evenings, Maikon Borba hosts two classes at the church’s rented space between a pawn shop and a pet grooming salon. 

Enrollment is $40 and intended to encourage students to invest effort and time into the program. The Borbas also teach private sessions and meet with one student remotely via Zoom, bringing the total number to 22. 

“Most people come to us through the English classes, and then we try to connect with them after the English lessons,” Maikon said. “So (we offer) English studies and counseling first, and then as we meet them and become friends with them, they come to us with all these other needs.”

The Southeast church also exposes its congregants to English through visiting young adult groups from the College Church of Christ in Searcy. That congregation is one of its supporting churches.

The trips are a mutually beneficial cross-cultural experience.

Emily Nikolai, a senior nursing major at Harding, spent a week with the bilingual congregation on a recent mission trip.

“I think especially in America it can be so easy to just assume that everyone has had the opportunities that we’ve had to learn the Gospel,” Nikolai said. “And so coming here highlights that there are a lot of people who live in America and haven’t heard the Gospel.

“I’m realizing that there are a lot of pockets in the U.S. where the language barrier is still prominent,” she added. “We need people to minister here as well as going out in other countries.”

Ministry limited by visas

Yet maintaining a steady attendance is difficult.

Immigrants tend to work low-paying jobs with long hours, Maikon said. Many pick up extra shifts on the weekends.

“It is the land of opportunity, the United States,” Maikon said. “If you have an entrepreneurial mind, and you work hard, you’re going to succeed.”

That success can come at the expense of church attendance. Convincing people to give up work — or much-needed rest — to attend church is a challenge. 

Attendance also fluctuates drastically due to the transient nature of immigrants, Maikon said. Some Sundays they have 30 people. Other times it’s as few as nine. 

The Borbas and Liras face their own immigration challenges as well.

Religious visas to the U.S. — known as R-1s — are issued in 30-month increments and cannot exceed five years for foreign workers.  

While the Liras are eligible for another two years, the Borbas are running out of time. Their next step is to apply for permanent residency in the state of Florida.

“Having a green card, at least for us, was never the goal,” Tatiane Borba said. “But the religious visa only lasts for five years, so now that we renewed, we are starting the process for residency, so we can stay here and finish the mission — or at least keep it going.”

Green cards for the couple will cost about $12,000. Their daughter, Joanna, is already a citizen. 

It’s not a simple process, but the struggle is worth the chance to preach salvation to an unreached populace, Maikon Borba said. 

Despite being far from home, both missionary families are sure of one thing: Their work is here.

“God doesn’t see the borders,” Lira said. “He sees the people. And he said, ‘OK, you have people in the United States.’”

This piece is republished with permission from The Christian Chronicle. 

Audrey Jackson, a 2021 journalism graduate of Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, is The Christian Chronicle’s managing editor.