Family big on talk — in 3 languages

PROVO — Sitting down for dinner with family and friends, Cindy Brewer asks her 10-year-old son, Logan, to offer a blessing on the food.

Logan looks perplexed as he glances around the room at the variety of guests. Turning to his mother, he asks — in German — in which language he should pray.

His mother smirks and tells him to pray in Chinese or Swahili. Logan's face brightens as he decides to pray in Spanish.

The next night, without friends to occupy seats around the table, five chairs remain empty at dinner. Half of the home's occupants have departed for different corners of the globe.

But even with five Brewers missing, the house remains full of German, Spanish and English chatter.

Bruce and Cindy Brewer decided to raise their children in a multilingual home, despite skeptics who told them it would be too hard. Now, their family is living across five regions of the world: Asia, North America, Africa, Europe and Central America.

"Some people ask how we afford to do this," Cindy Brewer said. "I say I'd rather let my kids go abroad than buy new furniture. For us, it is a matter of priorities."

Two parents, six boys — four of whom are living out of the country — and a recently adopted 17-month-old girl complete their dynamic family. Bruce Brewer said he never planned anything as crazy as having half of them spread throughout the world.

"We have always told our kids that if they invest in learning another foreign language, we would find a way to let them go to that country and to have an immersion experience," Cindy Brewer said. "They have been working hard to earn this, and it just so happens that this summer they called those promises due."

The Brewers hadn't considered raising a bilingual family until Cindy was pregnant with their first child. She said she was terrified because she didn't start studying German until she was in junior high school. She worried that it wouldn't seem natural to raise her kids to speak both German and English.

"My side of the family was encouraging; the other side was skeptical," Cindy Brewer said. "There are no skeptics now."

"It has been very hard at times," 18-year-old Jacob Brewer said via e-mail from Cairo, Egypt, "but it has definitely been an exciting and rewarding life."