Emigrating is an experience of changes of the Dying-Rebirth type, but not of us but of the context with which we are familiar. The new context-town, city or country will begin to pressure us from all the most unexpected sides towards our interior. In no time our cultural lens stops being a support to constantly put us in trouble. Our instincts and learned attitudes close doors and relationships to us. In short, emigrating is almost like returning to childhood with almost no time to learn and grow. The capacity and speed of learning and adaptation are crucial in those first 3 years. In that time we end up collected in the new context and growing, or isolated and defensive with everything and everyone. And unfortunately, due to the false idea of what we are going to find, the absence of a healthy support community and the lack of prior preparation, most often end up isolated and frustrated.
Accessibility to healthy communities is the most important factor in a healthy and productive process of recontextualization and transculturation for both individuals and families. And this accessibility is vital both with the community to which one belongs in the country of origin as well as the new community that one needs to access in the host country or countries. The harsh reality is that it is not common for these support communities to have been part of or to be there for the immigrants.
In two days, the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States will end. And the pastors of Equipo Río have always seen this period as a golden opportunity to open people's eyes to the lack of a role for a community that, more than helping, opens up to accompanying the Hispanic through their first years of adaptation. Especially for families, churches, community organizations and even Hispanic businesses that intend to direct their services to our Latin American nations. And these are currently growing in many of our localities.
How can we envision and begin to build a community that not only lends a hand when one is in trouble, but rather is there throughout the entire process? A community that welcomes, supports, educates, and accompanies people in a long process? The kind of process that the gospel proposes. One that is entered into however one arrives, but one grows and matures. And to that same extent one stops consuming community to continue building it together with others.
This is precisely the DNA of Team Río. And these are the images of our 2024 celebration that reveal this fruit.
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