Accompaniment

As I have joined Young Adults and Global Missions, I have come to embrace the accompaniment model of being present in people’s lives through all occasions, easy and hard. While in Mexico, I have accompanied the hardships of hangovers, breakups, and deaths of friends and aspirers. With the hardships, I have also participated in the pleasant times as well. I now have inside jokes with people, weekend trips, where I was able to bond with new friends, and a mug exchange, where we all went out and bought a mug for another person in the company.

The verb “to accompany” is used a lot more frequently in Spanish than in English. We use the word “acompañarse” to ask people if they would join us to go to a store or to buy food to bring back, or when you are offering to go somewhere with someone.

To me, accompaniment means more than just joining someone or participating in something. It includes presence. It means being able to pay attention and participate in the conversation/event completely, without distractions. This is something that I have been struggling with in Mexico because coming from a different culture and language, it is not always easy to be able to pay attention and fully participate in conversations. There is a language barrier. I cannot speak like a native Mexican speaker and I never will be able to. So far I have been saying “¿Que significa …?” (What does … mean?) a lot. My language skills have dramatically improved in two months. I can understand much more and I think that I can communicate better. People have told me that my speech has improved in terms of grammar and fluency since I have been here. On Tuesday, I went to a birthday party, with my family, for one of Saul’s friends at the embassy of Morocco. We stayed there for about an hour and a half and I did not “zone out” once. I was fully able to immerse myself in the conversation and understand all of it! We talked about birthday celebrations, visitations to other countries and eating things like crickets, dogs and cats (which seems to be a recurring joke in Mexico).

It has been a challenge trying to better accompany people in my life, but it is something I am getting better at every day. I saw the responsibility of accompaniment as a calling in the United States as well but it was not as difficult as it is in another language. I will further pursue the duty of accompaniment every day I live because I do believe that it is how God intends for us to build relationships and truly love each other.