Hispanic Heritage Month

Isaias Miranda: Porque de tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigénito,
para que todo aquel que en él cree, no se pierda, mas tenga vida eterna.
You can put the next slide.
Por tanto, vayan y hagan discípulos de todas las naciones,
bautizándolos en el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo,
enseñándoles a obedecer todo lo que les he mandado a ustedes.
Y les aseguro que estaré con ustedes siempre, hasta el fin del mundo.
If you didn't understand that, I hope you were able to follow along on the screen.
Those two verses remind me of God's love and remind me that God's love is for all.
And so as I am speaking about Hispanic Heritage Month today, those two verses were appropriate.
My name is Isaias Miranda.
I'm the director at the Center for Student Success, and I go by some of these titles up here.
I appreciate Brooklyn and Caroline for giving me those titles.
I am a little bit of a CliftonStrengths nerd, so if you want to talk about CliftonStrengths, I'm open for that.
But I also go by some of these other titles.
I'm a husband, I'm a dad, I'm a son, a grandson, and a brother.
Up here you see pictures of me and my wife, Cami, and our three kids, Johan, Mateo, and Luciana, so they keep us busy.
Today I'm here to talk about Hispanic Heritage Month.
Hispanic Heritage Month is observed from September 15th to October 15th,
and it honors the histories, cultures, and contributions of people whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, Caribbean, Central America, and some South American countries.
So originally, it was a Hispanic Heritage Week, so it started in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and then in 1988 it was expanded to a full month by President Ronald Reagan.
So this is just a time where we celebrate different cultures from Hispanic countries.
And why do we celebrate around September 15th?
Well, this coincides with the Independence Day for a couple Latin American countries.
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica celebrate Independence Day on September 15th.
Mexico celebrates their Independence Day on September 16th, and then Chile celebrates on the 18th.
So it just kind of fell around that time, and that's why we celebrate Hispanic heritage today.
Next slide.
I want to highlight an organization on campus.
Juntos is the Hispanic student organization on campus,
and they're having a couple events coming up in the next week or two.
There's a wrong date on there, and I'll get to it in a little bit.
But starting October 6th, we're going to have Hispanic Heritage Film Night.
And then on the 8th, there's going to be a game night.
So October 7th is Maddox Day, so we'll bump it down a day.
And then we're going to have a dance workshop and a paleta and paint night.
So I hope that you keep an eye out for these events and participate.
We are called Hispanic Student Organization, but we're open to all students.
So we want you to be part of our culture and learn a little bit about us.
And so I hope that you attend some of those events.
I know that represented here at LCU, we have international students from various Hispanic
countries like Ecuador or Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, and also people here who are
Americans, you know, who are not international students, but you have descendants of Mexico or
Puerto Rico or other Latin American countries, and I wish I could talk about each culture, and I wish
I could share a little bit about what makes each culture unique, but today you get to hear a little
bit of my story and my experience as a Mexican-American. So I'm what you would call a first generation
American. So what that means is that I was the first one in my family to be born here
in the United States. My parents immigrated from Mexico in the late 1980s, and I am thankful
for the sacrifice they made. So they, although they were coming to the United States in search
of better opportunities and a better life,
they also had to make some sacrifices.
They had to leave their homeland.
They had to leave a place where they spoke Spanish
and were comfortable, and they moved to the United States
and had to learn a new culture.
They had to learn a new language.
And as an adult, that can be kind of hard
to figure out and learn a new language.
So I'm grateful for my parents
that they made that sacrifice for us.
growing up in a Spanish speaking household with my parents and my grandparents I learned Spanish
at home and so growing up that's how we spoke in the house was Spanish and I didn't learn English
until I went to school and so there were some challenges there fortunately in Pertalus where
I grew up there was a bilingual school and so I was able to get caught up to speed and then
when I learned enough English I was able to join the English classes but being bilingual
I had to translate and interpret for my family a lot.
When we went to the bank or to the doctor,
I just had to be the interpreter for our family.
I also, benefit to that, got to interpret
when we went to parent-teacher conference.
So the teacher says I'm doing great, straight A's.
So there's some benefits that come with that.
And I imagine some of you relate with me, right?
Some of you are first-generation Americans.
Some of you are bilingual, and so if you are, what a blessing to be able to speak two languages and to be able to connect two cultures.
As I was growing up, also, I sometimes found myself stuck between two cultures, especially as a teenager and as a young adult.
I really felt like I had to choose one or the other, like I had to choose, you know, being a Mexican and embracing my Mexican roots.
But then sometimes I felt like I was being, you know, challenged to leave that behind and kind of just forget about that.
And, you know, as I grew up older and as I developed and matured, I realized that I can be part of both.
I'm so honored to be able to celebrate my family's Mexican roots and also to be in the United States, which is the greatest country in the world.
and to be able to embrace the freedoms that we have here.
And so if that's you today and you're feeling stuck,
know that you can be a part of both.
You don't have to pick one or the other.
And a last part of my story is I get to pass on the baton.
So you saw the picture of my little ones on the screen.
And I get to share about Mexico.
I get to share about movies and music that I enjoy.
I get to pass that along to my kids.
And someday when you have kids, and some of you may have kids already, but you get to pass along culture to your kids.
It might not be the same culture that I pass along, but you get to pass along the baton.
And so I'm excited that I get to pass along my story, my values to my kids.
And that's my responsibility and something that I don't take lightly.
So as students, as people, I think we gravitate to things that are familiar.
So sometimes we gravitate towards people that look like us, people that talk like us.
You know, maybe you go into a room full of people and you look for the person that's from your hometown or from your home country.
Sometimes you look for that person that speaks Spanish or that person that knows the language that you speak.
Sometimes you gravitate towards the person that you know is going to talk to you about the Cowboys
and you get to vent to them about how we could have won, right?
It's a bad performance against the Packers.
Right.
Well, we all, I think it's okay for us to embrace the familiar.
Because I do it, right?
When I know that somebody speaks Spanish, I lean into that and I talk Spanish to them.
Because there's a bond there.
You know, I was at a soccer game over the weekend and there were two students, international students from Brazil.
And they were talking in Portuguese to one another.
And I was like, all right, let's see how much Portuguese I know, because Spanish and Portuguese are both Latin-based.
And I think I caught maybe one or two words.
I could not understand what they were saying.
But it was so neat to see them connect and bond through their native tongue.
So it's okay to embrace the familiar.
But today, I want to challenge you to seek to learn and understand other people from different cultures and different backgrounds.
So here at LCU, we have a diverse group of students.
This year, we have the largest and most diverse freshman class ever.
That's awesome. Yeah, you can cheer for that.
So that's exciting to have students from different backgrounds
and different nationalities and heritages here on campus.
But we're also diverse.
We have over 30 countries represented
through students who are international students or other students or staff or faculty members who
have roots in other countries. And so that is just beautiful to be able to learn from other people
who are different than you. I'm also aware that we have various faith backgrounds represented here,
and that's beautiful. We get to learn about how we worship in different ways. And also,
There are students here who may have never stepped a foot in a church, and we get to be Jesus, right?
We get to learn from them, and we get to hear their perspective.
There are many things that make us different, that make us a diverse campus, but we all make LCU.
So my encouragement to you today is to reach out and learn about somebody else, and it starts with a simple hello.
You can go on to the next slide.
It starts with a simple hello where you're curious about other people, right?
Don't make it weird.
Don't like, you know, sometimes it's like, hey, where are you from?
Well, I'm from San Antonio.
No, like, where are you really from?
Well, like, my parents are from Colombia.
And so don't make it awkward, right?
But be interested in somebody else.
Ask them about what's important to them.
Ask them about what they value.
So be curious about others and find common ground.
I think you're going to find out that as you meet with people, they're going to have some things that are different, but you're going to find a lot of things that you have in common.
Be respectful about your questions, and if something comes off as disrespectful, I think it's okay to say, hey, just letting you know that question maybe was a little uncomfortable or came off this way.
We all need to learn from one another.
We need to be empathetic to other people's experiences.
We're in a time where there's a lot of division, and it's really easy to just kind of look at the things that we have against each other or maybe the things that we don't have in common.
But be empathetic with the other person's experience and celebrate diversity as a strength.
I love getting to meet students, and sometimes I think, man, this student is from this country or this student is from this place.
And sometimes I put people in a box.
And then when I hear their story, that box is broken because, you know, they're not what I thought or who I thought they were.
And so be mindful of that.
Celebrate diversity as a strength because we all need one another and we could all learn from one another.
So as you go on with your day and with your week, remember to or I want to encourage you to connect with somebody who maybe you wouldn't normally connect with.
And like I said, it starts with a simple hello.
You're dismissed.
applause