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Lucia Perez, that is transitioning from male to female, actively seeks a life that is new one which she can embrace without making her family members or her church behind.

Picture of Lucia Perez at church by Rosa Ramriez.

Rosa Ramirez is just a journalist located in the Bay region. She’s covered immigration, criminal activity additionally the courts, and breaking news for different magazines around the world, such as the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Rocky hill Information, Birmingham Post-Herald and Hispanic Link Information provider. Rosa proactively covers stories worth focusing on to communities of color, including Latinos. Rosa happens to be finishing a master’s in Latin American studies at the University of Ca, Berkeley, where she recently finished her master’s of journalism.

By Rosa Ramirez

“God does not make errors,” says Lucia. “He does every thing for an objective.”

One rainy in November, Lucia PГ©rez walks across the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Concord sunday. She closes her rainbow umbrella and shakes the hand of this guy who greets her inside your home of Jesus.

“Que Dios la bendiga hermana.” Might God bless you, sis. The church greeter, A mexican immigrant, does not learn about Lucia’s sex transition.

Spanish-speaking guys, females and kiddies fill every bench. Lucia, a forty-seven-year-old immigrant from Nicaragua, takes a seat nearby the backside associated with the church.

One girl, whom looks become about sixty, tells the churchgoers, “Hoy cumplo quince años de haber nacido de nuevo.” Today could be the fifteenth anniversary since I happened to be created once again. This acknowledgment of religious rebirth, a regular training in Baptist ceremony, encourages a crescendo of claps. The church people sing in Spanish.

Lucia, too, celebrates the church-goer’s devotion that is pious. Her sound, quiet yet coarse, like this of a person whispering, praises Jesucristo.

The pastor starts to talk about salvation. “There are not any psychologists on the market who is able to allow you to, friends and family. When you have an issue, take it to Jesus,” he preaches in Spanish. Lucia claps. Along with her eyes closed, she bobs her mind down and up. Faith in Jesus Christ has aided her through the rocky areas of her religious journey.

Lucia is searching for comfort and community about this chilly early morning—except that to feel she’s welcomed only at that church, Lucia along with her wife, Yadira, told the pastor that Lucia is just a hermaphrodite and a virgin. Individuals wouldn’t turn their backs for a solitary girl with this kind of condition, they thought.

Even though this transgender Latina hides her gender transition from church people, she’s available with Jesus.

For quite some time, Lucia preferred conversing with her medical specialist. She could inform the therapist things she would not tell God—such as that she attempted to commit committing committing suicide on one or more event. Or that her first experience that is sexual when Lucia ended up being Javier Pérez, had been with a person. In those times, it had been hard to accept that God had provided her a man’s body and a woman’s desires.

Picture of Lucia’s arms by Rosa Ramirez.

She was never angry at God although she struggled for decades to understand how this could have occurred. Today Lucia visits her therapist every Friday and would go to church on Sundays because she’s got grown to believe Jesus, too, knows her.

“Nothing takes place without God permitting it,” Lucia now loves to state. “And Jesus does not make errors. Jesus is ideal. He does every thing for an intention.”

Lots of Lucia’s transgender buddies tend to be more skeptical about their churches. Some have originate from conventional Mexican houses with strict Catholic upbringings. These people were taught that being gay-not to say being transgender-was a sin. A few of these ladies arrived to trust you can understand God without likely to church.

But Lucia, who has got accepted Jesus as her lord and savior, asked Jesus about this Sunday to assist her.

“I don’t inform Jesus about my condition. Jesus understands my condition significantly more than I’ll ever understand,” Lucia claims. “I ask him to greatly help me live with it since it’s difficult … whenever you reside in a homophobic globe.”

There will be something else, too.

“I’ve additionally asked him to simply help me look more feminine,” she says.

Lucia’s appearance

But Lucia is not making that totally up to Jesus.

Couple of years ago, she started using hormones. The cocktail of anti-andro-gens and hormones that are female making her skin softer. Her human anatomy is growing breasts. She runs frequently to build up a sleek and look that is slender.

Her face is pale, her eyes dark. Her cheeks are rosy. But nevertheless, her jawline and five o’clock shadow are strong.

“Many folks have said we look half male, half feminine,” Lucia says.

It, she’s unlikely to have surgery to change her sexual organs while she would like to do. The price of a intercourse reassignment procedure operates within the tens and thousands of dollars-well away from reach. However a noticeable modification of genitals is not critical. Lucia could be delighted if she just seemed feminine, like her buddy Jessenia Yépez, a transgender girl from Guanajuato, Mexico.

Yépez is slender and looks also leaner in her shiny, tight black colored jeans and high heel shoes. Her epidermis is tan and smooth. “Look at those feet, those curves,” Lucia claims one as she stares at Yépez day.

Picture of Lucia’s hormones by Rosa Ramirez.

Lucia laments decades that are waiting result in the gender change. Her human anatomy would look more like surely Yépez’s if she’d started her modification earlier in the day. Her face, too, might have softer, more feminine features, she informs by by herself.

Yépez, that is half Lucia’s age, offers her great tips on where you should purchase garments, specially bras, now that Lucia is beginning to develop.

Lucia prevents wearing sundresses, blouses, polyester hip-huggers, high heel shoes, miniskirts, clingy dresses, hoop earrings, fake eyelashes, mascara, and hot red lipstick like several of her transgender Latina buddies.

She desires to put them on. Her spouse, Yadira, won’t let her.

Yadira worries that some body shall make an effort to harm Lucia. Hold back until your woman’s human body is more developed, Yadira informs her.

For the present time, Lucia is concentrated on minimizing her broad shoulders—the result of pumping iron whenever she lived as Javier. It amuses her today that she tried difficult in her own twenties to check and behave like a guy. Lucia wore boots that are steeltoe. She viewed films featuring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.