*Click here to read the story behind my Spanish Blog
I listen to certain songs and I am
there again. Pushed against the side of
the bus, wedged snugly in the back corner on a row with more people than
seats. The trees outside the window rush
past me as I gaze at the gorgeous African sunrise beyond them. The music playing through my earbuds, Tears of the Saints by Leeland, speaks
for my heart of the complete brokenness I had just witnessed in the previous
couple of weeks.
I hadn’t talked very much about
it. None of us had. We had all encountered a deep desolation
unlike anything we even knew how to describe.
Some had been able to respond with tears – tears of complete
bewilderment at the pain displayed around us in the eyes and hearts of the
people, the children of God, we had come to minister to. But not I.
I would not be able to release any emotion about it for another week or
so after being back in my own country for a few days. And yet it was in my heart. It was in all of our hearts; for despite the
beauty of the sunrise around us, the excitement over the safari we were about
to embark on, and the incredible relief and exhilaration over finally being
together again after several days of emersion in the culture away from each other,
pain was all around us. We had come to
see the countryside in a new way in the past couple of weeks. Now when we saw the little hillside
communities, the kinds we had only before seen in photos, we envisioned the
evil that had taken place there only 13 years before – the mass
extermination of nearly an entire ethnicity of people.
During my final year of college I took
a missions class that was structured around a 2-week missions trip to Rwanda in
the middle of the semester. I felt God
direct me to go on this missions trip in a very different way than I had my
previous trip to Paraguay. Other people
were quite influential in nudging me towards considering this trip – including
those who were leading the trip. After
much thought and prayer, as well as consultation with my parents, I decided
that this was something God would have me do, and I signed up to take the
class. I knew I would be challenged in
my thinking about world missions as well as be given an opportunity to see how
God is at work in a very different part of the world and join Him in that work
for a short time.
The missions class was set up so that
each student would be able to serve in Rwanda through a venue that they
specifically felt a calling or passion for.
I would be interning with an elementary school for a week while living
with a Rwandan family along with one other girl from my class. For the second week in Rwanda we expected to
travel to several memorials from the country’s genocide in 1994 as well as
visit the country’s university and finish up the trip by going on a safari at
a national wildlife park. I had no idea
how drastically those two weeks would change my concept of the world, of human
kind, and of my God.
Why
Rwanda? During the country’s genocide in 1994, which was a mass extermination of primarily one
ethnic group present in Rwanda, 78% of the country’s children experienced a death in the family due to war, and 36% lost
both parents. 80% of children were
forced to hide to protect themselves, as they were specifically targeted for
death. This tragedy left the Rwandan
people traumatized physically, emotionally, and spiritually. God was at work in Rwanda, however, through
the work of missionaries and local pastors such as Emmanuel Gatera, who our team
would be working with.
With the knowledge of these
statistics and a strong sense of our own inadequacy yet a deep desire to help
and encourage, we set off on a plane headed towards Africa. The flight was long and we were all quite
anxious about what we would find when we reached our destination, yet this
apprehensive time of travel bonded us tighter as a team – a process that would only persist during the
next two weeks. For while in Rwanda, we
would become like a tight-knit family –
saddened at the thought of leaving each other for a few days, and rejoicing at each
other’s return. We would care for each other in sickness, hug
each other in sadness, laugh together, cry together, and constantly pray for
each other.
Upon finally arriving in
Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city,
our first impression was of the overwhelming hospitality with which we were
greeted. The people from Emanuel’s church had looked forward to our coming as
though we were long lost children finally coming home. I will never forget the looks on the Rwandese
families’ faces as they greeted
their new “son” or “daughter” who would be staying with them for a week. It was quite a joyous occasion; I had never
felt so instantly loved and wanted by anyone, much less someone of another
culture and language. The people of
Rwanda knew how to love on their family in Christ, and they showed us that from
the first day.
It did not take very much
time in Rwanda, however, for us to observe another incredible depth the people
possessed, and that was a depth created through great pain. On our third day in the country, we visited a
genocide memorial and museum in which we saw lists of names, mass graves, rooms
covered with photographs of people who were killed, pictures of manslaughter,
and video clips of family members recounting the death of their loved ones. Later, during a visit to another memorial, we
would walk past the remains of thousands of people – people still rendering the twisted positions in
which they had died at the hand of machetes, clubs, rifles, etc. We would hold our breath to keep from getting
sick at the smell of death around us as we listened to our tour guide, a
survivor who himself bore a bullet hole in his head, tell us of how five
thousand weak and starving women and children had been murdered there.
The next day, however, the
tone of our trip changed a little as we each moved in with our host families
for the coming week and began our own internships in different locations around
Kigali. I spent 3 days at Kigali Parent’s School, the local elementary school, visiting
different classrooms, talking with teachers and students, and teaching in classrooms. It was so fun to take part in these small
classrooms in which 50 to 65 African children were eagerly learning all they
could. The children acted so excited to
learn from a “mzungu” (white person) and give her a high five!
During this time I, along
with my classmate, Jessie, stayed with a Rwandese lady we came to know as Mama
Sheila. She had a nice (but very humble)
home in Kigali that she shared with her son, daughter, mother, and uncle. Her husband had been killed during the
genocide. Mama Sheila’s
kindness and hospitality were no different than that of everyone else we met in
Rwanda. She immediately made us feel
very at home and like part of the family.
She referred to us as her daughters, prayed with us, shared her heart
with us, and took very good care of us while we were with her.
Mama Sheila’s testimony was, and continues to be an
incredible inspiration to me. She spent
hours in prayer every day, both as she went about her daily chores, and also in
quiet meditation in the middle of the night.
She told us that she liked to pray at 3:00 a.m. because it was
completely quiet and peaceful then, and also because it corresponded to the
time at which her savior died for her.
So she would rise at that time each morning and talk with God for an
hour. In reality, though, to Mama Sheila
every occasion was an opportunity for prayer –
before a meal, before bed, before leaving for work, at the coming and the going
of guests, and often in between. The
togetherness of brothers and sisters in Christ called for approaching and
praising our heavenly Father.
Probably the most impactful
experience for me in Rwanda took place alongside a group of teenagers orphaned
and left in absolute poverty by the genocide.
During our second week in Rwanda, four other girls from our team and I
got to assist with a seminar for these genocide orphans led by our professors. There were about 70 orphans, all thirteen to
twenty-three years old, and most of them had lost everything when the genocide
occurred.
The seminar was structured
around three main topics related to the struggles of teenagers in general and
more specifically the struggles of these teenage orphans in Rwanda. Following each talk, the teens would divide
into five discussion groups –
each overseen and “enhanced” by one of the five of us visiting college
students. The orphans would raise
questions, discuss them as a group (in their native tongue which we did not
understand other than through the help of a translator), and then direct the
toughest questions to us.
I will never forget some of
the questions they asked me. “Why,”
they wanted to know, “would
a God who loves them allow them to lose their parents, their homes, their
livelihood, and all means of comfort and security.” “What would you
do,” they asked me, “if you
were dying of aids, the mother of a small child, and with no family, home, or
income?” “How
do people in America get through
things like this?” Time froze in my mind each time I was asked
one of these questions, and I felt almost sick to my stomach because of the
responsibility resting on my shoulders due to this opportunity – the opportunity to offer hope and encouragement
to people who felt complete despair.
It was overwhelming -
stretching, and yet a blessing, to sit and talk with these orphans as they told
us about the things they struggle with. I
felt very inadequate to encourage or offer help to these young people, but one
thing I could offer them was the love of Christ, and that seemed to be an
encouragement to them. They were so
appreciative of our being there. I
learned a lot from them as well, for despite their dire circumstances, many of
them loved the Lord and praised Him for His goodness.
One girl I met at this
seminar was named Claudine. When she was
six years old, her family moved from Uganda to Rwanda. The day following their move, the genocide
began; and she lost her entire family.
She was forced to run for her life several times. She had been fending for herself ever
since. Claudine had been physically
abused and raped countless times, and her emotional scarring was just as deep
as her physical scars. After the first
day of the seminar, she spent some time in counseling with one of my
professors, who told me afterwards that that was the first time she had ever
been able to share her story with anyone.
Merely recounting all that she had been through was so traumatic for her
that she had to be taken to a clinic afterwards.
The next day, however, she
requested to see me, so I went to visit her at the clinic. It was such a blessing to hold her in my arms
and pray with her. At one point while I
was there, she saw some kids playing and she told me that the Muslim family she
has been serving did not allow her to play.
I thought about this, and decided to teach her how to thumb
wrestle. So sitting there on her bed, I
became the first person to play with her in thirteen years. What a blessing!
Claudine was so grateful to
me for coming all the way from America to show her and her people that they are
loved. This, I discovered, was one of
the greatest needs that the countless orphans in Rwanda had. They had many physical needs, but they also
needed a reason to keep on living. They
needed hope, and they needed to know that they were worth something. Not only were my team and I able to show this
to people in Rwanda, but they showed us
that God can work through us even if
we don’t feel adequate or worthy.
During my time in Rwanda I saw all
kinds of pain and hurt, and heard stories of a hatred and evil that I cannot
fathom. I talked to people who lived
through things that I cannot begin to understand and yet who love God anyway
because He is all they have. I heard
stories of forgiveness that these destitute people extend every day to those
who tortured and killed their family members mercilessly. This forgiveness was hard to take in, but an
even greater mystery that beset my mind was the realization that God – a pure
and completely holy Being who gave these individuals their very breath of life,
extended forgiveness to the killers through suffering agony on a cross long,
long ago for them.
As I worked through these thoughts in
my head upon returning to the United States, the realization occurred to me
that if these fellow human beings in Rwanda, a country home to the most
friendly and kind-hearted people I had ever come across, were capable of such
brutality and violence, then surely I myself would be capable of the same
thing, were it not for God’s grace to turn my heart towards
Him. And so it was, that my heavenly
Father taught me to understand just a little bit better, the depravity of man’s own
heart, the magnitude of the grace He extends towards us, and His miraculous
power to work through nervous and incapable beings such as myself.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in
order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His
glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably
great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength He
exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at his right hand in
the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power
and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but
also in the one to come. Ephesians 1:18-21
