Rwanda

We head to Rwanda, land of 1000 hills, in less than 2 weeks. Rwanda, where 800,000+ people were massacred at the hands of their neighbors, teachers, priests, in 100 days. Preparing for this trip, and learning about what happened is heart wrenching. This is another one of those things that I’m not sure what to do with. I know that this happened in the past, and that nothing is going to change the fact that this genocide did happen. One of the books we read talked about how the OJ Simpson trials were going on at the same time as the genocide. I was young, but I remember those trials. I remember seeing it on the news, people talking about it, about who he was and what he had done to his ex-wife and her boyfriend. I remember it well. I don’t remember hearing about Rwanda. In all honesty, my first encounter with what happened may have been the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’. Why do I remember the corrupt trial of a man that was paraded because of his fame, but not the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives that was happening at the same time? I’m finding it very hard to reconcile this. I’m finding it harder to accept and reconcile knowing that Rwanda had been the greatest example of evangelism in Africa; and that when the killings began many of the people sought refuge in their churches. Instead of standing up for their brothers and sisters in Christ, Hutu clergy and laymen handed over their Tutsi ‘family’ to be killed… or did the killings themselves. America didn’t stand up because as Clinton confessed, there was no American interest in Rwanda. The question that has been eating away at me is, why didn’t the church do anything? One American (literally, one), a pastor, stayed in Rwanda when the US pulled everyone out. I’m not looking forward to this trip because I haven’t been able to process the past events, events that didn’t happen that long ago. I am looking forward to this trip because I believe it offers mourning over the loss of men, women and children who died at the hands of their ‘family’. I hope that in this, God shows me and the rest of the students, how we can remember this tragedy, celebrate those who stood up, and learn to prevent this from happening again. They are not happy, but I do recommend watching “Ghosts of Rwanda” and reading “Mirror to the Church” for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of what happened during the spring of 1994. I pray that this trip is a growing experience and that through sorrow, hope grows.