What a day of two halves today has been - a joyful barbecue with the American ministry team this afternoon, following a somewhat harrowing morning at the Genocide Memorial Museum this morning.  

Attending the Rwanda’s Genocide Memorial is probably ‘a must’ for every visitor to this country, certainly not a joy, but important none the less, to try to gain some understanding of the pain that these people have endured and the journey of reconciliation upon which they continue to travel.

It is impossible to grasp the enormity of the terrible atrocities of the 1990s in a couple of paragraphs but having discussed our response to our visit this morning, we can only share our impressions with you and trust that these lead you to pray for this nation.  Even those of the team, who had visited the memorial previously, still found new horrors or personal stories which deeply affected us.

Perhaps some of the most powerful exhibits were the snippets of video footage of survivors telling their personal testimony of the horrendous violence they witnessed and their ensuing fight for life.   One young woman described how even though she had survived the genocide, she felt that the whole of her generation was effectively ‘dead,’ and that it would take several generations before the country would recover from this atrocity.  She stated that even though her contemporaries were trying to work through the process, they would not be able to recover, such was the destruction.

Others stated that even in the evil depths of the genocide, there were still choices, and thankfully some did chose to help others rather than to destroy everyone.  We were introduced to Rita, who told of her remarkable rescue during the genocide.  She had been a 7 month old baby at the time, in a building where everyone was murdered except her and another baby.  The soldiers took the two babies to an orphanage, where they survived. 

Some of the survivors have chosen to move on from the past and to focus on the future.  One survivor explained that he had chosen to forgive the perpetrators, who had annihilated his family, because this had been the last instruction given to him by his dying mother.

One observer noted that it was only those who knew they themselves had been forgiven, who were  then in turn able to forgive others. Hannah was very touched by this quotation, “Our greatest problem was the brokenness of our hearts, because of the genocide.  At the beginning each and every person considered his own suffering as the biggest, but when we shared our own pain we began to feel compassion for others. We understood how people suffered on the other side.  Now we look at what people need, not at who they are.”

Grace was moved by this comment, “Ubumuntu is humanity, goodness and kindness.  A person who has Ubumuntu is a person who has greatness of heart.  We can all be champions of humanity by standing against division wherever we live.”

Perhaps this is an important message for us all, especially in the light of the gospel of Christ who came to reconcile us to God, and to each other.

We'll post the rest of today - tomorrow. So for now....Goodnight!