Rwanda was never on my radar as a country I would one day travel to. That is until the summer of 2014. This tiny country nestled in Central/East Africa isn’t one I’ve always dreamed about getting to. I’d heard of Rwanda before that summer. I knew a genocide took place there at some point in my lifetime, but had absolutely no idea what exactly that meant. In my ignorant brain it was still a scary, unsafe place to be.
But God has a way of blindsiding us with passions we never knew were in us.
For me, that was a passion for this beautiful country nicknamed The Land of a Thousand Hills.
So what happened? Why did I, seemingly, all of a sudden find this dream deep inside of me to travel to and do ministry in Rwanda? There is one pivotal moment I can point back to as the moment it all changed. While this was the moment this dream started to be uncovered I do not believe it was the moment the dream was planted in me. I fully believe it was planted long before I was born, it simply began to become visible through the soil of my heart at this moment.
During the summer of 2014, I traveled to Uganda, Africa for a two-week long missions trip. It was on this trip it all changed. God told me before going that this trip was going to be the catalyst into the next thing. I had all sorts of expectations as to what that might mean. I also had moments of doubting those were actually words from God, but they were and he wasn’t kidding! On that trip God allowed me to meet two Rwandan men, who were visiting Uganda, to set me down this path. That meeting would forever change my life.
We met on our first full day in Uganda. They were staying at the same guesthouse as my travel companions and I in Jinja. Our paths didn’t cross much until the second evening when we all sat down to dinner.
I had no idea when sitting down the entire trajectory of my life was about to change.
Our conversations started with your basic get to know you questions. At some point, though, it shifted to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. As I have mentioned, I knew little to nothing about this dreadful event in history. There were opportunities in my life to learn about it, but I never grasped those opportunities. In fact, the officiant at my brother’s wedding, Carl, who is a friend of my brother’s, was the only American to stay in Rwanda during the genocide. The weekend of my brother’s wedding probably would have been a prime time to ask Carl about it and learn more. Yet, at the time I had no idea God was cultivating a love in me for that country, so I didn’t ask. There are times I wish I would have known then, but I also know God had a reason for not revealing it to me before then.
All that to say, the Rwandan genocide wasn’t something I knew much about before that dinner conversation in Jinja. Over the course of our dinner, I began to be educated on those 100 days in 1994 where nearly a million Rwandans were brutally murdered. They shared a brief history of this event and gave us a tiny glimpse into their own stories.
God had begun to grab my heart at this point, but I wasn’t ready for what was to come next.
They went on to share about the state of the country today and how it was being transformed by forgiveness. I learned about individuals sitting across from those who had caused horrific, unfathomable pain on them to walk through healing. In these meetings, they were healing and forgiving in incredible ways. Individuals were seeking out and being offered forgiveness from those who they beat, attacked, raped and/or whose families they brutally murdered. True forgiveness was taking place in epic portions in Rwanda and I couldn’t fathom it.
When this conversation took place I was carrying around my own heavy weight of past hurts and pain. There were people I struggled to forgive. There were past events I was still angry and bitter about, but that conversation flipped something in me. How come I was struggling to forgive acts, seemingly, less intense than genocide? Now, I don’t think my hurt was any less valid it simply seemed less ‘big”. So why couldn’t I forgive them?
God grabbed my attention in that moment and convicted me of my own unforgiveness. I knew I had to lay all of it at His feet. So, the next morning during my devotionals I offered it up to God. I didn’t want to hold on to that hurt and pain any longer. If there were people in Rwanda truly forgiving acts the world often regards as “unforgivable” then I had to allow God to touch my heart so I could forgive those who had hurt me. That morning, God began to break chains from my life. He started me down a path of letting go, learning to forgive, and healing.
I began to learn true forgiveness doesn’t happen without the presence of God. He is the only one who is truly capable of bringing healing. It was due to Jesus’ death and resurrection that forgiveness is even possible. This made me think if true forgiveness is truly taking place throughout Rwanda than God was very much present and moving in that country. And I wanted to experience and learn from it!
This would set me down a path of pursuing a trip to Rwanda. As time moved on and God continued to work within me I knew it wasn’t just about a trip to learn about forgiveness, but God was calling me to ministry there. God is calling me to learn and explore Rwanda as a whole. He’s calling me to love the people of Rwanda the way He does. I don’t think that is simply for a one time trip, but for the rest of my life. While I don’t know what that will look like I know God is going to show me!
The journey I am on only continues to get better! God has brought incredible healing in my life since that July day in Jinja, Uganda in 2014. I cannot wait to see not only how He continues to shape me as a child of God, but how he wants to use me to love and challenge others! This adventure has barely just begun!
“Forgiveness is the key which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.” -Corrie Ten Boom
If you are interested in reading more about the forgiveness and/or the genocide check out these books:
