Kigali: July 21

July 21

Dana Hicks, my pastor, was in Rwanda at the end of June. He met up with a couple who has been in Rwanda for 6 months. Before I left Nampa for Africa Dana helped me connect with Lindsay and Blake Berry. I learned they are Nazarene Missionaries and they are planning on spending 2 years in Rwanda and Congo. Blake‘s main job is to set up compute centers so that pastors can get theological education online. What a cool task! Lindsay is finding her job too but her work is coming more slowly. She has been connecting with the Nazarene Youth and next week is speaking at the youth camp.

Lindsay and I met at a coffee shop. Lindsay showed me around the city a little and then we met her husband at a nice western restaurant. We talked all afternoon. They showed me their home and the Nazarene compound. We made plans to meet on Friday when they are going to take me to visit some of our pastors in Butare. We are going to meet with a District Superintendent.

Today I changed my return travel plans to Kampala. The bus experience was so good on the way here. However I’ve decided to fly back. I decided to fly on Sunday (instead of returning on Saturday) because Friday is going to be such a long day. I’m hoping Saturday will be a recover day. I just can not see having 2 long travel days in a row and ten jumping right into the last part of my trip with GAP. I also learned that Saddie, who was my travel companion on the bus ride here, had a huge incident on her attempt to return to Kampala by bus. She was in a head on collision on the bus. She had to climb out of the window. No one was hurt and the bus company sent for everyone and returned them back to Kigali. Oh my! So my decision to fly on Sunday feels really good! I’ve had my bus adventure for this trip and we’ll leave it at that.

After leaving Lindsay and Blake I returned to Philbert’s home. I had dinner with Sophie and Philbert. We talked more about forgives and reconciliation. Philbert has a wealth of experience working with people who have experienced conflict. I find it so easy to over romanticize the work that he does. It just amazes me that people who lost family members can become reconciled with those that killed their family. It is beautiful. Philbert said that in the last 10 years he has done his workshops with 23,000 people. And only 5,000 of those have been able to forgive and/or be forgiven. He talked about how hard it is for people. He said that the power to forgive only comes from God and that he can not judge those who cannot forgive and be reconciled because it is just too hard. It is too hard for so many to live in the same community with those who took their families from them. Philbert helped me see both the difficulties of forgiveness but also he helped me gain a perspective of how needed the work he is doing is. There are still so many people in Rwanda who are living with the pain and trauma of 1994.

As we talked Philbert said, “Julene I have an analogy I want to share with you.” I love that I’ve felt like a student in his home. : ) He explained that in Africa most snakes have poisonous venom. If a snake bites you it infects you with poison. When infected you need to get to a doctor to get help. If you don’t get help, the venom inside of you could very well kill you. He said, “What if you were to kill the snake after it bit you?” “Would that save your life?” “What if instead of getting help from the doctor you kept wishing and planning how you were going to kill or make the snake’s life miserable?” “ It wouldn’t save your life!” “In fact it would kill you because the venom would take its course in such a way that life would end.” What a good way of talking about how holding onto hatred and ill feelings for people kills us. It might not actually make our heart stop beating, however, it steals life from us. And it does!

Sometimes we spend so much time plotting how we are going to kill the snake instead of taking care of the venom that is working to kill us. Forgiveness doesn’t turn the snakes bite into an acceptable act. Forgiveness in no way condones the wrong doing. But it frees us from the poison. And getting rid of the poison can also be a very painful journey! God is needed to help in the journey towards forgiveness.

It was a great evening! I wish I could listen to Philbert tell stories all night!