Sonrise Magazine

By Dr. Stephen List of International Support Ministries

Warning: this story is intense and likely not suitable for children

art by Amy J Heath

It was hot and dry in May. When I arrived in Rwanda, the airport buildings were pitted with bullet holes from years of civil unrest and wars. A young man from the Tutsi Tribe named Michael, who was about the age of 21, met me with a wide smile on his face.

He informed me that he was going to be my interpreter. There was something special about Michael. I asked him what he wanted to do with his life. His face lit up his eyes wide with a vision.

“Oh, brother Steven, I want to be an evangelist just like you,” Michael replied.

After settling in to the Mission House in the city of Gilgally, we began our schedule of ministering in local churches and speaking in outdoor crusades.

One day, Michael took me to a village. More recently, the Hutus had massacred a great number of the Tutsi tribe. Upon entering the village, I noticed there were very few adults. As we were coming upon what looked like a deserted building, I heard songs of praise and worship coming from inside.

Upon entering, we saw only children and strangers: some standing with arms lifted to the heavens in worship, some kneeling in prayer, some walking with songs of praise to God. Michael told me they were praying for their enemies. They had all witnessed the death and mutilation of their parents. These were the only survivors of their families. The sight of these orphans was more than anyone could possibly understand.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, full of compassion and humility for what God was doing in this place. It was truly holy. We prayed and ministered to these great, beautiful orphans and encouraged them in God’s love and grace. Upon returning to the Mission House, I asked Michael about his family and if his parents were still living. He told me he came from a family of seven, but he was the only survivor.

He began to tell me his story.

“One day, the Hutu militia burst into our home and dragged all of us outside. Two soldiers tightly held me to witness what was about to happen to my family. The other soldiers captured my mother, my father, and one older brother, and one older sister, and my baby brother and sister. We were shocked with terror. As my mother was restrained, a man grabbed her breasts and with his machete chopped them off.

“They began to chop at each of my family members’ body parts. Toes and fingers, tongue here and eye there. Our screaming seemed to make them want to chop and torture them more wildly. They held my head and forced me to watch. I wanted to die.

“When they had finally finished what was typical of their kind of warring, they released me and told me I was left alive so that I could tell other Tutsis what the Hutu would do to them also. I could not make my body stop shaking for hours afterward, and my ears would not stop ringing. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t talk as if it were somebody else in my body. I began gathering up the parts belonging to each member in neat piles, digging graves for each of my family.

“As I laid each one in their place of rest, I gave reverence to my Christian parents and brothers and sisters. When I turned to leave my home, I had determined to avenge their deaths, and I went about devising a plan to find the murderers who had changed my life that day. A few days later, I had found a gun with a determination and a strength that was so deep in me that was birthed in hate and bitterness.

“I began to hunt the militia who had continued on the rampage doing to other families what they had done to mine. I tracked them for weeks. It was still daylight when I discovered the militia held up in a house, a good distance from where my life had changed. So filled with rage, I coldly determined to sit out the daylight under a tree. Then, sometime during the night, I would enter the house and shoot each of the men who had dismembered my family.

“Sitting in the hot shade of the tree with intensified rage, beating my soul, and in my head the plotting over and over, the most gruesome way I could avenge my family…I I thought I heard a small voice speak to me.

 “You are no different than they are if you do this.”

“I brushed it off. As the shadow of the tree began to lengthen, I began to sense a presence. There it was again, that quiet voice:

“Michael, I want you to forgive them.”

“I began to cry out, ‘But God, I cannot forgive them.’

“Deep in my belly was this huge ball of hate and anger I could not release. Revenge owned me.

“God again spoke to me:

‘I can do it.’

“In a moment, it felt like a hand began to reach deep inside my stomach and began pulling out a huge ball. I began to vomit and where that ball was once lodged, he began pouring into me his love and forgiveness as I wept in his presence. For hours, all of the mourning for my family was replaced by his love.

“Life began pouring back into my very being. I was being filled with His Spirit of forgiveness and compassion. That ball of anger, hate, and revenge was gone.”

When Michael was telling me this story, the Spirit quickened to me the words of a song I had once heard: “When I couldn’t go to him, he came down to me.”

In the evening breeze, Michael, immersed in God’s overwhelming love, realized the purpose of God’s sparing of his life. The story of God’s power and his love toward His people needed to be shared among the tribes of Rwanda.  He knew God had called him to evangelize. Michael’s determination to finish off the murderous militias had been transformed into the fullness of Christ’s love and compassion for a dying generation.

They know not what they do. Michael realized his family was safe in the arms of God, and that in reality, because of Jesus, they would never be taken away from him. They had eternity to be together. Such freedom and love drenched into his soul. As he prepared to meet the Hutu.

“In the dark of the night,” Michael said, “I felt the power of the Holy Spirit lead me to the door of the house where his soldiers were resting. I knocked on the door. When it opened, I stepped into the house with the gun in my hand.”

“I told the Hutu soldiers, ‘I had come to kill each one of you to avenge my family’s death, but instead, I come to you with forgiveness for what you have done.’ I then told them of my encounter with God at the tree just yards away from this house. Each one of the men in the house began to weep as I shared with them the love of Jesus Christ. Through the night I witnessed to each of the men and all of them experienced the salvation and love of Jesus.”

All praise and glory is God’s forever and ever. Amen.

By Dr. Stephen List