Currently, I am sitting at an Internet Café in the Amsterdam airport in The Netherlands catching up on emails and details while only half way home from Rwanda...a world to which I long to return...

Altered Within

While there...I was radically altered in history's crossfire somewhere between heaven's mercy and a people decimated by genocide's blow... My prior arrival into Rwanda brought me face-to-face with a hellish reality perpetrated against a once unified people, with weapons forged with hatred's hammer on aggressions anvil... This reality, birthed in the shadows elitism, exploitation, and extermination was thrust upon the defenseless by those powerful for the purpose of godless position and gain. Genocide's dark foundation, clandestinely created behind democracy's doors, had been carefully constructed with sling stones of disrespect, deceit, and devastation quarried from death's domain and perpetrated against a once peaceful people who were silently invaded, colonized, identified, divided, and murdered without remorse. Those fallen among the masses, estimated at over a million souls; included tribal chiefs, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends once numbered among the Rwanda's once majestic people. Amid the massacre...overseeing nations, armies, and multi-national (UN) forces looked on turning a blind without intervention as those purposely trained in wholesale execution killed the unsuspecting with machetes, axes, and knives either leaving the dead lay or heaping them in mass graves... It was to this Rwandan people...a people raped by radicalism...exploited by elitism...isolated by indoctrination...plundered by power...and set one against another prior to eventual intervention and subsequent reconciliation...to whom I was sent in Jesus' name...

Transition

After speaking to many leaders and laymen in multiple venues while in Rwanda over the course of eight (8) days between flights...we made our way from the city of Gisenyi on Congo's border back to Kigali...Rwanda's capital...where most of the team flew out yesterday one day before me. As a result, I was privileged to spend the night with members of Eric's family awaiting my next day departure. While there, I was treated like royalty, given a nice room to myself in their home, and gained a much needed night's rest before rising to breakfast the next morning. Once showered, dressed, and on the other side of a cup of rich Rwandan coffee...my host loaded me in the car delivering me to an Internet Café to check-in for my flight before navigating the path toward one of Rwanda's largest Genocide Museum sites. Upon our arrival there, we went inside, gathered information, and stepped into our self-guided tour together before descending a long flight of cold stone steps toward the mass grave vaults in which the remains of nearly 300,000 Genocide victims had been gathered to date.

Descending into Heartache

With each downward step toward the vaults...tears welled up in my eyes, a somber air settled over my spirit, and grief gripped my soul. As my friend and I made our way along side of one of the vaults...he collapsed against the railing and wept... Turning to me, his face stained by tears, we locked eyes as I put my arms around him and we wept together. Between sobs...he said, I lost 36 people in my family including my mom, brothers, cousins, and children...and still...we do not know where they are...they have never been found. We just stood there...speechless...wrapped in each other's arms...weeping. I was pierced to my core by the impact of hell's devastation within the tender heart of man whose world one day plummeted from tribal honor into emptiness through the heartless machete blows inflicted by those once called friends... After an extended stint, we regained our composure to a degree before continuing onward through even more disturbing displays telling of the Genocide's instigators, propagandists, and executioners...the murderous training they received and the weapons they used...graphic photos of slain victims piled in heaps...pictures of those still missing...all before...leading us to glass cases filled with mature and adolescent skulls and leg bones. Station-by-station...we cried our way through the tour before finally emerging out the other end indescribably wrecked within... How...simply how...can human beings descend to such barbarism as was necessary to maim friends, rape mothers, dash children against walls, and torture the innocent before systematically killing them with a single targeted machete blow to the skull capable of inflicting instant death...how? It is to this people...a people determined to forgive, to rise, and to overcome hell's bid for their lives and nation...I was sent. The setting was surreal as I found myself speaking to different audiences comprised of people sitting next to a brother or friend who had killed members of their family...now sitting side-by-side at peace through Christ-empowered forgiveness. As I stood and spoke in the presence of greatness...I was truly humbled and arrested by their genuine grasp of unconditional love, compassion, and selfless honor focused on rebuilding a great nation for the glory of God.

Flashback

As I sit here in Amsterdam...a city known for decadence and unbridled freedoms...my heart, mind, and thoughts are gripped by those I met, all I saw, breakthroughs which occurred, and the radical alteration incited within me... To the everyday American...such a story seems more like a detached fictional narrative...than reality. Why? Because most allow themselves to wander in idle notions, distorted perceptions, wayward desires, and selfish ambitions wholly divorced from mankind's recurring potential to destroy his own. In many cases, things prevail over people...self over others...power over principle...provocation over peace...and malice over mercy as those created in God's image devour or destroy their equals for personal gain. No one is immune...not you...not me. To believe so...is delusion. If it were not for the intervening love and transformational power of Jesus Christ...our pathway...which proves we have all gone astray and fallen short of the glory of God...would leave us lacking. In light of all said above...after visiting Rwanda and meeting its people...I will never be the same again. I simply, am in awe of its people... Meanwhile, I have been invited back, in addition to other invitations to Kenya, Uganda, and the Congo. Africa has gripped my heart, mind, and soul as God compels my loving reach to its people...

As I send off this note amid my homeward journey...it appears obvious my face needs a shave, my day old shirt has smelled better days, and that a cup of coffee may revive me long enough to spur me toward my final flight back to America... Interestingly, however, Rwanda feels more like home...

In Christ,

Greg

BattleCry