Friday-Pastor Deo and Reconciliation Village

Today was amazing. When I woke up this morning, my first thought, my very first thought, was that God picked me up from Shreveport and placed me here. And the day proved it. We started with a trip to see Pastor Deo Gashagaza. Pastor Deo is the founder of Prison Fellowship Rwanda, or PFR. Here's the COOLEST THING EVER! Around Christmas time, The Well got in a new line of slogan t-shirts. Many of you have some of them. One of the ones has a quote Kris had found when researching reconciliation in Rwanda. It's a quote from Pastor Deo! (The orange shirt, if you happen to have it). The shirt has his the quote and then pastor's name on it! And the even cooler thing- we both packed the shirt, so we were able to wear it today when we met him! He is a genuinely joyful man. After he lost all his family in the genocide, 45 in total, he told us he felt sick inside. So he fasted and prayed and fasted and prayed, and God spoke to him. He said it was the first time he'd ever heard the voice of God. God told him to go into the prisons because the murderers needed to learn how to repent and ask for forgiveness. In true Moses-and-the-burning-bush fashion, he said no. But, he says, God said yes, you, you must go. Now. So he went. The prisoners were NOT happy to see him. They wanted to know how he survived the genocide. So they planned there in prison to kill him. But then somebody said no, wait, let's hear his sermon first. Then we'll kill him. So he preached to them about the freedom of forgiveness. And at the end, they were weeping, hugging him. God told him to start going back, and God helped him begin to build relationships, and Pastor Deo led them to find forgiveness from their victims. At first the murderers couldn't believe they would or could ever be forgiven. They were being released from prison and going back home, to the same village with the families of those they had killed. Women they had raped, people missing limbs that these men had cut off, and they were going back to living with these people. Those who admitted their crimes were admitted back into society, and life was expected to move on. But they were still remaining separated, murderers and their victims. Technical restoration into society had happened, but true reconciliation had not. An additional problem was the amount of homelessness. The Hutus burned most of the Tutsis' homes, and those returning from prison most of the time had lost homes during their time in prison. This gave Pastor Deo an idea.

Reconciliation Village. A village built by Hutus and Tutsis together. Working together would be necessary. And it would be a brand new village. It worked. In the district of Bugesera, the first area where major killing started, a new village was built. They named it Mbyo. We visited Mbyo, and sat down with some genocide murderers in a pretty area under some trees with yellow flowers. Long poles were used to make a defining boundary, like a canopy bed without a canopy. Long narrow benches were brought out for us, and we sat down with some of the killers, as well as some victims who came to talk to us as well.

The first one stood up and politely welcomed us to his village. He had killed 45 people, including many family members of the woman sitting next to him on the bench. She had a quiet, peaceful, sweet face, and held a baby boy who was SO cute and plump, about five months old. She watched the murderer talk, her face giving no sign of her thoughts. The man , stooped a little now with age, explained that he had actually begun killing before the official start of the genocide- the government told them if they killed the Tutsis in their town they could take their cars and bikes and goats and cows for plunder. So they killed. The genocide started some time after that, and he kept killing. When the RPF army won back the country, he was sent to prison for nine years. Now he has reconciled with the victims and lives here in reconciliation village. He sat down to let the next killer speak to us, and I saw something then that brought tears to my eyes. A few minutes into the next killer's "testimony", the baby in the woman's arms reached for the first man who had spoken, now sitting back next to the woman. He grinned, took the baby in his lap, and I watched as the baby played with the face and hair of the man who had killed so many of his family. Reconciliation indeed.

They showed us around afterwards, around their village. The homes, mud bricks covered with cream colored cement, were plain, simple, and functional. 45 homes were in this village, with a litte over 300 living there. There are now 5 villages like this one, built by and for genocide perpretrators and victims to live side by side. Kris voiced what we all were thinking when we got back that night. He said it was such a gut check for him to think about how he felt he hadn't truly forgiven some people, yet these people forgave because they said God gave them the strength and the command to do so. And not only did they forgive, they reconciled. The quote on the orange shirt from Pastor Deo says it best: "Reconciliation is not a philosophy. It is a practice."