Not like the Memorial Day Meeting! (Sunday, May 24th)

On Sunday, I woke up early to go to the local church. I knew the service was in the native language, but I wanted to experience that part of the culture. (Kelsie G. I wore your favorite purple skirt that you picked out for me :)
In Rwanda, many of the people Catholic. The cathedral we went to was beautiful! It was a present from Belgium. Church started at 7:00 AM so we were early risers. Now, I don't know how the Catholic services in America work, so I was especially was confused when I didn't even understand the language here in Rwanda. There was a lot of singing, standing, kneeling, and sitting during the worship. You could tell the visitors were confused! ha. The service was about two hours long, and since I didn't understand anything I had a lot of time to sit and reflect. Being in a completely different church like that really made me miss my home church. It was especially hard because this weekend was the Memorial Day meeting at Smart Road, and I really wanted to be there. I talked to my parents and Drew the night before so I got to hear how excited they were for the meeting. During the service, I reflected on how much I love the fellowship of our local congregations. I wish there was more, but I appreciate what we have. I have met some of my best friends through church and I am really thankful for that. It makes the friendship easy because you have the same morals and values which makes relating to each other easy on a whole different level. Being away from the Church of Christ service and fellowship for three weeks has been difficult. I'm excited I come back on a Saturday night so I can see everyone next Lord's Day...Lord willing.

After church, we went to Murambi Genocide Memorial. There was a school almost finished being built in the town right before the 1994 Genocide. During the Genocide, the local church leaders and the government told the Tutsi people to take refuge in the unfinished school. For two weeks, there were between 40,000-60,000 people there. They were told they would have water, but someone cut the waterlines. The people starved during those two weeks. Then the Hutu rebels took over the school. They surrounded the school so the Tutsi could not run. The Hutu had guns, machetes, and grenades. The people in hiding had nothing to fight with. They tried to fight with stones and whatever they could. Sadly, there efforts did not last long against the weapons. All of but 4 individuals died in the attack. The tour was strange because the guide didn't really tell us the “story” before the tour. The tour consisted of walking the grounds and the worst part was looking in the buildings. The Hutu buried the victims in mass graves. A year later, people extracted the bodies and then they started to preserve them. When we looked in the buildings we saw bodies that had decomposed for a year and then they were preserved. There were 1000's of men, women, children, and babies bodies laying in front of me. It was so sad because some still had hair on top of their heads. The sight was disturbing, but I just tried to picture these bodies as people who died for a pointless cause.
When we finished our tour, we met one of the four survivors. He then told us his story. His story made the event so much for real for us to picture. To make a long story short, this man went outside to fight with his friends and when he went back inside he found his wife and 5 children murdered. The man was then shot in the head and fell to the ground. While he was on the ground, dead bodies fell on top of him. This eventually saved his life. I don't know how he survived being shot in the head, but some how he made it to another country, received medical treatment, came back to Rwanda to testify what happened, and is now a worker at the memorial. It was an incredible story.
When we finally returned back to Kigali, we went to the Principal of Fawe Girls' School house. It was so nice of them to invite over 15 strangers to their house and to feed us. Yesterday was Josh's birthday (a boy from ISU that is on the trip) Before we ate, they turned off the lights and brought out a cake and sang to Josh for his birthday. It was so nice! We had dinner and chatted for a bit, and then we all went around and said what we appreciated about Rwanda. It was a touching night. I can't really describe in words what the night was like, but it was something I think everyone will remember.