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A gripping reminder of the horror that happened on April 7, 1994, and for 100 days thereafter in the tiny African country of Rwanda, appeared on Public Television’s Front Line program titled “Ghosts of Rwanda.”
On April 6, the plane bringing two presidents back to Rwanda from the Arusha Peace Conference was shot down just before landing in Kigali. That was the signal for the beginning of the methodical, step-by-step killing—by not only Interhamwe militia and Hutu government troops—but by neighbors, co-workers, family members, and even pastors—of 800,000 to 1,000,000 minority Tutsis in the tiny country of Rwanda.
Arthur with a young man who attended the retreat for youth leaders in Cyangugu, Rwanda, February, 2004.
It was a carefully planned murdering of anyone who was a Tutsi or a Tutsi sympathizer. The Front Line story was told through the experience of General Romeo Dellaire, the Canadian Commander of the UN Peace Keeping Force that was in Kigali at the time. He was ordered by Kofi Anan to do nothing. At the time, TIME magazine reported Dellaire as saying, “I came to Christ in Rwanda because I met the Devil there.” However, the awful sense of failure at being forbidden to stop the genocide broke his heart and drove him to alcohol and suicide attempts back in Canada.
The church itself was complicit in the genocide. Many pastors invited Tutsi parishioners to seek the protection of the church buildings—only to lock them in when they got there and proceed to their killing.
Responsible pastors are, in several instances, still at large. And now another genocide looms to the north in Sudan and the question to us is, “Will the white West again turn its back on its brothers in Africa?”
It was World Vision’s President, Robert Seiple, who, after seeing the bodies floating down the river of Rwanda to Lake Victoria, determined his organization must do something to try to bring healing to that land. Out of his deep concern, a partnership was proposed—of World Vision US, World Vision International, and the Pilgrim Center for Reconciliation (PCR)—to find a way to heal Rwanda.
The result is the seven-year ministry of the Pilgrim Center in Rwanda, and its neighbor countries of Burundi and eastern Congo. The target was church pastors, youth leaders, and women leaders. Because of its complicity, the Church itself has needed to be healed, restored, and brought back to it role of moral leadership to that heart-broken, fear-laden society. To date, more than 4,000 people in Rwanda and Burundi have gone through PCR healing retreats. Another 125 have been trained to conduct PCR retreats. Three national coordinators oversee PCR retreats which are held throughout the year.
The quiet work—with 12 to 20 people at a time—has begun to break down both ethic and denominational barriers in the church and, so, set its leaders free to serve in a whole new way as healed people.
Several NACCC churches have come forward to help support this mission of deep healing that is bringing hope and restored life to these African countries that have borne such sorrow, and are finding hope now, and a new way to live, in peace, with faith.
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