My Adventure Part VII: Sunday

The view of beautiful Rwanda from the Genocide Memorial

The next day was Sunday so we got ready and headed to church. I really enjoyed going to church and meeting so many wonderful people. Many of them know my dad from the many times he has attended that branch and when they met me they thought that I had been there before and that they knew me too! They must have thought I was my mom or something...

Some things that stuck out to me about church were:
1. They had an electric piano, but they didn't use it. I assumed that no one knew how to play it. So when they sang hymns the chorister would sing the first line a capella and then the congregation would join in starting at the very beginning. I'm so glad we don't do that here. I'm not very good at starting on the right note!
2. The first 2 rows were children. There were no adults sitting with them. They weren't eating snacks. They weren't playing with toys. They weren't colouring in colouring books. And they were quite reverent too. I think to not have those distractions made church even more reverent overall. How do I have that here with my kids? My dad told me that the primary president's kids go around the neighborhood before church and invite all the children they can. These kids stay for the full 3 hours!

After sacrament meeting, Dr. Sorensen took Jenna and I to the Genocide Memorial while my dad stayed for the rest of church and met with some people afterward. Words can't even describe this memorial. It was educational, but very heart wrenching. We were there for about 2 hours and I could have stayed even longer. There was just so much to take in. There were mass graves there and they are still finding bodies to put in them over 17 years later! There is a room that has people's clothes on display, and people's bones and skulls, a room that is full of pictures of the people who were killed during the 100 days. It is estimated that over 900,000 people were killed in that time. And then there is a wing dedicated to the children who were killed during the genocide. I think this is the part that hit me the most. The people who conducted the killing during the genocide did not care about gender or age. They killed babies. Sweet little innocent babies... I think that room will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Looking into the mass graves

Rwanda has come such a long way since the genocide. They no longer have identification cards that tell whether they are Tutsi or Hutu. It is actually illegal to ask someone what group they belong too. These people can tell by looking at each other though. It's amazing to think that both groups were sitting together in church! What a testimony of forgiveness and moving forward. I am sure it is still hard for them and that things aren't so perfect as they may seem to an onlooker such as I. That makes it even more amazing that the country is the way it is today. What a tragedy to bounce back from.

The rest of Sunday was spent just hanging out in my hotel room, getting some rest. I was still quite ill and being at church and the memorial was fairly agonizing. My rest did wonders and I was felt pretty good for the rest of my trip!