The Power To Forgive

Dear Grace,
           I've just finished the most incredible book. It's the kind of book you can't put down until you're finished with it, and then afterward you can't stop thinking about it. It's really changed my life, and it's really made me take a look at myself religiously and realize that I need to be better. This book is called Left To Tell, the true story about a Tutsi woman named Immacule Ilibagiza, who was one of the few Tutsis to survive the Rwandan holocaust. I don't know how much you know about the Rwandan holocaust, but I'll give you a brief background on that story. Rwanda is a small country in Africa Where two tribes of people live: the Tutsis and the Hutus. In 1993, a horrible war broke out, and all Hutus were ordered to wipe out the entire race of the Tutsis. To literally wipe them from the face of the earth. They killed almost a million people in just 100 days. That's like ten thousand deaths each day. 416 each hour. Six people each minute. The amount of killings is just staggering. Immacule talks about how her neighbors and family friends turned against her and her family because they were Tutsis, and how people she had grown up with and gone to school with had taken up machetes and killed family, merely because they were Tutsis. Immacule escaped by going to a Hutu minister's home, where he hid her and seven other women in a tiny 3' by 4' bathroom within the minister's bedroom. They hid the door to the bathroom with a wardrobe. They were so well hidden that even the minister's family didn't know that they were hiding there. She and these seven other women hid in there for three months. Never bathing, eating only when the minister could sneak food to them, and only able to flush the toilet when someone else flushed a toilet in the house. And never, ever able to leave the bathroom, for fear of discovery.
           She tells of how the Hutus were constantly coming to the house to search for them, and how they would tear the house apart while they searched. During these times, she tells of how she spent her time in intense prayer. I can't even describe it, but the way she prayed, she prayed with all the intensity and energy and strength of her being. She prayed for hours until she was sweating and exhausted. The killers never did find their hiding place, but she talks about how, having nothing else to do in the bathroom in absolute silence, she would spend every waking moment in prayer, and she describes this amazing relationship she developed with God. Again, I can't describe just how touching and incredible this relationship she developed was, so you'll just have to read it to see for yourself.
           When she finally got out of the bathroom, she relied on God to get her to safety. The killings were over, but there were still many Hutus (she calls them Interahamwe) who were everywhere, still killing Tutsis at every chance they got. And yet, despite terrifying circumstances and obstacles along the way, by putting her complete and absolute trust in God, she always miraculously made it to safety. The most important thing that she talks about in her book is learning how to forgive. She talks about how in her prayers (she's Catholic) she would recite the prayer "...and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us..." and she talks about how she just couldn't bring herself to say that part of the prayer because she just couldn't forgive the killers for what they had done. They had murdered everyone in her family, her Father, Mother, and two of her brothers, Damascene, and Vianney. As she was in that bathroom, she asked God to open her heart to his light and love, and to help her learn how to forgive. Again it's just the most remarkable story, and you would just have to read it to understand it at all, but at the end of the book, after the holocaust is over and she is free, she goes to a prison where they are keeping war criminals for their mercilous killings and finds the man who led the party who murdered her family. When she finally meets him, she takes him by the hands, looks him right in the eyes with love and says, "I forgive you."
            How someone could learn to forgive someone of something of that magnitude I'll never know, but I do know that without God it's not possible. In order to become as Christlike as she, you have to do as she did, and open your whole heart to the Lord and let him heal you and replace the darkness with his light. After seeing things through her eyes, one has to wonder how there could be any hate in the world for any reason, if we could have such a vast capacity for forgiveness as Immacule? Her story has had a profound effect on me, and I've decided that I want to do everything within my power to become more like her, to become more forgiving, more Christlike.
            How do I transition from that serious note!? Well I'll just move on to the stuff I've been up to recently. Well, Mom and I went down to Cedar City and picked out my new apartment and signed the contract for it. I'm so excited to move out and get out on my own! It's a really nice place, and I'll be sharing it with three other girls. We'll all each have our own rooms, and there's a full-equipped kitchen and a big living room and a laundry room, so I'll pretty much be living in the lap of luxury. I'll miss Mom and Dad so much when I'm gone, but it'll be so nice to get out of the house and get out on my own. I'm hoping that I'll get normal roommates who won't keep me up until two AM and steal all my food and leave a mess everywhere they go. I'm determined to be a good roommate, and I'm going to keep my room clean and organized as much as possible, and I'm going to clean the kitchen and the bathroom I'll be sharing every week. Another thing I'm determined about is keeping the apartment smelling good. I've walked through a few apartments that nearly made me gag with how horrible they smelled. And if I could smell it, you know it had to be bad (what with my no sense of smell and all). So I'm going to do my laundry once a week and wash my sheets every other week and vacuum the living room and my room and burn candles and keep air fresheners in my room (I know this sounds a bit over the top, but it's what Mom does to keep our house smelling so nice, so it can't hurt to do it on my own).
           Another thing I'm determined to start doing once I'm down there is to cook a good meal every Sunday. I don't know if I'll actually follow through on this one, but I'd like to try and get up and make breakfast for my roommates every Sunday. Mind you, I'm not going to pull out my chef hat and go crazy, but I think it would be nice to give everyone something to look forward to. Plus, I've come to find that you can make a lot of friends very fast when you make good food, so I'm making Mom teach me all of her little cooking tricks so I'll have some recipes in my head to use once I'm down there.
           I forgot to tell you about our little adventure while we were down in Cedar! So I donated blood the day before, right? Well, when I got up the next day to get ready I felt kind of sick and weak, and I ended up having to lie back down while I was getting ready. I didn't think anything of it though because I sometimes get sick in the morning because of my blood sugar. So anyway, we drove all the way down to Cedar, no problem, but the minute I got out of the car, I almost fell over, and I had to hold on to the car to stay standing. I'm still not sure why I was so dizzy, but in any case I ended up having to hang on to Mom for the rest of the day every time we had to go walk somewhere because the dizziness wouldn't go away. So I guess this means I should probably drink a lot more before I donate blood next time, haha.
           Another great thing about the apartment is that it's pretty much within walking distance of a bunch of stores, and the school is about a fifteen minute walk away. It'll be great because I'll have my car, my bike, and my legs to get me from A to B. I'll be going through a LOT less gas too, because I'll be driving so infrequently, so that should help keep the empty feeling out of my wallet.
           Well I'm rambling, I know, but I'm just so excited about getting my own place! Plus I can't really think about anything else I could write about. Oh! I did get some of my senior pictures back the other day, and those turned out really good, so I'll try sending you a couple of those if I can.
           And now I'll end this letter with a cool story and call it good. So I bore my testimony on Fast Sunday about that experience I wrote about in my last letter, right? Well, after sacrament meeting, I was amazed at the number of people who approached me and told me never to think that about myself and how much they loved me and admired me. I never knew that people thought those things about me! I'm still puzzling over it. Then, after church I got a phone call from Sister Clark, and she gave me a little pep talk and told me never to lose heart and that she'd be my personal cheerleader if I would ever need it. People are so kind and considerate sometimes, and it always amazes me when people so freely reach out like that. It gives me hope.
           Well that's it for this letter, I love you and I miss you!
Love always, Katie Jo