We were out beyond Nyanza, Rwanda in a small village with over sixty genocide orphans and some really neat things were going on.  I started to clap after a choral had sang some songs.  Charles, my good friend and founder of Xtra Mile ministries, leaned over and said, “You can’t clap during the time of mourning.”

I was dumbfounded.  It made sense because of the aims of this time in Rwanda of remembering the victims from the genocide, but it kind of became like that moment when you were laughing in church and your mom reached over and thumped you telling you with that look that this was unacceptable and then it was impossible to stop.  I wanted to clap.  Here were orphans of the genocide standing before me having seen their parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and siblings hacked to death before their very eyes singing beautiful songs of healing and God’s mercy.  I wanted to clap, but no, I obeyed the rules and didn’t.

You can, though.  You aren’t here right now.  Clap for these brave young men and women who have continued on.  Many of them are outperforming their peers in school and are having to fulfill all family roles for each other while bearing the physical and emotional scars of the tragedy of fifteen years past.  They have bad days, don’t get me wrong, but they still know how to smile, sing, pray, and be thankful for life even in all their confusion and trauma.

It was a great Easter weekend and although I am tire of hearing, reading, writing, and speaking Ikinyarwanda, it seems I was able to cross a threshold of sorts and am finally, after three months more comfortable.  I was able to preach and give devotionals through the weekend without translation and was so thankful to God that he has made me able to speak other languages in order to share his love.  That is definitely not worth clapping about though.

My heart was broken yet again as we visited the worst of all the memorials as I have been told.  This memorial near Nyamagabe was a technical school where around fifty thousand were killed and later the French soldiers of Operation Turqouise played volleyball by the still open mass graves.  You can see a sight with many photos from it, but I warn you it is very graphic and disturbing.  http://homepage.mac.com/stevesimonphoto/Murambi%20Memorial/index.html

We met with those orphans on Easter Sunday and I definitely wanted to clap for them.  By God’s grace they have come so far in the last fifteen years, but they bear the telling signs of the journey in their tired looks and solemnity.  They smiled, though, as I stumbled through my sermon, even encouraging me with amens and thank yous.  They smiled when we handed out T-shirts, calculators, and dictionaries for those who performed well in school and they smiled as we ate a meager lunch of one meat pie, two pieces of bread and a soda of their choice.

So, as you pray for Rwanda and those scarred by the genocide, please remember the orphans here and lift them up so they can hear the applause of heaven.