Portions of this story were related by Elder Terrence M. Vinson of the Presidency of the Seventy during the First Presidency Christmas Devotional Broadcast on December 2, 2018. The full story was published in the Africa West Area Local Pages in the January 2019 edition of Liahona, the international magazine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
My father’s name is Jean de Dieu Nsanzurwimimo. He was born in 1961 in Rwanda’s Western Province. He married my mom, Emmeline Mukamusonera, in 1981, after they met in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city.
My parents came from very different backgrounds; my father was a member of Rwanda’s majority ruling Hutu tribe and my mother is from the Tutsi tribe. In Rwanda when they were growing up, there was an extended civil war and a long-simmering conflict between the two tribes. This animosity led extremist groups of Hutus to promote the ideology that all the Tutsi people living in Rwanda should be killed.
I was born on January 1, 1994, just four months before a series of events led to a catastrophic genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi population, led by Hutu extremists who took over the government. During a 100-day period from April 7 until mid-July, nearly one million Rwandans were brutally killed, including as many as 70% of the Tutsi population.
Even before the 1994 Tutsi genocide, many leaders of the Hutu tribe taught that a Hutu man married to a Tutsi woman should be required to kill her and all her family to show his allegiance to his tribe. Because of those teachings, and to better protect his family, my father moved his wife and children to a small village near Cyangugu, in the far southwestern corner of Rwanda. Even in that small village, the majority Hutu villagers spurned and rejected my mother because she was a Tutsi. But my father continued to protect us. In 1993, when the tension and genocide ideology increased, she was pregnant with me and caring for my three older sisters. Because it was known that she was a Tutsi, our family didn’t have many friends and it was dangerous every time she had to fetch water or go to the market. It was a very difficult time for her, but always my father was on her side, protecting her and taking care of his family.
During this time, there were constant meetings in the community where the locals were given machetes and guns and trained how to kill the Tutsis. Every week they had a community meeting. In March 1994, my father attended a town meeting where it was announced that Hutu men married to a Tutsi woman would be required to kill her and all their children. It was a hard time for them. Some of the men and some of the women who were Hutus did kill their children.
In a meeting in early April, my father was ordered to kill my mother and his four daughters. At the time I was only four months old and my three sisters were twelve, seven and two. When he came home from the meeting around 6:00pm, it was very dark because there were no street lights at the time. He immediately took us to a small island, located in the southern part of Lac Kivu, a large lake dividing Rwanda and Congo. He told my mom that the villagers had determined that we were supposed to die, so we should hide in that place; he was going back home to find a safe place for us. He told her that if she saw any boats, she should ask them if they would carry us over to Congo where we would be safe from the Rwandan genocide. She was able to find someone willing to take us across to Congo, where we spent the next five months, until the peace was restored in Rwanda and it was safe to return.
All the while in Congo, and after we came home, we didn’t know what had happened to my father. When we came back we didn’t see anything; they didn’t allow us to enter the house where we had lived, and we were told everything that belonged to my father had been sold. It was a very hard time for my mom. We didn’t have a house to stay in. We didn’t have anything to eat. We went to the Seventh-Day Adventist chapel, where we slept for a whole week. After that my mother carried all of us to town where she learned we could get small help from the new government.
In 2003, nine years after the violence ended, the government created a reconciliation program called ‘gacaca’ to help resolve the hard feelings from the killings. As part of the process, people who had killed others during the genocide confessed and asked for forgiveness. Through gacaca, we came to know that that my father’s family members, after they looked everywhere for us and could not find us, had killed him. My mother and my eldest sister attended the hearing where my father’s family members asked for our forgiveness and they forgave them. They told my mother that they had thrown his body into the river after killing him, so we were never able to locate his body. Because I was so young at the time he saved us, I have no recollections of my father; I don’t know his face.
When I met with the missionaries it was hard for them to tell me how God loves me and that he is my Father in Heaven. I did come to understand that because of the Plan of Salvation, I will meet my father once more. Because of my faith in the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2013.
My mother continued to struggle to raise the four of us herself. She had many health and stomach problems and for much of the time she suffered, she was not able to go to the hospital because she was a Tutsi. She finally passed away on 16 June 2016 from what was discovered to be cancer. She knew I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. She believed that I had become part of a big family. She blessed me and said I was doing the right thing. She always taught me and my sisters to love one another and to serve one another. She said our father suffered himself to allow us to live. She said we should always work hard; it would make our father happy.
I know this gospel is true. I know I will see my family again. I know my father sacrificed his life to allow me to have this life today and I am very anxious to meet him once more and thank him for his wonderful sacrifice.
I was thrilled to receive the privilege to serve as a missionary, starting in August 2017. My mission allows me to teach the joy of the gospel to families around me. One of the greatest blessings the Lord has given me since I have been on my mission is that two of my sisters have joined the Church. One of my greatest ambitions after I complete my mission is to do the temple work for my parents so that our family can be sealed for eternity.
The Plan of Salvation can bring happiness in this life and eternal joy in the life hereafter. I know this to be true in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
