Genocide Survivor Shares Jesus With Killer

Alex Nsengimana was only 6 years old when he and his two siblings survived the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Nearly 1 million other people did not. 

On this episode of GPS: God. People. Stories., Alex shares how he escaped death, discovered eternal life, and forgave the men who acted in violence against him and his family. 

Connect with us through email at gps@billygraham.org or on Facebook at Billy Graham Radio.

If you’d like to know more about beginning a relationship with Jesus Christ, or deepening the faith you already have, visit FindPeacewithGod.net.

If you’d like to pray with someone, call our Billy Graham 24/7 Prayer Line at 855-255-7729.

Transcript

MUSIC STARTS

Alex Nsengimana:
00:00:00 So we came back to our house and we closed all the doors. Then all of a sudden, we heard footsteps around the house. And then knocks on the door and they say, “All of you, if you’re in there, come out.” And we didn’t say a thing. Then they broke the door off, they kicked the door off the house, and then they came inside and said, “All of you get outside and lie down.” They yelled at me and my brother and my sister to go back inside the house.

Jim Kirkland: Alex Nsengimana and his two siblings survived the Rwandan genocide. Nearly 1 million other people did not. You’re going to hear Alex tell how he escaped death … and discovered life on this episode of GPS: God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I’m Jim Kirkland.

After we hear Alex’s story, we’ll hear comments Franklin Graham made while the Rwandan genocide was still going on. At that time, he was part of a Samaritan’s Purse team that was caring for people during the violence. 

Franklin Graham:
00:00:58 You’d go through villages, there was no people, not even a chicken, not even a goat, not even a bird. The villages were there; the people were gone.

Jim: But God was there. And God is with you, no matter what you’re going through. If you’d like to know more, here’s a website to visit: FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net.

Just before we get started, we want to let you know that Alex’s story may be troubling for young listeners. We will be sharing some raw moments from the Rwandan genocide. Listener discretion is advised.

Intro: GPS: God. People. Stories.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Jim: Alex Nsengimana was born in the African nation of Rwanda. He, his older brother, and his younger sister were raised by a loving grandmother in a small village. There, they grew a variety of crops, from bananas and guavas to mangoes and potatoes. Although they didn’t have any modern conveniences, life was good for young Alex … until an April morning in 1994.

Alex:
00:02:07 I remember it very well. As a little boy, I loved watching the sunrise as a little kid. I loved playing in the dirt in the sunrise, so our grandmother—we didn’t have watches—our grandmother told time by shadows, knowing where the sun is. So I remember very specifically that morning, we woke up, me and my brother were playing outside. You know, we live in a small little dirt flow houses, no electricity, no running water, just in, you know, in a village. I woke up that morning specifically and I heard noise from a distance: boom, boom, boom.

Jim: That “boom, boom, boom” was the sound of bombs going off in a distant city. Tribal unrest had been simmering in Rwanda for nearly a hundred years. That morning, it finally blew up.

Alex:
00:03:04 The tribal unrest goes back to 1800s when Rwanda was colonized. And it was during the colonial time that the people of Rwanda were divided in three tribes. The three tribes were the Hutus, the Tutsis, and the Twa people. 

Jim: Alex was identified as a Tutsi.

Alex:
00:03:20 They would measure the length of your nose to figure out what tribe you were. And it was such just so absurd, the way they made this up. They would say, if you’re very tall and you’re slim and you have a pointy nose, you are Tutsi. And if you’re short and muscular built, you’re Hutu. And the Twa tribe was kind of in between. So this initial separating of the people of Rwanda is created. And then, hatred is created between the Hutus and the Tutsis, and that hatred continue to grow in families, in children’s lives.

Jim: The hatred grew to the point that parents would forbid their children from playing with their friends just across the street if their friends were of a different tribe—but the hate would grow far worse.

Alex:
00:04:01 The Rwandan president was assassinated at that time, and that became the spark of this genocide against a Tutsi, where it went on for three months. Three months, a million people were killed, and over 400,000 orphans were left in the country. 

Jim: How that many people could be massacred in such a short period of time is hard to fathom … until you have a better understanding of the tribal division that had been in place since the 1800s.

Alex:
00:04:30 And that division was so ingrained in people’s lives to the point where a neighbor would not see their own neighbor as human being, to the point where ideologies, names, such as cockroaches, were abused so much so that even in the newspapers, you would—it was easy to find on headline news saying, There’s going to be a day cockroaches are going to be crushed.

Jim: The assassination of the Rwandan president served as a type of cue for young Hutu adults. They were being told through all media that it was time to “crush a cockroach”—or, in other words, it was time to kill the Tutsis. 

What’s come to be known as the Rwandan genocide started that morning of April 7, 1994, when Alex heard those “boom, boom, booms” in the distance. 

Alex:
00:05:23 And I remember—this is so bizarre that I still remember to this day—I counted those bombs, those things going off until 21. Then that’s when our neighbor came to us and interrupted us. Our neighbor came out of breath to tell us what was happening: They have started to kill the Tutsis. Do not go anywhere.

Jim: Alex and his family had been planning to walk a few miles to tend to their garden … but that was no longer an option. The region was filled with tribal unrest.

Alex:
00:05:51 We were scared. Our grandmother was way more scared than we were because all these years she had survived all these constant bullying, constant mistreatment in the village because of the tribe that we were. Immediately it’s like a dark cloud came to our grandmother’s face because she knew. All of a sudden, we looked at grandmother, What do you know? What do we do? So immediately we went and hid in our coffee plantation that was very close to our house. 

Jim: Alex and his family weren’t sure if someone was going to come to their house and attack them. They waited and waited … and everything remained quiet. 

Alex:
00:06:30 So we came back to our house and we closed all the doors. Then all of a sudden, we heard footsteps around the house. And then knocks on the door and they say, “All of you, if you’re in there, come out.” And we didn’t say a thing. Then they kicked the door off the house, and then they came inside and said, “All of you get outside and lie down.” They yelled at me and my brother and my sister to go back inside the house, and that’s when they would beat our grandmother to death.

Jim: The attackers used machetes to kill Alex’s grandmother. Machetes were the weapon of choice during the genocide.

Alex:
00:07:03 Me and my brother and my sister, we are literally in shock because we could not fathom that our own neighbor, our own friend, people we considered friends that all of a sudden do this to our family members. They had bought so many machetes. The government had been years and years preparing these machetes, buying machetes, and they distributed them, sticks, clubs, you name it.

Jim: Alex and his family were literally being hunted down. After the group of men who killed their grandmother left, nearly 100 others came looking for their uncle. 

Alex:
00:07:42 They couldn’t find him. We’d hid him under the bed. And so when they were looking everywhere and throwing their weapons under the bed, they couldn’t get to him, so they left. But three days later, three men came back. He said, He is under the bed. Let him get out. And he hesitated to come outside for a little bit. And the last words he said was, Please do not destroy the house because my kids need a place to live.

Jim: Outside the home, the men looked at Alex’s uncle’s identity card which stated he was a Tutsi. Then, they shot him and beat him to death. It was a scene that would give Alex nightmares for years.

Alex:
00:08:19 Again, me and my brother, my sister, thinking, Why are these people doing this to us? Just because we’re different tribe than they were? It was hard to fathom this. But again, it was also a miracle that I was not seeing at that time: They had no reason to spare our lives. We were at the mercy of God because if they had a bad day, they could have killed all of us. 

Jim: Alex and his siblings were left with one uncle, and uncle managed to bribe the militias for a week until he had no money left to use to bribe them. Then he told Alex and his siblings to leave the village and make the hour-and-a-half walk to the city to stay with their aunt.

Alex:
00:08:57 As we walk to the village, we come to roadblocks. Roadblocks have militias. They call us over and they would say, Turn around. They have guns in their hands. And so we thought they were going to take our lives. So we would start crying and crying, and then they would say, Just keep walking. Miracle that they will never bother touching us. Eventually we make it to our aunt’s house, and at our aunt’s house, it got better a little bit, but it was also getting worse because a lot of—the genocide started out in the outskirts, and so everybody was running towards the city. 

Jim: In fact, at his aunt’s house, Alex lived with 19 family members who were seeking refuge. To survive and protect their family, Alex’s aunt and her husband sold local beer made from bananas. One day, a man who came for a drink snuck into the backyard and saw Alex and his family.

Alex:
00:09:48 He has different intentions. He takes his gun. And in that process of loading his gun, his magazine fell out of the weapon. And so when he was bent over trying to reload, my aunt’s husband came in the backyard and he asked the guy, What are you trying to do with my family? And the guy said, Oh, I was just playing with him. He was not there to joke around, because if his weapon would’ve been loaded instantly, I will not be on this podcast. 

Jim: The tribal unrest got worse in the city and Alex and his family were forced to run for their lives ... along with thousands of other people.

Alex:
00:10:19 Everybody’s running, because the people who came to stop the genocide are chasing out the militias. We refugees are caught in the middle. Gunshots all over the place. So we get into this valley, and I hear a noise from a distance. And, this noise was getting louder and it’s getting closer. And, all of a sudden, I slipped and fell down to the ground. When I fell, that noise missed my head by an inch, and that was a bullet that missed my head because I had slipped and fell in a cow pie. Now, that is just nasty because I never thought I’d be telling people that God used a cow pie to save my life, but He did. He can use anything. 

Jim: The Rwandan genocide officially ended on July 19, 1994—nearly one hundred days after it began. The next year, Alex’s aunt placed him and his brother in an orphanage because her health was failing and her husband had died. Alex’s sister was too old for an orphanage, so she went to live with friends. It was at the orphanage where Alex received … a shoebox. 

Alex:
00:11:21 I will never forget as I opened my shoebox gift, seeing a hair comb that I would keep for the next three years. Now, the other item that was such a favorite item of mine was an item that cannot longer go in the shoeboxes: a candy cane. I had no idea what a candy cane was, so I ate the candy cane with the wrapper on it.

Jim: The shoebox was from Operation Christmas Child, an outreach of Samaritan’s Purse, the sister ministry of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Receiving those gifts in the shoebox helped Alex be a young boy again, even as he and the other 250 children in the orphanage tried to process the trauma they’d experienced. 
Alex:
00:12:05 One day, the orphanage director would give us a piece of paper as a form of therapy. And then would say, All of you guys, you need to draw. This is an art time. So we would draw. Kids would draw people without legs, people without arms because that’s what they remember seeing through the genocide, all these horrific images. So we get this shoebox gift from Operation Christmas Child, and we get that coloring book, that water paint. So we’re coloring with our colored pencils; we’re tracing that little Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, little elephant, and the animals, the fun. It was—that process was taking all those horrific images, replacing it with the fun items from our coloring books. It was so powerful that it reminded us to be kids. And then it didn’t stop there, though. The orphanage director used that opportunity to share with us about Jesus Christ, the greatest gift of all. And personally, a seed was planted.

Jim: Although Alex didn’t accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior that day, the Lord was working in his life. Another organization came to the orphanage called the African Children’s Choir. They chose 12 of the kids to go to Uganda to learn English, and Alex was one of them. He was 9 years old.

Alex:
00:13:19 I’m so vulnerable that if any kind of religion would have come to give me hope, I would’ve grabbed on it. I was searching for hope. And I’m in Uganda, and I’m—they’re starting to teach us about Jesus Christ, about the Bible. 

Jim: Alex already knew about God because his grandmother regularly took him and his siblings to church. But, when she was killed right in front of his eyes, Alex’s faith was shattered. 

Alex:
00:13:46 And so I’m asking, Does God love me? So as I was reading the Bible, it would say that we are all created in the image of God. God loves us so much so that He would send His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for us. Then in my mind, I’m thinking, How can a God who loved me that much watch where my grandmother and my uncle being killed? I never knew my father and my mother passed away of HIV/AIDS when I was very little. Why would He take away the most important people in my life? And if He loved everybody in this world, send His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for all the kids, all His children that He created in this world, why would He then watch while a million of His children are being literally butchered to death? That I could not fathom, that I could not understand.

Jim: Alex became bitter and angry at God. On one hand, he wanted nothing to do with Him, but on the other, he was so desperate for hope that he kept reading his Bible anyway. Eventually, Alex came across the Bible verse Jeremiah 29:11¬–13, which says this: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans [of] welfare and not [of] evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
Alex:
00:15:16 For the very first time, I started to realize that He has to have a plan for my life. As my faith journey was continued to grow, I started to study about the journey of the Israelites. And I looked back and I saw countless miracles that God did for the Israelites and how countless times they forgot the miracles. I looked at my own life. I started to process the miracles that God did: I was born to an HIV mother, but I didn’t get the virus. Grandmother and uncle murdered in right in front of me. They never bother touching us. Ran for two months hiding. Nothing happened to us. A man’s gun didn’t work when he went to pull the trigger. Slipped and fell down in a cow pie and a bullet missed my head. Got to an orphanage. I got to receive an Operation Christmas shoebox gift—a gift that planted me planted the seed of the Gospel in my life. 

Jim: For the first time in his life, Alex felt God’s presence. He realized God had always been with him … and he put his faith in Jesus Christ … but it wasn’t easy for Alex to fully surrender to God.

Alex:
00:16:21 The reason I was struggling is because He was starting to go into a place in my heart that I did not want Him to go. That place was full of bitterness. It was full of anger. It was full of—honestly, still trauma that time. And I didn’t want Him to go there because I was thinking if I saw the people who killed my grandmother, I would kill them. I would do exactly the same thing that they did to my uncle and my grandmother.

Jim: At that same time, Alex visited the United States with the African Children’s Choir. They went into host homes, sang Christian music, and read the Bible.

Alex:
00:16:53 I knew that I wanted to be in the ministry and talk about the miracles that He has done, even as a 9-year-old. When you would ask me, what would you like to be when you grow up? I say, I want to be a pastor, and I want to travel the world and share the Gospel.

Jim: There was another question, though, that was much harder for Alex to answer. One of the choir chaperones asked him to share his story. Alex had never been asked to share about the genocide before. Later, that same chaperone asked him another hard question. 

Alex:
00:17:22 ‘What if you’d sit with the person who has caused you the most pain? What would you do?’ Those moments helped me realize how angry I was and how bitter I was. So I started to pray, Lord, help me. Help me to heal so that I can be able to see those people that caused me so much pain. 

Jim: While Alex continued to pray for God to heal his heart, the choir finished their 42-state U.S. tour that went for nearly two years, from 1998 to 2000. After the tour, they returned to the orphanage in Rwanda. In 2003, God connected Alex with a family that hosted the choir in the U.S. The family wanted to adopt Alex and his friend. At 15 years old, Alex was again part of a family. He moved to their home in Minnesota. Ten years later, God worked through Alex in a powerful way.

Alex:
00:18:15 2013 was a big year because in that year, I got to go back to Rwanda to deliver shoeboxes in the same orphanage I grew up in. In that year, that’s when God took my healing process at different level when I got to meet that man who had caused me so much pain. 

Jim: That meeting wasn’t something Alex had planned; it was something he decided at the last minute.

Alex:
00:18:36 So we went to the prison and they said, you cannot just walk into the prison and say that I want meet so and so when you don’t have a personal relationship or a biological relationship. The process usually takes about three weeks of getting permission and paperwork. Well, we kept going to the next person, the next person. By the end of three hours, we had all the paperwork we needed.

Jim: Upon arriving at the prison, Alex learned that the man who killed his grandmother had escaped, but the man who killed his uncle was still there. 

Alex:
00:19:07 That was a tough day. I was hot. I was cold. I was so numb. I’ve never been so nervous in my life. And as we walked through the prison, we get to meet with him, and we get to sit across from him. And I asked the guy, Do you remember me? 

Jim: No, not specifically, he said. But he did recall seeing three children there, especially an older girl—Alex’s sister. That was the confirmation Alex needed. This man before him was part of the team that had killed 30 people in his village.

Alex:
00:19:40 I asked him, Why did you guys do what you did? He’s like, well, we, some of us were just following orders. We don’t even remember some of the things that we did ourselves. And it goes to show you that they were brainwashed so much so that they just, they had something, they went and did it. 

Jim: Alex listened to the man’s explanation and that helped him get more closure … but Alex didn’t stop the conversation there.

Alex:
00:20:01 As we talked to him, I actually specifically told him that I’m here to share with you what Jesus Christ did in my life. And then I also—just because I’m ready in my heart to forgive doesn’t mean that that’s the same case for everybody in my family—so I also shared with him, asking him for forgiveness on behalf of my family, because not all of us are ready. But again, it’s like I’m sharing with him on my personal behalf, but also asking him to forgive us for the bitterness that is still there within my family towards him. 

Jim: This man who had helped kill Alex’s uncle … now let Alex pray with him. The man didn’t accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior, but Alex knows that a Gospel seed was planted in his life. Before Alex left, he assured the man that God can forgive him.

Alex:
00:20:53 As tough as it was, it was so healing to the point where I’m able to say, Thank You, Jesus, for allowing me that opportunity to be able to heal and process the bitterness and realize that that bitterness was gone. There’s no way in my human nature I would ever want to see that man ’cause I wanted to kill him. I thought about it. I planned it, and if I had the opportunity in the right time, I would have done it. And that scared me that that kind of hatred was in my life, but every time I share my testimony of how God saved me is to give Him thanks for what He’s done. 

MUSIC TRANSITION

Jim: If you’re harboring bitterness in your heart the way Alex Nsengimana was—or if you’ve done something for which you don’t think you can be forgiven—I have good news: Jesus Christ can fill your heart with peace and joy and give you an eternal home. We can tell you more at our website, FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net. If you’d rather talk and pray with someone, call the 24-hour Billy Graham prayer line. The number is 855-255-PRAY. That’s 855-255-PRAY.

In a moment, Alex will share one final word about forgiveness.

Voice-over: You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories., a podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

MUSIC STARTS

Franklin Graham:
00:22:27 You’d go through villages, there was no people, not even a chicken, not even a goat, not even a bird. The villages were there; the people were gone. 

Jim: Franklin Graham in 1994, shortly after returning from Rwanda, where he had assisted in setting up medical and spiritual care for victims of the genocide.

Franklin Graham:
00:22:47 They need doctors. They need nurses. They need food, medicine. They need all of those things. But what Rwanda needs more than anything else is: They need the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These people have suffered. These people have been butchered. But there needs to be healing in this country because there are hundreds of thousands of people that are guilty of murder, that have the blood of their neighbor on their hands, and those people need to be forgiven. And, my friends, God will forgive them if they’re willing to come to Him through Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus Christ is God’s Son who died on a cross for our sins, and if we’re willing to confess our sins and turn from our sins, and by faith receive Christ into our heart, God will forgive us. And, my friends, if you don’t know Christ as your Savior, I pray tonight that you’ll give your heart to Him.

Jim: If you want to learn more about what it means to give your heart to Jesus, we can tell you. Visit us at FindPeaceWithGod.net. 

Our guest on this episode of GPS: God. People. Stories. is Alex Nsengimana. He was only 6 when he witnessed the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Since then, he has forgiven the people who killed his grandmother and uncle. And he challenges us to forgive whoever has caused us pain, and to see them the way God does. 

Alex:
00:24:18 All of our lives will have people who have caused us pain. Maybe as you even listen, that pain is being caused to you even in this moment. In my bitterness, I did not want to accept that God loved the man who killed my grandmother and the man who killed my uncle, and in my bitterness, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to do exactly the same things. In my journey of faith is God coming to my life challenging me because He forgave me of my sin. He forgave me when He hung on the cross. The man who killed my uncle was the one who actually caused me the most horrific pain because it’s the trauma that I faced, even into my adulthood. I think I’m grateful that God allow me to heal that. I share this with you to encourage in your own journey, that even the person who has caused you pain, God loves that person … and God loves you as well. But God does not want you to be defined by that pain. That’s what Jesus Christ did on the cross ’cause He forgave us. He freed us. And bitterness is destroying us from the inside out and we miss out. And so, I hope and pray that you hearing this, that you can be encouraged that there’s freedom in Christ. 

Jim: We’re grateful Alex Nsengimana was willing to share his story with us on this episode. Today, he lives in the United States and shares his story with people all over the country as part of the Operation Christmas Child team. He and his wife are expecting their first baby in March. They would appreciate your prayers. We’re excited to see how God will continue to use Alex and his family in the future.

Speaking of the future, make sure you subscribe to GPS, if you haven’t already. That way you will catch every single episode. We post a new one every other Wednesday. 

I’m Jim Kirkland, and this is GPS. God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—Always Good News.

CLOSING MUSIC
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