During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Alex Nsengimana escaped being shot because he slipped in a cow pie. The bullet missed about one inch at the top of his head.
“Never underestimate the power of God and what he can do,” the 25-year-old advised those in New Philadelphia Nazarene Church on Saturday evening.
He ran with thousands of people to a city where they hoped to be safe at the time of the near-miss. Nsengimana escaped to leave him alone on the advice of an uncle who had bribed the militias.
The boy lost his grandmother and other uncle as a result of the violence that took place during the Rwandan Civil War between April 7 and July 15, 1994. After their mom died of HIV / AIDS, he and his brother and sister had moved to live with their relatives.
“Nsengimana” means “I pray to God” in Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s national language. He informed the conference on Saturday how God guided his steps along the trip that included death escape during the genocide that claimed nearly one million life.
His tale included getting a donation through Operation Christmas Child in a shoebox gift — a donation that helped take him to a powerful belief in Jesus and led to the willingness to return to Rwanda to establish a church and minister to the people who murdered his family.
“I want to be back in Rwanda so I can share the ministry of forgiveness, because that’s the only thing that has continued to heal me,” Nsengimana, who left his country to go to school in Minnesota in 2003, said.
He toured the village he grew up in later. He gave shoebox gifts to children unconscious of past distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi, and who do not feel the same hatred of their neighbors as the generations that came before them.
Nsengimana thinks that the grace of God and the example of forgiveness of Christ can reconcile his country.
He strengthened his words with actions during his 2013 visit to Rwanda by providing pardon in person to the man who murdered his uncle. When, through Jesus, he faced the man who was a neighbor and friend of the one he murdered and uttered words of forgiveness and redemption, a burden he had borne from his chest for many years.
Nsengimana said he realized that for him and the person who murdered his father, God sent his son to die on the cross.
“God loves that person just as much as He loves you,” he said.
Jesus’ instruction to forgive 70 times seven isn’t a mathematical equation, but a message to “forgive, forgive, forgive,” Matthew Reed, regional director of Operation Christmas Child at Great Lakes, a component of the non-denominational Christian relief agency Samaritan’s Purse, said.
Reed told the audience on Saturday to pack this year’s additional shoebox Christmas gift for kids. He observed that the top of each bundle is a booklet about God.
Nsengimana said he was helped by the shoebox donation he got as a seven-year-old and other war orphans from their suffering.
“That shoebox helped us create new memories in our minds,” he said. The memory is so strong that when he goes to a shop, he still smells the soap he got as a donation.
Starting shopping for relatively small Christmas presents for Operation Christmas Child is not too early, said Esther Troyer of Sugarcreek, the organization’s volunteer regional manager. She said sales back to school offer a great chance to purchase supplies that can be packed into boxes.
Troyer said the reason she keeps doing the work is because the gifts bring hope to children now, as they did to Nsengimana in the past.
Nsengimana is the most sought-after shoebox recipient on the Samaritan’s Purse/Operation Christmas Child circuit, according to Christy Bloom, who serves as a publicist tor Operation Christmas Child in Carroll, Coshocton, Harrison, Holmes and Tuscarawas counties.
He is traveling with the Amani Children’s Choir. The choir performed Saturday at New Philadelphia Nazarene Church. “Amani” means “peace” in Swahili, one of Rwanda’s official languages alongside French, English and Kinyarwanda.