Immaculee Ilibagiza was 22 at Easter, 1994, an ethnic Tutsi in Rwanda. Over the next three months, Rwandan Hutus murdered over a million Tutsis - including most of her family - in a genocide that the world ignored. This book is the story of how she survived, hidden in a Hutu pastor’s bathroom with seven other women for 91 days. The most amazing thing about it, however, is not the fact of her survival, but the depth of her faith, a faith that grew during the three months and continued to grow afterwards as she came to forgive her family’s murderers.
G. K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” This does not apply to Immaculee Ilibagiza.
(My parish book club read this a while ago, but I neglected to log it. Thanks to Homer’s Travels for the post that reminded me of Ms Ilibagiza’s story.)