Left to Tell

 Left to Tell
Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
by: Immaculee Ilibagiza
2006
210 pages, paperback (with a few photos too)

There are gaps in what I know about history, the world, and the people who live in it.  How did i not know of this awfully tragedy that took place in my own lifetime?  In 1994, over 1 million people were brutally murdered in about 100 days in Rwanda, many died at the hand of what had been a friend or neighbor.  Tragic indeed.  Thankfully Immaculee's retelling of her own survival story has a redemptive tone.  Yes, it was very hard for me to read, yet i read through it quickly and will think about it maybe for the rest of my life.  Stories like these change one's perspective on so many things.  
One Tuesday in my ladies prayer time we were discussing various aspects of Col. 3:12 (putting on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience) and one of the gals used this book to to further explain elements of compassion.  She loaned Left to Tell to me, and as I wanted to learn more about Africa while Sophie was living there, I began to read it.  Then I put the book down for these images were too much for me,  then i thought i can not simply stick my head in the sand.  I read on.  It is a very sober, straightforward firsthand account giving just enough background to make some sense of two tribes Hutus and and the Tutsis that have for years lived with a form of unity including intermarrying within  Rwanda.  Hope springs from the pages; hope in God, hope of forgiveness, hope of healing. 
It is a book worth reading.