One of the nations on my heart for the past 9 months or so has been Rwanda. I remember watching the atrocities on the nightly news back in '94 and not even being able to comprehend the scope of evil that was occuring. The genocide has destroyed the hope in the country, and the people left spiritually bankrupt. Thousands and thousands of women were raped and left to live; their attackers saying that the attrocities would live on in their children born to them. Years later these same women can not even bear to look upon their children, as the sight of them remind them of the events of 1994.

Almost a million people were slaughtered in a space of 3 months. A tribal war progressed without the acknowledgment of the leading influences of the world. Why? No answer is good enough.

And really, today there is still nothing being done. Sure, promises that it will never be tolerated again, etc etc, but the people who lived through it are still emotionally devasted, spiritually inoperable. Humanitarians come and go. Don't get me wrong, I love humanitarians, they do awesome work. I have an 'issue' with them though. Not really with them, but with the end result. When humanitarians leave an area, the food will run out, the clothes will run out etc etc. A missionary cannot meet every need, but they give out hope. They give something a humanitarian can't, the Gospel. Hope for the next life, if hope for this life cannot be believed for. We cannot grasp the level of despair millions of people around the world are struggling with. The UN cannot even now give a decent excuse for not intervening. There is no answer, just.............nothing was done. The answer is simply, 'there was just nothing done!' Apathy will not make it go away, only action. There is enough resources in the 1st World Nations to alleviate poverty in the poorer nations. There is much to say about simply feeding someone who has hunger. It is much easier to feed someone and then minister to them, than to minister to someone then feed them. It's a fact.

So I pray that one day I will be forced to go to Rwanda to see the spiritual devastation firsthand. Getting involved is the only answer. The first step for the West is to NOT change that channel when the World Vision commercials come on.