This is my testimony

Well, this is the part where I explain to you all how my Christian journey begun. I started going into the Lord’s house because I was emptied by the burdens of being self-reliant. I relied on myself to get that university application etc. and so when everything came crushing down in front of me, I thought I’d done something wrong in terms of the process required to get it. Little did I know what was called “God’s plan”? I needed this one thing so bad and  though my relationship with God wasn’t at its best I had this crazy idea of jumping the part where I had to seek the kingdom of God and the rest shall be added unto me. So my prayer life accelerate, 3am prayers, fasting, desperate prayers, I stop going out, partying, basically everything I knew pleased God, I did. So after all that, clearly I didn’t get what I was begging for but I got something  bigger and greater.  It led me to who I am today.

Even though I was pretty devastated, pity parties were thrown eh, it was basically lit up in my room, where I closed myself and sobbed every night. But I knew I had to dig up some courage to keep going, to move on to something (easier said than done,i know). A few months later I got back on my horse called life and kept riding to some sort of purpose. Meanwhile of course round 2, 3 and 4 of that pity party resumed because as much as i pretended to act like I was made of steel, I wasn’t. It’s okay to fall into discouragement as long as you don’t stay there. After a couple of figuring out what my purpose was, I started serving in church and that brought a lot of clarity and deep Salvation to myself. I opened my heart and God healed it, he showed me with great love and peace that I had never experienced before and that’s when I realized that seeking his kingdom is what I wanted, since then it’s not been easy but I’ve given him full control. I have never looked back. 

So am here to testify that, they will be dark seasons in your life but the good news is that they won’t leave you with a cough or flue but with strength, faith and Freedom. xoxo

Saved by perfect Grace

Being a christian and being saved, are two different things. Being saved is acknowledging the presence of God’s grace in your life and accepting it to take full charge, to changing you and to making you a better person, hence being saved by it. Few years ago, i experience the grace of God but didn’t surrender to it completely but instead i took it for granted and pretended it was normal, but it wasn’t, being saved by God’s grace is a big deal. And so after everything else failed, i went back to the fountain and went to seek God’s grace again and it’s in that time where it flooded my heart and filled me up with hunger and thirst to drink more and more from the fountain of perfect Grace. Since then i have never left and it does not make me a perfect person, it just makes me a deserving person through accepting to receive forgiveness through accepting and acknowledging my wrongs and letting him make them right through his mercy and love.

I made a decision to be completed by this amazing grace and also a sign representing the “”no turning back” point in my life. i had been set apart and i was not about to go back from where i came from. 2 weeks ago i accepted my commitment through getting baptized, of course getting baptized doesn’t make us saints or free us from sin but through the act, i buried my old self and accepted to be completely changed and made new by God’s grace which will leave in me through all the days of my life. I live as a reflection of how living in God’s way brings peace and stability of a high level into your life. Since i got saved a lot has changed, not in a physical way specifically but most importantly in a spiritual way( sense of understanding and all). These are the few advantages i can be able to thing about right now, but of course we all experience the Grace of God differently. But one thing in common with everyone who has accepted the grace in their life is experiencing the unending sense of belonging and being loved, which brings out the better version of ourselves. Contrary to being of the world, which brings a lot of frustrations and i am talking from first hand experience. I use to be the most frustrated person, and by the smallest thing, it was so bad, loosing my pen cover would drive every nerve in my body crazy. And of course frustration leads to anger which isn’t the prettiest of looks. But i realized that all that was a result of being independent of my situation, am not talking about the women Independence we as women strive for but the independence of not involving God to take care of our loads which by the way he instructed us to hand to him. But we instead fight for ourselves until we break ourselves.

Accepting his perfect Grace which is available to us 24/7 takes all that away and once again, i am talking from first hand experience.   xx

What will you then live for?

 While making changes in the way we live, what God needs from us is to also change not only how we see life but also a change in our priorities, our relationships, and everything else. It will sometime mean choosing a difficult path instead of an easy one. This is to say, we need to live for the glory of God and God alone. Will you live for your own goals, comfort and pleasure? Or will you live the rest of your life for the glory of God. Knowing that the reward of God’s glory is eternity. Many people hesitate when it comes to this issue of whether to live for God or for them. I remember me, myself before when I would think about giving up the party life. The fact of letting all that go made me terrified and I would find myself living a double life. But the reason to why I thought this way was because I thought that, that is where my joy and happiness came from. I had convinced myself that it was the source of my happiness until I learnt that there’s not true happiness within the earthly things and that only true happiness and joy lays in the house of God. I pray for you that God helps you make a better choice in your life which is to live for him because God will give you what you need and even better. The bible says “Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God had been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally, and intimately, the one who invites us to God”.

One night, it was a Saturday morning. I told my cousin who was staying with us for her holidays here in Rwanda. I told her to come with me to church the following day and her response melted my heart and I was amazed by the honesty to it. She told me, she wouldn’t come to church with me because God is not pleased with her actions so she wouldn’t dare to walk into the house of the lord. Being too deep into the earthly things had convinced her that she wasn’t good enough but little did she know that God has a soft spot for sinners. First, you have to believe that God loves you and that’s a fact. Believe you have a purpose. Believe that God has chosen you to have a relationship with Jesus and for that, he is ready to receive you, no matter what you’ve done in the past. God does not hold grudges, God forgives and forgets. Second receive Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and learn to listen to his guidance. 

"The temporary and the eternal"

 “So fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

In life, we are usually drawn to the temporary things because we feel like; it’s what we need in order to make it in this world. But little do we know that, this world is not our home therefore everything in it is not ours to own as well. I usually say to myself I need money or an education to survive but someone once told me, the people who have all that you want, aren’t they miserable? This is true, even those things that “we thing we need” won’t satisfy us when they arrive. A while, I begun to job hunt and I got this great opportunity to start working, I had desperately been looking for a job and I was sure that once it came through nothing would make me happier and that all my worries and complaints would be put to rest. After a while into the job, I started complaining of how I didn’t like it, how I’d prefer to stay home instead. We as human beings are never satisfied with what we have, even if they came when we desperately needed them, the joy of having them disappears after a while. The reason to why this happens is because everything around us is temporary. Everything we have possessed here on earth is not ours.

Our identity is in eternity, and our home is in heaven. If we understand the truth to this, we will stop worrying about having it all on earth.  We often worry about having it all, education, jobs, etc but we don’t realize all these things just fade and shatter. God wants us to treat all these things of this world as temporary riches and this does not only work for possession but also trials, disappointments and defeats from this world for the reward is eternity. Even while Jesus was here on earth he experienced all of these things because this wasn’t his home. Once we realize that life here on earth is just temporary, we will learn to detach ourselves from it but instead keep our eyes on he, who is greater.

How factors of a temporary life should change us:

Knowing that life and all that’s in it is temporary will change our perspective on life and how we live it every day. The first step is to understand and accept the truth of this matter and from there everything will be clear and it will make a lot of sense as to why things happen the way they do. I have developed an attitude of letting go though some people will considered it “losing hope” it’s not. I have understood and I pray that some day they will understand as well. Not only is it an act of trusting in God but it’s very healthy for our souls, in a way that I no longer worry or feel scared of what’s going to happen in the future, the bible says, (Matthew 6:34, so do not worry about tomorrow; it will have enough worries of its own. There is no need to add to the troubles each day brings.)

So with that being said, the changes we need to make in our lives are our day to day tactics of how to go about a situation that crosses our paths. Be positive and begin to see events that happen to you in a different light. Bad things can be seen as blessings and learning experiences. In fact, you become abundantly prosperous because what you saw as trivial, meaningless or burdensome have now turned into rich experiences. Walk with the lord daily and let him change you.

"Follow the leader"

I recently just realized that, I spent too much time and  basically half of my life aiming towards someone else’s dreams. I spent a long time visualizing a life which was considered as “the norm”.  But on my journey as a Christian seeking to see God’s hand in my everyday life, I’ve come to realize that, what I wanted wasn’t what I was designed for and that I don’t have to live according to the standards of this world and what it calls “a normal life” because we are created for something higher. I then, developed an attitude whereby I know and I understand that I have to live for God’s plan and that plan has to be carried out eventually, regardless of how long it takes. So how then does God’s plan start taking action in your life?  By constantly following the Holy Spirit and what it leads your heart to doing. Being on a daily walk, side by side with the Holy Spirit reveals a lot to you and you grow to understand more. The Holy Spirit doesn’t lead you to the so called “norm” but instead it wants to make an exception out of you. Society shouldn’t control us to drifting us from our faith and what we believe in but instead we should be controlled by the higher power which is none other than the Holy Spirit.

The bible says in John 14:17, “I will ask the father and he will give you another helper, who will stay with you forever”.  This helper that we were fortune enough to be granted free of charge is the holy spirit, which is appointed to guiding us each step of the way.

I am a SURVIVOR

I was born in November 1992 about 2 years before the 94 Tutsi genocide here in Rwanda. I was born in a small family; it was just me and my older brother Kevin who was born a year before me. My parents were entrepreneurs, working for themselves in town. They met and fell in love and by October 1990, they were married here in Kigali- Rwanda. My father grew up and spent most of his life in Uganda, where he also did achieve his education. Afterwards he had to move to Rwanda- Kigali, where he had found a bride and so he settled in Kigali. And as for my mother, she was raised and grew up right here in her motherland all her life. After 2 years happily married with 2 kids, a tragedy occurred. They had been insecurity threats in the country for a longtime and for that my parents were never comfortable leaving me and Kevin alone at home with our nanny while they went off to work every morning, so instead they’d always drop us off at my grandmother’s in Kiyovu with our nanny who took care of us and they’d go on with their day and later in the evening on their way back from work, they’d pick us up and we would all head to our home in Nyamirambo. This routine went on for a longtime until one day, it was done differently which is how me and my brother Kevin survived the 94 genocide.

It was on the 5^th of April, when they dropped us off on their way to work and at that time it was intense in the country and everyone was living in fear even though they’d wake up and try to live a normal life which my parents also tried to maintain. So, that morning they dropped us off at my grandmother and on their way back that evening something held them up at work and they left work a little bit later than usual and so since it was late and we were already asleep, they called my grandmother and told her to keep us for the night and that they would be coming back to pick us the next day. On the 6^th of April (the following day) my mother went to work as usual but my father remained at home (nobody really remembers what exactly happened) but they didn’t go to together at work that day and so that evening when my mother called my grandmother to have us dressed and ready, that she was coming by to pick us up and take us back home. When she reached my grandmother’s house, grandma tried to convince her that it was not safe for her and that she should just remain here as well at least until the morning and maybe then she could go. But my mother became hard to convince to stay and so she told my grandmother that, she couldn’t stay and leave her husband- my father- to stay home alone that night so she instead allowed to leave Kevin and I with my grandmother since she had insisted and so she went back home in Nyamirambo and we stayed in Kiyovu with my grandmother. On that night, the night of the 6^th is when President Habyarimana’s plane crushed and the madness begun and on the following day, is when the official day of the killing begun and so nobody was allowed to leave their homes especially those who were targeted and so my father and mother stayed at home that day in fear while we also remained at my grandmother’s in kiyovu.

The interahamwe invaded Nyamirambo on the 8^th of April, brutally killing everyone and leaving no one behind. It’s said that on that day in Nyamirambo is where there was massive killing in the beginning days of the 94 genocide. My father was apparently on “the list” and so on that day, a large group of interhamwe barged into our home in Nyamirambo and started shooting non-stop and running around the house, threw all the rooms in searched of anyone  who could be there hiding from them and so my Father and mother were killed in that way. My aunt who survived hid outside in the dog house and the house girl covered her and didn’t tell the men about her. The house girl who had “Hutu” stamped on her National ID was safe and so the men left the house, leaving my father and mother dead. My grandmother heard the news and so she kept us threw out and the whole journey of trying to survive. It was not easy running and escaping from machetes and gun fires  for about 3 months with a 1yr(almost2) old baby and a 2(almost 3) yrs old baby, but my grandmother managed with the help of the other members of my family. My Grandmother raised us and onto this day she is still fighting and taking care of us. And this is my story of how I survived. 

“Purpose from the maker”

In life when we keep hitting walls it doesn’t mean that we are doing it something wrong, it simply just means you are forcing a purpose which is not designed for you. I use to think holding on is an act of faith and believing that it will happen, but I came to understand that sometimes we need to stop  planning our lives and constantly asking ourselves what we want to do but rather ask, “ God, what do you want me to do?”

The question is, what does God want you to do? At times we want to go all the way to the noon to accomplish “what we think is best for us” while what God designed for us is literally right in front of us. But we are blindsided by society on what is “the best” but God’s plans are even better so do not settle for less aim to accomplish the best together with the one who can make that happen only if you let him and stop fighting your biggest enemy which is you. God will not work, while you are still up and down, left and right but he will intervene once you let go.

Sometimes, I ask myself what’s my purpose? And truth be told, I haven’t done a good job trying to figure it out on my own. I  met rejections and disappointment but the day i accepted that I am not my own my maker, and that only the maker of a creation only knows how to make it work, I have freely step out of the way and allowed him to intervene and changed my perspective on life. A lot of people think that in life, you have to suffer to get up there but what’s the point of the cross then? Why the double suffering?

Seek the truth to understand your purpose and your destiny. Skip the step of suffering put on our lives by this world because that is not how it happens in his kingdom. Sometimes, I ask myself when Jesus said. “It is finished” what did he mean? What is finished? Jesus put an end to it but we keep bringing it back over and over and over again. The shackles were broken so  Let’s also put an end to it.