Featured Guest: Immaculée Ilibagiza
Segment Title: Faith In Action
Interview Description: Immaculée talks about how her life was transformed dramatically during the 1994 Rwandan genocide where she and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s house. She emerged weighing just 65 pounds to find that most of her family had been brutally murdered. Immaculée credits her salvage mostly to prayer and eventually found it possible, and in fact imperative, to forgive her tormentors and her family’s murderers. Immaculée’s strength in her faith empowered her when she came face to face with the killer of her mother and her brother to say the unthinkable, “I forgive you.” Fortunately, Immaculée utilized her time in that tiny bathroom to teach herself English with only The Bible and a dictionary.
Bio: Immaculée Ilibagiza is regarded as one of world’s leading speakers on peace, faith, and forgiveness. Her book, Left to Tell is an autobiographical work detailing how she survived during the Rwandan Genocide. She has also written Led By Faith and Our Lady of Kibeho. Her story has been made into a documentary, “The Diary of Immaculee.” Immaculée has received honorary doctoral degrees from The University of Notre Dame and Saint John’s University and has been recognized and honored with numerous humanitarian awards including: The 2007 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace Award, and the 2011 Humanity’s Team Spiritual Leadership Award. Wayne Dyer is quoted as saying, “There is something much more than charisma at work here – Immaculée not only writes and speaks about unconditional love and forgiveness, but radiates it wherever she goes.”
Contact: www.immaculee.com
Everyday Hero: Anna-Marie Pietersa is the South Africa coordinating director for Humanity’s Team developing a call for the South African Government to declare a