Nearly four years ago, on Sabbath 11 March 2018, lightning killed 16 Seventh-day Adventists at Nyarunazi SDA Church in Southern Rwanda, an hour drive to the country's border with Burundi.
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| The new church structure at Nyarunazi Seventh-day Adventist Church Rwanda with a lightning rod/ Faith Reporters |
140 people were hopitalised and about 40 families lost
loved ones in this Central African state in East Central Division, among the
deceased included children, mothers and young men and women who were arranging
marriages.
Faith Reporters
revisits this tragic story in this remote and impoverished community and talked
to the church elders, health workers and local authorities who gave an impression
of recovery amid raw scars.
“It was a special day. We had already announced
that there would be a delay at church to enjoy songs from a visiting choir” Elder
Berchimas Habimana told Faith Reporters on Thursday 2nd December
2021.
“It started raining with some hailstone” he added,
“such that we could not hear the special item that precedes the preacher, so we
stopped the choir to resume the song after the rain subsided”
The church elder reached the organists on one side
of the pulpit to ask them to play hymns for the church to sing along as they
waited for the rain to subside because of the noise from the iron sheets on a
church with no ceiling.
“I was at the pulpit when I saw a flash from the
roof striking the congregation, spreading its web on people as if it wanted to
lift them in a net. It was terrifying” he said.
Elder Habimana said that the whole congregation in this church that had no lightning rod fell
to the ground apart from him and few at the pulpit.
“We all lost our senses for minutes as if we didn’t
know where we were, looking at the fallen congregation in the rising dust as if
the church had collapsed,” he said.
The ambulances came and took 140 people to two
health facilities from where 15 dead bodies were brought back for burial the
following day on Sunday.
One young woman who was arranging a marriage with a
young man who died instantly in the church remained at the hospital for a month
in the hospital before she succumbed to injuries and agony.
“She was brought to the burial in an ambulance but
stayed at the hospital for a month. The young man they were preparing to marry
left a new house in which they were going to stay together in”
One of the residents and a community health worker
and one of the people who lived near the church told Faith
Reporters today 5th December 2021 that so far, many are
recovering from the trauma.
“There are two mothers who lost their babies in
the accident. It took longer for them to mentally recover but are now doing well,
with the grace of God” said Marceline Mukamana.
Mukamana explained that one mother in her late
thirties who was so traumatized started gaining some hope when she became
pregnant a few months later.
“One day, the nurse told her that she was pregnant.
She started gaining some hope that God was recompensing her loss” Mukamana
said.
Mukamana, who is not an Adventist said the whole
community saw faith in the bereaved.
“We could offer some days digging in their
fields to occupy them and encourage them”.
Currently, there is a new church, about 150 yards
on an elevated hill away from the church which was struck by the lightning.
Members found it unbecoming to renovate the struck church or build another in the same place where the accident happened for fear that people would be traumatized to stand on the same ground where they survived the death that took their loved ones.
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