July 23 As a speaker...

The National Speaker’s Association is an amazing collection of clever folks spread across the world in every industry known to mankind.  When you say “speaker” most everyone associates their industry + motivation of some kind.   As I witnessed at the National Speakers Association Annual Conference this past week, it is so much more expansive. 

When I hear amazing speakers that compel me to be a better person, compel me to be a better speaker, compel me to be a better business woman, my future audiences and clients receive the intense benefit.  It is certainly an investment of time and money to attend these conferences but I’m looking forward to implementing the new skills, new thoughts and new lectures for the benefit of my future audiences and clients.

Let me tell you about one of those who spoke.

Left to Tell: A Story of Peace, Hope and Forgiveness was written by Immaculee Ilibagiza, whom in 1994, survived the Rwanda genocide that murdered her family.  She survived by being confined in a 4x6 bathroom with five other women, for three and a half months, without talking, and eating only scraps of food that their protector could salvage from the garbage.

There were two tribes in Rwanda while she was studying to be an engineer in college.  Immaculee spoke about the national radio and how it had been spreading negativity and hate about her tribe.  When the president’s plane crashed, they knew the other tribe would begin to kill them all.  

And they did.  The Hutu killed the Tutsi and moderate Hutu tribe members for one hundred days.  An estimated 1 million humans were killed:  elderly, babies, adults, and children were slaughtered, bodies being left in the streets to decay.

Only one brother survived because he was outside the country.

She received the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace 2007.  She met the men that killed her Mother, Father, and two brothers.  And she forgave them.

You can watch videos on her website at Immaculee.com, where you can see the size of the bathroom, as well as hear her story and her faith.

We are so isolated in America.  I’m often amazed at the hate that is spread through social media, through television, through radio.  We are surrounding by a social discontent.   Yes, we are a more “civilized nation.”   But, when I heard her talk about the days leading up to the genocide and saw so many parallels to what I hear in America today.  Are we a civilized country?

It’s up to us.  We must be different.  We must influence the hate-talkers and soften their hearts, one toe at a time.