Evening with Immaculee in San Francisco

On June 12, from 7:00 to 9:30 PM Imaculee Ilibagiza will speak at St. Paul's Church at 221 Valley Street in San Francisco.

For those who don't know Imaculee's story, she is a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, which saw over 1,000,000 people slaughtered in 100 days. How could a person not only survive such an ordeal, but manage to forgive those who murdered her family? From her foundation website:

"Immaculée Ilibagiza is a living example of faith put into action. Immaculée's 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. Immaculée entered the bathroom a vibrant, 115-pound university student with a loving family - she emerged weighing just 65 pounds to find her entire family had been brutally murdered (with the exception of one brother who had been studying out of the country).

Immaculée credits her salvage mostly to prayer and to a set of rosary beads given to her by her devout Catholic father prior to going into hiding. Anger and resentment about her situation were literally eating her alive and destroying her faith, but rather than succumbing to the rage that she felt, Immaculée instead turned to prayer. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the negativity that was building up inside her. Immaculée found solace and peace in prayer and began to pray from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to the time she closed her eyes at night. Through prayer, she eventually found it possible, and in fact imperative, to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers. "

Admission: $20 for adults, $10 for seniors and students. Tickets are available and can be be purchased in advance by sending a check made out to St. Paul's Church and mailed to: 221 Valley Street, SFCA 94131 - attn: Katy. For more info, please call 415-648-7538.

All proceeds from this event will go to the Speaker's (Immaculee) Foundation and will be used to provide for Rwandan orphans.