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• About Led by Faith
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Author who survived the Rwanda genocide tells how faith kept her alive during the massacre. (3:00)
 

Full interview. (13:07)
 

Tavis: As a young adult, Immaculée Illibagiza survived the genocide in her homeland of Rwanda by hiding out in a bathroom for over three months. During the time in the bathroom, members of her own family were brutally murdered. Her remarkable story of survival was the basis for her first "New York Times" bestseller, "Left to Tell." Her latest is called "Led by Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide." Immaculée, nice to have you back.

Immaculée Illibagiza: Thank you for having me.

Tavis: When you wrote the first one I guess you couldn't imagine you'd be doing another one, huh?

Illibagiza: I know. It was inspired by many people who asked me, actually, what happened after when they read "Left to Tell." And they wanted to know what happened.

Tavis: What happens next.

Illibagiza: Yeah.

Tavis: That's what good book readers do -- they want you to give them more. And so you have with "Led by Faith." Before I get into this text, let me go back to the first book, "Left to Tell," and we didn't get a chance to talk about this, I think, the first time you were on, but how that book came to be published is a fascinating story until itself.

There's a picture I'm going to put up here newspaper of your friendship with a guy named Wayne Dyer, who I know and more importantly PBS viewers know Wayne Dyer because Wayne is on here all the time and always empowering people and selling a lot of books, to be sure. But tell me how you got to meet Wayne and how this book, really the first book and consequently the second, comes as a result of your friendship with Wayne Dyer?

Illibagiza: Yeah. I was working with the United Nations and friends who especially used to be in the kind of programs, I used to approach them and told them -- ask them going on in their life. And I would end up sharing my story, and somehow every time I shared my story people would end up smiling and really tell me they are able to put things in perspective when they hear my story.

And they kept asking me, write a book. So one time I sat down, I have never made a (unintelligible) in my life, and I started to write a book and I couldn't hold my hands. Something was led by fate -- I just couldn't hold my hands. And I finished the book three months after. I have finished it, and three days after -- the three months was praying, asking God in my heart how am I going to publish, I've never met somebody who wrote a book.

Three days after I have just finished "Left to Tell" I went to a workshop -- a friend invited me -- and Wayne was there signing books, which I didn't even see before, and I just joined the line. People are going to this man, let me just go to see what they're looking for.

So when I got to him, like 10 people before, I realized he's signing books, and then I said, let me go and buy a book. Of course, I didn't realize he was just signing books. I bought his book "Power of Intention" and I came to him and I gave it to him to sign. He signed it, and then he asked me, "How are you?" I said, "I'm fine." And then he said, "Where that accent come from?"

First -- "I don't have an accent." Then I told him I'm from Rwanda. And his eyes opened, he said, "Do you know what happened there?" And looking at my story, I'm like, "Yeah, I heard about that." (Laughter.)

Tavis: I heard about it, yeah. "I was in a bathroom for three months while that story was unfolding," yeah.

Illibagiza: Yeah. And so I told him that yes, I was there, and he said, "Have you seen the movie?" and I said, "Yes." "Were you there? Are you Tutsi, are you Hutu?" And then I was about to leave, he pulled me back. He's like, "What happened, exactly? I don't want you to go -- tell me." So I told him, "Well, my parents died but (unintelligible). Everything's good now." I just -- people were waiting for him.

Tavis: Yeah, so you gave the short version.

Illibagiza: A short version -- like a minute. At the end, his eyes again was open. He's like, "What makes you smile after what happened to you?" Again I told him, "There is a lot -- there is hope, there is God." He said, "You're still talking about God after what happened? Have you thought about writing a book?" And I'm like I just finished it three days before -- in my heart, I couldn't tell him that I finished it because I thought he will think I came there to get him to help me.

I said, "Well, I thought about it and I started," and then, again, people were making a circle around us. And then he said right in front of everybody, he said, "I promise when you finish writing your book, I will publish it." And I was like, who is he?

Tavis: Who is this Wayne Dyer guy?

Illibagiza: Who is Wayne Dyer? I left and I went to google him and I realized he's a writer of, like, 40 books.

Tavis: Oh, yeah, he's -- yeah. You figured out who he was real fast.

Illibagiza: Who he was. And two weeks after, I just, like -- I wrote a lot in my books how this -- there's always two voices in our hearts. One is telling you "Forget about it; who do you think you are?" And one is like, "Just do it -- do it, just do what you have to do."

So something was like, he will never remember you -- he meets a thousand people every day. And that little voice was, like, "Just do what you have to do. Communicate with him; he asked you to do it?" So I sent him an email. The next day he called back, he's like, "What took you so long?" Okay -- he's like, "I'm going to introduce you to my publisher, Hay House, and it will be good. Your book is going to be a 'New York Times' bestseller." I'm like, "What is that?"

But he was so helpful. And one time, he told me, he said, "Do you dream about your parents? Are they pushing me to do this? I don't know why I'm behind this." It became just, like, beyond him and beyond me.

Tavis: It's an amazing story, and every time I hear it or read it I think about the advice I'm always giving to people -- "Don't follow the crowd." And that's example what she did. She followed the crowd to Wayne Dyer and didn't know what she was doing -- just got in line. And obviously, it seems to me -- and I suspect you feel the same way -- that all of that was divine intervention. You were destined to go there, you were destined to get in that line, even though you didn't know where the line was leading, you were destined to meet Wayne Dyer. Do you believe all of this?

Illibagiza: I do believe that, and I have a -- it's so funny. I still have letters I was writing to God, asking him to bring me somebody to help me. And I would write them because sometimes we trust, like, it's going to be fine. And then again that nagging voice is there, like, who do you think you are? Forget about it -- it will be bad. Don't you see these bad examples?

But it's (unintelligible) to hold on to that hope. And for me, one thing that really helps me to hold on to that hope it's write what I want, and have it there. When I get discouraged, I'm like, I'll write a letter to God. I know he's going to make it. So I was writing a letter -- "Please help me to get somebody," and I met Wayne Dyer three days after I finished the book.

Tavis: I'm laughing -- you didn't just meet somebody, you met a "New York Times" bestseller who's got some friends at a great company called Hay House that I work with and know well. As you've been talking for the last few minutes, you referred to your faith and to God so many times I've lost count, just in the last five minutes here.

How important was your faith to you when you were in that bathroom for three months?

Illibagiza: Faith became everything. I remember I was there for three months --

Tavis: You're Catholic.

Illibagiza: I'm a Catholic, yeah, and faith became that loving God, really, and reaching to him. I used to be a Catholic, just Christian, really just being there and go to church full of people without really knowing what are you going for. Then the first week I was in that bathroom in silence. That's when I realized that I don't have faith -- this is not faith. I'm scared. You can't be trusting in God and be this, and maybe God doesn't exist.

All of a sudden I started to doubt things I believed all my life. Then I remembered the thing that really pushed me to believe in God and faith became very important to me was the first time that people who were killing came to search the house. Three hundred people searched a house of four bedrooms, and the moment they were inside the house, which I was in the bathroom, I can't imagine how they can miss one door in a four-bedroom house -- 300 people with machetes and dressed in banana leaves, really trying to look like the devil.

And we had -- they are (unintelligible) I'm a Tutsi, and I am, and they would find me the next minute. That was a time I started asking God, in that second, please don't let them find the door for the bathroom.

Again, this little voice that's always trying to discourage you, I think everyone has, especially in those moments of challenge, this voice was, like, "They will find you. You think they're crazy? They will find you; it's a matter of seconds." And the other voice was, "Tell me, why did you ask God to help you? If you truly believe in him as almighty, what do you think that leaves out? Almighty means anything, anything."

So I (unintelligible) my knees and asked God in my heart. I didn't even have a space to kneel down -- we were eight in three by four feet -- and asked God if you are there, if you exist, don't let them find the door for the bathroom. I think after that I fainted, and three hours after they have left, the guy who was a Protestant pastor who was hiding us, he came to us and told us what happened, how they searched every single place in the house, on the top of the house, in the ceiling, under the beds.

They even opened suitcases to see if (unintelligible) hiding. The last place they were going to search was the bathroom. One killer came, put his hand on the handle of the bathroom. Before he opened it, he told the guy, he said, "You know what? We trust you. There's no way you can hide the (unintelligible), the snakes." That's how they called us.

So when he told us, he was, like, "I don't know whatever praying, but whatever you are doing, keep doing it." I don't understand how they stopped at the time when they were about to search you. So that was the time I said, "Wait a minute -- God is real. He listens. I asked him."

Tavis: That's a remarkable story, and it's in the book -- this one and the first book, "Left to Tell," and the new one, "Led by Faith." I'm trying to understand this, though. On the one hand I can understand how in that moment your faith becomes everything, and when the pastor who's hiding you, to your earlier point, tells you the story of how you all survive -- his hand is on the door and he just doesn't open it because he says "I trust you" and he turns around and walks out -- powerful story.

I can see your faith in God being made stronger in that moment. What you didn't know, though, until you got out of that bathroom, was that your family had been murdered.

Illibagiza: Yes.

Tavis: I mean brutally murdered -- cut up, chopped up, macheted. Your family had been brutally murdered. Did that question your faith? You got faith in the bathroom, but then you get out; I can see somebody saying but God, if you really are there, even though you protected me in that bathroom how could you let this happen to my family?

Illibagiza: That's such a good question. What my belief in God led me to have that strong faith like he's there, I think what hurts people and hurts us most of the time is because we believe halfway. We're not too sure. We're (unintelligible) -- oh, no, even if we go to church (unintelligible).

So what happened there is I completely believe in God, and I remember asking this pastor to give me the bible. I started to read word per word, asking, like, what is there? Will Heaven exist? So if it exists, it have to be a paradise. So when people die, they really don't get lost -- they're in a better place.

So the whole truth became so real to me. And then as I'm reading everything in the bible, which became my prayer time for the next two months and a half, everything was about love, forgiving. I fought off God, I think he was there, "Don't ask me to forgive -- I can't forgive. I have a good reason to hate them." But again, the bible, the psalms, everything tells you "I am there for you; I will take revenge for you -- don't take revenge for yourself. Love me, love people. Even love those who persecute you. How do I know them?"

So in the bathroom I went through not just accepting fully that God is there, but truly to find out who he is. And to me, the ultimate thing he wants us to do is to let go of the angry (unintelligible), the grudges, the resentments, the huge obstacle between us and God, and to truly love people, even if you know that they're mistaken, they're blinded, they hate us.

The right thing to be, the right place to be, is to be in a loving place. Those who hate, they are wrong. You don't compete with them. So after that journey of really feeling that Heaven is real, I feel that paradise in my heart, I forgave people who are killing us. I wanted them to change, but I didn't want to hurt them anymore, and that came through those two months.

So when I came out and I saw what happened, I can easily cry -- I still cry to this day for my parents, and I shared a lot of the story in "Led by Faith." I cry today, but I don't cry out of confusion, I don't cry out of hate for those who killed them, and I do pray for people who did hurt them.

Tavis: I say all the time in two simple words that love wins. I believe that is my life's motto, that love wins, and I thought of that when I saw this text by Immaculée.

Her new books is called "Led by Faith." If you missed the top of this conversation, her first book, called "Left to Tell," tells the story of her being in Rwanda in a bathroom for three months, surviving that Rwandan crisis. And this book, "Led by Faith," picks up with what happens after she survived the genocide in Rwanda. Again, it's called "Led by Faith" by Immaculée Illibagiza.

I'm honored to have you here, as always. Congratulations on what I know is going to be another bestseller, and we're glad to have you on.

Illibagiza: Thank you so much for having me.

Tavis: I appreciate you. Thank you, it's my pleasure.