God Painted Our Story: Thirty Years of Ambassadors of Christ and Rwanda’s journey from trauma to hope

When I was serving my country in Washington DC as Rwanda’s first Diplomat, Charge d’Affaires, after the genocide against the Tutsi, a small group of young Christians reportedly began singing at Remera Seventh-day Adventist Church. The year was 1995, barely a year after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Rwanda was confronting the immense task of rebuilding a society devastated by violence, loss and displacement. Institutions were being reconstructed, families were struggling to rebuild their lives, and a wounded society was searching for ways to recover its sense of hope and community. The group consisted of about 25 members, mainly students. They called themselves the Ambassadors of Christ Choir. Few, if any, could have imagined what that modest beginning would become. Three decades later, Ambassadors of Christ is one of Rwanda’s most recognised gospel choirs, with generations of singers having passed through its ranks and its music reaching audiences far beyond Rwanda. On August 30, 2026, current and former members, supporters and music lovers gathered at BK Arena in Kigali to celebrate thirty years of music and ministry under a theme that captures the choir’s understanding of its own journey: “God Painted Our Story.” I was gratefully privileged to be invited among special guests. The phrase is more than an anniversary slogan. It encapsulates a history marked by faith, musical creativity, travel, tragedy, generational change and institutional continuity. It is also a story that unfolded alongside Rwanda’s own extraordinary journey since 1994. I was particularly touched by the growth from 25 singers to more than a taunting two hundreds active members. Ambassadors of Christ began its activities in a particularly difficult environment. Its early mission was not limited to singing. The choir sought to communicate the Christian message while contributing to peace, reconciliation and the restoration of hope in a society emerging from genocide and war. Contemporary accounts of its early years describe members travelling across Rwanda as part of evangelistic activities and using music to reach communities far beyond their original congregation. That mission acquired a particular significance in the Rwanda of the mid-1990s. The country was rebuilding not only roads, homes and institutions but also human relationships. Many people were carrying profound grief. Others had lost confidence in institutions, including religious institutions. For some, the experience of the genocide had profoundly altered their relationship with faith itself. Music offered and remained another form of communication. A song could reach people emotionally where conventional messages might not. It could speak of hope without denying suffering, and of reconciliation without pretending that reconciliation was simple. Ambassadors of Christ became one of the institutions working within that difficult space. Its subsequent history demonstrates how an organisation can develop an identity that is simultaneously local, regional and international. A particularly important figure in that evolution was the Ugandan musician, composer and music trainer Joram Ssozi, who began working with the choir in 1997. His involvement helped strengthen the choir’s musical training and broaden its repertoire, bringing influences from the wider East African gospel tradition into its developing Rwandan sound. This was not simply a matter of importing music from a neighbouring country. The choir increasingly adapted regional influences on its own language, experience and audience. Kinyarwanda remained central, while English, Ruganda and Swahili helped extend its reach. Songs such as Imirindi y’Uwiteka, released in 2007, became important markers in the choir’s development, while Iwacu Heza, also known in Swahili as Kwetu Pazuri, helped introduce its music to a wider East African audience. The result was a repertoire that could travel without losing its Rwandan character. Over the years, the choir’s ministry and performances reached audiences in countries including Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, United Kingdom and the United States to name but a few. That expansion is significant. Rwanda’s cultural influence is not confined to political institutions or economic activity. It also travels through music, literature, sport, faith communities and the many informal networks created by Rwandans and their friends abroad. Ambassadors of Christ became one of those cultural channels and I am proud of them. However, the thirty-year journey was not one of uninterrupted success. It included moments of profound loss. The choir experienced serious road accidents during its travels, including an accident in 1999 while returning from ministry activities in eastern Rwanda. The more devastating tragedy came in Tanzania in 2011, when the choir’s vehicle was involved in a road accident while members were returning from evangelistic activities. Three choir members lost their lives and others were injured. They thanked Rwanda leadership and President Kagame for being involved in their rescue and helping them recovery by airlifting bodies and the wounded. God bless President Kagame and His team. For a musical institution, such a tragedy is more than an interruption to a programme. Choir members travel, rehearse, pray and perform together. They develop relationships that are closer to those of an extended family than those of ordinary colleagues. The loss of three members therefore became part of the choir’s collective memory. A thirty-year anniversary must consequently remember not only those who are present but also those who began the journey and did not live to see its third decade. The ability to continue after such a loss is one of the less visible dimensions of institutional resilience. It does not erase grief. Rather, it demonstrates that an institution can carry memory forward while continuing its mission. This is perhaps the most important achievement of Ambassadors of Christ: continuity. Many voluntary artistic organisations flourish for several years and then decline when their founding generation leaves. Leadership changes, members relocate, musical tastes evolve and younger people find other interests. I saw them all together as one. Maintaining an institution across decades requires more than talent. It requires a culture capable of transmitting purpose from one generation to another. Ambassadors of Christ has managed that transition. The 30th-anniversary celebrations have deliberately brought together current members, former and extended members and younger generations connected to the choir. That intergenerational character says something important about the institution. The choir no longer belongs only to those who founded it. It has acquired a history of its own. This distinction matters. A successful group can depend heavily on personalities. A durable institution develops structures, traditions and values that survive the departure of individuals. Ambassadors of Christ’s thirty years suggest that it has crossed that threshold and I personally congratulate them. There is also an interesting parallel between the choir’s institutional journey and Rwanda’s transformation over the same period. In 1995, Ambassadors of Christ was a small group of young singers operating in a country beginning the arduous process of recovery from genocide. Thirty-one years later, its anniversary celebrations are taking place in BK Arena, one of Kigali’s most prominent modern venues, before an audience drawn from Rwanda and beyond. The choir did not create Rwanda’s transformation, and it would be wrong to reduce the country’s complex political, social and economic history to the experience of a single religious institution. Yet the choir has lived through that transformation. Its members have grown older; new generations have taken their places; its audiences have expanded; its music has crossed national borders; and the technology through which music is recorded and consumed has changed dramatically. In that sense, Ambassadors of Christ offers a small but valuable window into Rwanda’s recent social and cultural history. Its history reminds us that national reconstruction is not experienced only through government programmes, statistics or major infrastructure projects. It is also experienced through the lives of institutions, communities and individuals that gradually establish continuity after a period of rupture. The choir’s 30th-anniversary activities have also extended beyond music. In December 2025, members participated in a tree-planting exercise in Rusororo, with approximately 1,600 trees planted by active, extended and junior members. The initiative was presented as an expression of growth, sustainability and service to the community. The anniversary programme has also included outreach to young people in rehabilitation and vocational settings. At the Iwawa Rehabilitation and Vocational Skills Development Centre, an evangelistic mission reportedly reached nearly 5,000 students, with 195 subsequently committing themselves to Christianity and being baptised. In May 2026, members visited genocide survivors at the Rudakabukirwa IDP Model Village in Gikomero, Gasabo District, offering messages of comfort and encouragement. These activities give the anniversary a broader meaning. The choir is not simply celebrating what it has achieved. It is also asking what it can continue to contribute. I wished I could live longer to be actively involved with them. That is an important distinction at a time when anniversaries can easily become exercises in nostalgia. Thirty years should certainly be a moment for celebration. But it should also be a moment for institutional reflection. What has been preserved? What has changed? What has been lost? What should be handed to the next generation? For Ambassadors of Christ, the answers are contained in its repertoire, its recordings, its members, its audiences and its memories. They are also contained in the stories of the people who heard its music at moments when they needed encouragement, consolation or renewed faith. There is therefore a strong case for preserving the choir’s history in a systematic archive. Its founding members should be documented. So should its early leadership, musical directors, major compositions and recordings, important performances and international tours. The stories surrounding the 1999 and 2011 accidents deserve to be preserved, as do the names and memories of members who lost their lives. The experiences of successive generations should be recorded before institutional memory becomes dependent entirely on recollection. This is particularly important for Rwanda, where much of the history of the post-genocide period is contained in the memories of people and institutions that experienced it directly. Ambassadors of Christ is one such institution. Its story does not represent Rwanda’s entire history, nor should it be romanticised. But it is a genuine part of the country’s cultural and social landscape. The significance of thirty years is therefore not simply that the choir has produced music for three decades. It is that an institution created by a small group of young people in an extraordinarily difficult period managed to develop, adapt, survive tragedy and transmit its identity across generations. The question now is what happens next. The founding generation has gradually handed responsibility to those who came after it. The younger generation inherits not only a catalogue of songs but also an institutional culture shaped by the experiences of those who came before them. They inherit the memory of the choir’s beginnings, its successes and its losses. They also inherit a different Rwanda and a different Africa. The audiences are younger. Music is consumed differently. Digital platforms have transformed the relationship between artists and listeners. Gospel music itself has become increasingly competitive and commercially sophisticated. For Ambassadors of Christ to remain relevant, the next generation will have to preserve the principles that gave the choir its identity while continuing to evolve artistically and organisationally. That is the real test of legacy. The first generation had to establish the choir. Those who followed had to consolidate it. The generation now taking greater responsibility must determine how to carry it forward without allowing thirty years of institutional memory to become merely a commemorative story. Perhaps that is why the anniversary theme is so appropriate. “God Painted Our Story.” For the choir’s members and supporters, the words express a conviction of faith: that divine providence has guided the institution through circumstances that could not have been foreseen in 1995. For the historian, the phrase can also describe the unfolding of an institution whose story has been shaped by its founders, its successive generations, its encounters with other cultures, its moments of tragedy and its determination to continue. Both perspectives can coexist. Thirty years ago, Ambassadors of Christ began with a few young voices at a church in Remera, in a Rwanda searching for a way forward. Today, those voices have become generations. The music has travelled far beyond its original congregation. The institution has outlived many of its founders. Its songs have become part of the memories of people who encountered them at different stages of their lives. And the story is not finished. The concert at BK Arena marks a major milestone, but an anniversary is ultimately less about looking backwards than about deciding what deserves to be carried forward. Thirty years after those first voices were raised, Ambassadors of Christ has earned the right to celebrate. But perhaps its greatest celebration is not that it has reached thirty. It is that the song continues, and that another generation is now ready to sing the next verse. Congratulations Ambassadors of Christ Choir. Rwanda is proud of you and your journey. Stay the course.

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God Painted Our Story: Thirty Years of Ambassadors of Christ and Rwanda’s journey from trauma to hope