Welcome to Just.Equipping!
PLEASE NOTE
September 2023
Dear Pray-ers:
- What a summer! Hot, cold, hot. Wind, rain, floods, tornadoes, wildfires. Mosquitoes, ticks, beetles. Expensive food, bad roads, no vacancies. Iffy health care, strikes, and shortages. And yet we here in Canada are the most privileged people in the world! May God grant us gratitude for every flower that blooms, every neighbour we are able to help, and may we learn how to better take care of God's creation. I didn't plan to start this letter to you with a mini-sermon but there has never been a time when we are so conscious of all we have going for us.
March 2023
Dear Pray-ers:
- It has been a ‘rainy’ rainy season. Yesterday several of us went to see C. who has not been well. In fact, she has been in bed for two months and unable to sell her potatoes as she normally would. There were six of us in the car, and the trunk was full of supplies. We travelled quite a distance into the country until the road ahead was washed out and the car hit a lava rock which punctured the gas line. We walked the rest of the way in the rain, preceded by very happy local boys whom we hired as ‘porteurs’ to carry the stock to C.’s house. We had a good visit, lovingly received and hopefully giving comfort. The trip back home was rather the same except in reverse! Once again, we were reminded of life’s lesson that darkness comes with light, good times with bad, and stress with fun. In the end, what gets us through is community, heeding 1 John where we are called to love one another.
October 2022
Dear Pray-ers:
- As I write to you from our cosy little home in Quebec, Canada, I am listening to the ducks and geese flying overhead in V formation. They are 'going south' for the winter. The trees in the yard, after a brilliant, blinding display of colour, have lost most of their leaves. Those of us with any energy or motivation are cleaning and pruning the gardens and putting away summer furniture. Autumn pulls at my heart. The summer was wonderful. Why do things have to change? Perhaps because that is God's way of constantly renewing us.
June 2022
Dear Pray-ers:
- It is with great joy that we (Pierre, Eileen and I) write to you from the house in Gisenyi, Rwanda. The journey here was not without hiccups, but we made it! All the suitcases did not, but we’re hoping!!
- It was a challenge to put things in order after the great covid absence, but the place is starting to be home again, immigration and the local offices and banks know us well, bags of beans, rice, flour, oil and ‘sauce tomates’ adorn the kitchen floor, and there is always breakfast company.
January 2022
Dear Friends:
We are very excited about 2022! Our teams in Rwanda, Burundi and DR Congo have made it through this momentous past year with all its challenges and sorrows. They have carried on working for the vulnerable and needy and forgotten.
September 2021
Dear Friends:
There have been volcanic eruptions, earth tremors, serious air pollution, cholera and typhoid. TB, respiratory illness, Covid-19, confinement, lack of transportation, market closings, stress-related illness, bank closures, starvation, contagious infections. School closures, lack of clean water, power outages, medication shortages, houses destroyed, rogue militia violence, and deaths of those very precious to us. We think of housekeeper Banyere’s little Elisha who was a ray of sunshine during his short life.
April 2021
Dear Pray-ers:
As we come to the end of a beautiful Easter weekend, we want to salute you for your unwavering support both financially and prayerfully.
November 2020
Dear Pray-ers:
- We trust that you are well, safe and managing patience through this pandemic. It is a difficult time and we send our encouragement and prayers your way.
August 2020
Dear Pray-ers:
- Warmest greetings to you as we continue to work our way through this unique and difficult time. We trust that you are well, finding patience you never knew you had, and feeling peace within God’s times and seasons.
- We are extremely thankful that you have continued in your wonderful concern and support for the work of Just.Equipping.
April 2020
Dear Pray-ers:
- We all find ourselves in one of the most difficult and stressful times of our generation. Despite this, the past week has been one of the most encouraging in all our years of working in justice issues.
- The Rwanda, DRC - Goma and Burundi teams are in lockdown similar to most of us. There is no public transportation, people are being asked to self-isolate and to stay at home. Food prices are going up, day trading is very difficult. It is hard to find water and soap to practise hygiene recommendations. There is little money and food. Many of the people we work with are hungry.
February 2020
Dear Pray-ers:
- Jacqueline Hodges, an integral part of Just.Equipping since its inception, will no longer be forwarding this letter to you. After a very difficult physical decline, she died January, 2020. She was a person with a giant faith who constantly encouraged Just.Equipping to take a basket to market so that the Lord could fill it. We are deeply appreciative of all she meant to those of us here and those in Africa. We honour her work and thank God for her life.
October 2019
Dear Pray-ers:
- We are enjoying a real, old fashioned rainy season here in northern Rwanda on the border with DRCongo. I was not far away from the house and so decided to walk home today in the rain. Arrived soaked. Pierre was in the centre of town doing business and finally had to call John the Taximan to rescue him. Fine and 3 others who were supposed to be here for an activity several hours ago are still 'missing in action', We hear they are sheltering in a local eatery, having a late lunch! And so goes life in October in the tropics. Everything is green. The new crops are making great headway. For the moment, there is peace.
September 2019
Dear Pray-ers:
As summer draws to an end for most of us, we pull out our warm sweaters and feel a bit nostalgic. And so it is with the activities with Just.Equipping over the past weeks. It has been quite a summer!
- Simeon and the DRC team have pressed valiantly onward with their de-bugging, medical care, literacy, counselling and advocacy ministries at the EGEE juvenile facility and the maximum security facility in Goma. It is extremely difficult: never enough food, medicine, clothes; violence and political unrest; quiet corners to share and pray with people hard to find. But - the team is fearless and unstoppable and we are so thankful for them.
May 2019
Dear Pray-ers:
- After a long rainy season, the sun has come out and the crops should be promising here in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region. Everyone is thankful!
- Speaking of thankful, this week at the annual retreat, we asked the 25 people on our three prison chaplaincy teams from Rwanda, Burundi and DRCongo to share one thing about their country. The comments were overwhelmingly upbeat: Our country is beautiful! Our country is secure! Our country allows us freedom of speech and worship!
January 2019
Dear Pray-ers; 'Bearing one another's burdens in 2018'
We are very moved as we put the year 2018 to bed and march into the mystery of 2019.
We are astounded at God's faithfulness, your support and our teams' perseverance.
Just.Equipping is a Canadian Registered Charity (#889184891RR0001) committed to educating, training and equipping in the area of restorative justice. Since 2006, a number of training missions have taken place in Africa: Rwanda, Burundi, RD Congo and Cameroon. Just.Equipping can play a crucial role in the reintegration of offenders, the rebuilding of communities, the comfort of victims and the future of corrections and chaplaincy in these countries. Our unique partnership with Queen’s University lends credibility to the academic component and allows us to issue an international diploma in Restorative Justice.
Visit our website where you can read our Africa reports for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. You also have access to a number of videos to help you understand our work better.
Nelson Mandela has said: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon that we can use to change the world.’ Just.Equipping is committed to play its part in shaping a better world! But, we cannot do it without your help.
If you believe in what we are doing and want to help us financially, click on ‘Donations’ and follow the instructions.
Thank you for making our work possible, for praying for us and carrying in small and big ways the burdens that we bear!
Pierre Allard, President
