Welcome to Just.Equipping!
PLEASE NOTE
June 2024
Dear Pray-ers:
- In my 75th year, I began to feel the unbearable heaviness of the injustice in our world. After years of working with vulnerable people, hope seemed to be slipping through a sieve. This week, a friend sent this statistical excerpt about the Democratic Republic of Congo: The average income for a citizen (of Goma for example) is $500USD annually. ...
February 2024
Dear Pray-ers:
- What a great privilege to be able to share with you all that has been happening already in 2024! Imagine, 2024!!
- We just spent the day with four genocide ex-offenders who have recently been released back into the community after two decades of incarceration. They came down from their villages to meet with Pierre, Eileen and me as well as Chaplains Fine, Nelson and Kizungu at the Petit Sanctuaire in Gisenyi, Rwanda. ...
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.
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
