A Ministry of Reconciliation in East Africa:

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda occurred just as Dr. Rouner was leaving The Colonial Church of Edina, where he had served for 32 years as Senior Minister.  In the summer of 1996, World Vision U.S. invited the Pilgrim Center to enter into a 5-year partnership to do the work of reconciliation in East Africa.

For its part, the Pilgrim Center has embarked on a strategy of conducting Scripture-based retreats with the pastors, women, and youth leaders of the churches of Rwanda and Burundi, for the healing and freeing of their hearts, so that they can go forward in the vital work of restoring the Church and healing their homelands.

It is precisely this healing of the inner heart that God has given to the Pilgrim Center.  It is a call to go to the places

of killing in Rwanda and Burundi, to sit with the people there, loving them, listening to their hurts, and offering

them the Cross of Jesus and the chance to "come apart and rest awhile" with Him - and so be reconciled, healed, and forgiven.

The Pilgrim Center's core International Reconciliation Team for Africa includes Arthur Rouner and his wife Molly - with a background in psychology, teaching, and retreat leadership - and trained ecumenical Christian volunteer leaders from both the United States and Africa.

Reconciliation in these troubled lands is unlikely to come without the help of the Church.  The Church, unfortunately in some instances, lost credibility by the failure of some of its leaders to stand against the evil of genocide.

Molly Rouner facilitating a retreat

for Burundi pastors

The churches in these countries now need to recover their own leadership, so that they can help bring people  to reconciliation in the villages and prefectures of their lands.   If the Church is to play that role, however, its leaders themselves need to have their own hearts healed, and their loads of grief, guilt, and fear lifted, so that they may lead their people into healing and finally reconciliation.

Survivors of genocide bear deep wounds - often physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  While many outsiders have come to Rwanda and Burundi to help, through seminars and workshops, lectures, and teaching on reconciliation, the cry from many who have been to these seminars is, "But how can we do these good things of reconciliation that we have been told to do, if we are not healed ourselves?"                                                                         

Machete wounds of genocide survivor

The Pilgrim Center for Reconciliation

7001 Cahill Road, Suite 17

Edina, Minnesota  55439-2033

Telephone:  (952) 946-6990

Fax:  (952) 946-6985

e-mail:  pilgrimcenter@pilgrimcenter.org  OR rouner@aol.com 

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Our Center's Team has been awed by the manifestations of God's working in the lives of each retreat participant.  We have been amazed at the participants' sense of their own healing that occurs, and at their eagerness to take this whole concept of reconciliation throughout their communities and across their entire countries.