People and Events

The Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery in Winnipeg is asking for artists to participate in More Refreshing Winds: An Exhibition on Worship. The exhibition begins in January 1999 and will run until the end of February. It will add a visual arts element to Refreshing Winds: A Conference on Worship, scheduled for Jan. 14-17 and sponsored by the Manitoba MB Conference, Concord College, Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the Conference of Mennonites in Canada. Visual artists are asked to submit slides or photographs of pieces which fit the theme of worship--expressing joy, celebration, new ways to communicate God's Word, etc. No art form is excluded. A jury will make selections. Some money will be available for shipping out of province artwork. Up to five photographs or slides, including description and dimensions, should be sent by each artist to: Ray Dirks, Director, MHC Gallery, 600 Shaftsbury Blvd., Winnipeg, Man. R3P 0M4. Deadline for submissions is Nov. 30. For more information, phone Dirks at 204-667-9340.--

Barry Penner, MLA for Chilliwack, B.C., voted to preserve the traditional definition of spouse during a recent B.C. legislature debate on extending pension benefits to "same sex" couples. Penner, a member of Sardis Community Church, was among 11 B.C. Liberal Party legislators who opposed the NDP government's Pension Statutes Amendment Act. In 1997, Penner voted against changes to the Family Relations Act which also changed the definition of spouse to include homosexual couples. The majority of people who had contacted Penner about this issue were opposed to changing the traditional definition of spouse.--

Mennonite Disaster Service is planning to stop receiving new requests for help by flood victims of the Red River Flood in southern Manitoba by the end of October 1998 and shut down its headquarters in Winnipeg in spring 1999. Volunteers are currently helping build five new homes and renovating 10 more. MDS also is providing bridge funding assistance to another five families. MDS has helped rebuild and renovate, or provided funding assistance for 100 homes since May 1997. To date, MDS has received $1.7 million in donations for the Red River Flood response. The project has attracted 1,800 registered volunteers who together have contributed more than 14,000 volunteer days.--

Mennonite Disaster Service is responding to people's needs in Puerto Rico after hurricane Georges struck the island Sept. 21. The hurricane is described as being the worst in 60 years with 30,000 houses affected, 70% of which were wood framed. MDS will be working in the mountains surrounding Aibonito, including La Plata, Cayey, Coamo and Barranquitas, areas populated by Puerto Rican Mennonites.--

Mennonite Central Committee workers in Khartoum, Sudan stayed close to home following the Aug. 20 US missile strikes on that city. MCC has no workers in Afghanistan, the US's other target. The US government urged Americans abroad to exercise caution in the wake of the attacks. MCC administrators of programs in more vulnerable areas of the world, such as the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia, stayed in close contact with workers. However, no problems were reported in the two weeks following the attacks.--

Mennonite Central Committee has given $15,600 to help flood victims in China. Continuous rains since March have caused extensive flooding, the worst in 50 years. MCC's funds will go to Amity Foundation, a Chinese humanitarian agency with Christian roots, which has launched an emergency relief program. The money will be used to buy rice for 2,360 families. MCC also has contributed $31,000 to help drought-affected farmers in Mindanao, Philippines. The money will provide one sack of rice to each of 525 households, enough to feed each family for three months. By then, the rains should have come, enabling farmers to plant new crops. Patricia McAuliffe, a Canadian missionary who works in the five villages that are receiving MCC's aid, said the food will "save people from permanent physical/mental disability, malnutrition and maybe even death."

John Wilson of Youth With A Mission was one of the 228 people who died when Swissair 111 plunged into the ocean near Peggy's Cove, N.S. Sept. 2. He was on his way to Lausanne, Switzerland to join the staff of YWAM. Wilson had recently done evangelism to Muslims, including prayer walking in Turkey and other Muslim nations. He was 22, and a resident of Brandon, Fla.--

Mennonite Central Committee US executive committee sent nine representatives to Cuba Aug. 30-Sept. 7 to meet Brethren in Christ and Mennonite leaders and to see firsthand the issues facing the Cuban people. They visited BIC churches and Mennonite house church groups, as well as MCC partners in Cuba: the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and the Cuban Council of Churches. One church in Cuatro Caminos was a little building stuck between two other buildings. "It was hot, and they had the windows open. The sound system was booming. There was a Pentecostal flavour to this congregation," one of the team members said. While Cuba is a communist country, "there was no attempt to keep things quiet and secret." According to Martin Luther King Jr. Center director Raul Suarez, shortly after the 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro adopted the Soviet Union's model of Marxism that required all party members to be atheists. During the 1980s, Castro began to loosen restrictions on religion. Suarez, a Baptist minister, and Pablo Odùn Marichal, president of the Cuban Council of Churches, are members of the Cuban National Assembly. MCC supports the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and the Cuban Council of Churches, providing grants for peacemaking activities. With two established BIC churches and 17 house churches in the eastern part of the island and in Havana, the BIC have more than 600 members. One BIC pastor reported that as many as 45% of Cubans are active church-going believers, both Catholic and Protestant. However, services are kept inside the church. They don't go out with religious tracts and Bibles. One church-goer explained that the US trade embargo makes life hard in Cuba, but has made Christians more faithful: "If we didn't have the embargo, we would not have to depend on God as much. Because things are hard, we must rely on God. If there was no embargo, things might become too easy and accumulating wealth would replace our reliance on God." Willroy Grant, a student trained in conflict transformation at Eastern Mennonite University, will work for MCC in conflict transformation training at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Havana. He will also be working with BIC and Mennonite groups. The other MCC representatives to Cuba went to Washington Sept. 17 to ask the US government to lift the trade embargo against Cuba, which was imposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy as tensions between the US and the Soviet Union mounted. Now 38 years later, the Cold War has ended, but the trade embargo still stands.--

Mennonite Health Services and Mennonite Central Committee Mental Health and Disabilities Progam offer $1,000-$1,200 US scholarships to graduate students in Canada and the US pursuing careers in mental health fields. The scholarships, to be awarded in spring for the 1999-2000 academic year, are available from the Elmer Ediger Memorial Scholarship Fund. Four to six students receive scholarships yearly. To qualify for the scholarships, candidates must be graduate students with vocational interest in mental health, developmental inted for the day spoke directly to the situation.--

Billy Graham is planning a conference of preaching evangelists to be held July 29-Aug. 6, 2000 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. More than 10,000 participants (three-fourths of whom are itinerant evangelists) from about 185 countries and territories, speaking 25 languages, are expected to attend. Other participants will include theologians, strategists, church leaders, stewards and conference staff. John Corts, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, will serve as general director of the conference. "World evangelization is fresh in every generation," said Corts. "Though the message of the gospel and the need for that message will not change in the next century, the methods and delivery systems will be different . . . There is an urgency for us to meet and encourage one another in a task that seems more daunting every day."--

A Turkish court handed down stiff sentences in early September 1998 to eight members of an outlawed Islamist group convicted of bombing a Christian bookstall that killed a four-year-old boy and injured 25 bystanders Sept. 14, 1997. The convicted were sentenced to prison, with the bomber receiving a life term. Others convicted drew lesser sentences. The bombing had followed several verbal threats against Good News Publishing Company's bookstand, which was legally selling Bibles and Christian books and tapes in the Turkish language at a fair. Good News Publishing Company owner Mustafa Efe, who converted to Christianity 15 years ago, also runs a licensed Christian radio station and a registered Bible correspondence course in Turkey. Efe, 33, recently imported the Jesus film, which in spring was granted the legal right to be distributed in the Kurdish language, making it the only Kurdish film ever to be allowed to be duplicated and screened legally within Turkey. The first 1,500 videos of the Kurdish version were made available in April 1998. The Turkish version of the film had been legally licensed since December 1992. At least 20% of the Turkish population are of Kurdish heritage. Only in this decade, however, have restrictive laws been lifted which prohibited the public use of Kurdish by Turkish citizens. Previously, Kurdish films were smuggled into the country.--

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