People and Events

A pre-Remembrance Day peace concert was held Nov. 10 by Canadian Mennonite Bible College and Concord College. The choral concert, performed at Portage Ave. MB Church, Winnipeg, celebrated Anabaptist-Mennonite belief in peace-making through song. The combined college choirs, conducted by Rudy Schellenberg, opened the evening with seven different compositions, including a rendition of Psalm 23 by Schubert, a call for peace by the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, and John Tavener's "Alleluia, May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest". In the second half of the concert, the Mennonite Oratorio Choir, the combined voices of both colleges and the community, performed Gabriel Faure's "Requiem, Opus 48". The 350 voices, under the direction of Concord College's Mark Bartel, were joined by soloists Melinda Enns and Mel Braun and strings from the Winnipeg Symphony and Manitoba Chamber Orchestras to present this peaceful, quiet version of the traditional mass for the dead.--

Helmut Harder, the general secretary of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada since 1990, will retire at the end of August 1999. Harder taught at Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Winnipeg, 1962-90.--

A supply of leukemia medicines for 50 Iraqi children remained in refrigerated storage in mid-November due to delays in Jordan and Iraq. Purchased in Jordan through Mennonite Central Committee, the two-year medicine supply is valued at $150,000. The project was scheduled to begin earlier this year. Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, childhood leukemia rates in Iraq have increased while medicines have become scarce due to international economic sanctions against Iraq.--

B.C. Christian News will be allowed space in B.C. Transit's depots along with other free-distribution publications. The transit authority reversed an earlier decision after it received complaints that it was censoring the local paper. The corporation had rejected the newspaper because it felt some transit riders might find the paper's views on homosexuality and abortion "derogatory or offensive". About 25 publications are available at B.C. Transit depots.--

Video lottery terminals will stay in Edmonton and Calgary. That was the result of plebiscites held Oct. 19 that asked to have VLTs removed in 31 cities in Alberta. Twenty-six communities voted to leave VLTs in their communities, including Red Deer, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. Communities that rejected VLTs were Lacombe, Canmore, Stony Plain, Cardston, Coaldale and Lethbridge County. A total of 553,059 votes were cast province-wide; 303,530 (54.8%) voted to keep VLTs, and 249,529 (45.2%) voted to have them removed. Gary Smith, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, who has studied gambling issues throughout North America, said he was surprised at the results of the vote. After the vote, Premier Ralph Klein promised to increase the visibility of gambling addiction programs, to separate gambling revenue from general revenue, to direct all gambling profits to charitable and non-profit organizations, and to set up an independent gaming research institute next year, funded by lottery revenue. Some religious and charitable groups are boycotting the grants that come from the province's lottery fund. Five days before the plebiscite, Chinese Alliance Church, Edmonton, decided to return $21,775 in lottery funds to the government.--

Relief efforts continue in Central America after Hurricane Mitch hit the area. Mennonite Central Committee is sending two 5-metre containers of canned beef, shoes, milk powder, laundry soap, clothing, water purification tablets and medicine to Honduras. Cloister Water of Lancaster, Pa. donated 2386 litres of bottled water. The Mennonite Spanish Lookout Colony in Belize, which just missed being hit by the hurricane, donated 39,600 kg of rice and 19,800 kg of corn to Honduras. MCC purchased another 19,800 kg of red beans from the colony. The US government has committed $250 million in assistance and has agreed to suspend debt payments from Honduras and Nicaragua for two years. (Nicaragua owes $6.1 billion US and Honduras owes $4.1 billion US to the US and other countries.) By November 13, donations to MCC Canada for hurricane relief efforts had reached $660,000, broken down as follows: Manitoba--$300,000; Ontario--$150,000; Saskatchewan--$110,000; Alberta--$14,000; and B.C.--$85,000. MB Collegiate Institute, an MB high school in Winnipeg, raised $7,154 for the relief efforts. MCC is also asking its constituency to donate 20,000 "relief kits-- for individual families.--

In Nicaragua, Mennonite Economic Development Associates' programs were hit hard by Hurricane Mitch. PROARTE, a marketing-assistance program for pottery makers, was hardest hit. Ovens, workshops, equipment and ceramics were destroyed; and about 40 artisans lost their homes. It costs $2,500 to replace one workshop and $2,000 to build a basic house. At least $150,000 of loans from MEDA to the potters may have to be written off. Farmers in the PRODUCER program lost 50-70% of their bean crop. About 350 farmers belong to this program; 20 families lost their dwellings. MEDA is providing $991,000 to help rebuild workshops, provide housing loans and lending capital, and repair roads. This financial assistance is a departure from MEDA's usual method of providing development assistance not relief assistance.--

In Puerto Rico, Mennonite Disaster Service will help rebuild Mennonite communites such as Aibonito, La Plata and Barranquita that were affected by Hurricane Georges Sept. 21. The relief agency is asking for donations as well as carpenters, masons and other Spanish-speaking volunteers to assist in the reconstruction.--

A language training centre in Burkina Faso, operated by Mennonite Central Committee, will close Dec. 31. For more than 10 years, MCC volunteers going to French-speaking African countries--Chad, Burkina Faso and Congo--studied at the centre. In recent years, the centre also provided training for various mission organizations (Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, World Partners, the Presbyterian Church, Conservative Baptists, Southern Baptists, the Church of the Nazarene, Methodist Church) and for development agencies (Save the Children Fund, UNAIS, US Peace Corps, APSO), as well as for individuals preparing to work in West and Central Africa. At one time, MCC had a large number of volunteers in French-speaking Africa, but as the number of MCC volunteers declined, the school has increasingly become a resource for other agencies.--

Iris Sharir of Windsor, Ont. is this year's recipient of the Canadian Japanese-Mennonite Scholarship. The scholarship, jointly sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee Canada and the national Association of Japanese Canadians, was created in 1985 to assist research that will reduce the potential for abuse of minority groups in Canada, such as that suffered by Japanese Canadians interned during World War II. Sharir is currently a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Windsor, and will use the $1000 award to study mental health issues among adolescents who have immigrated to Canada from Asia.--

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