People & events

The last of Vietnam’s imprisoned “Mennonite Six,” evangelist Pham Ngoc Thach, was released in early March, after completing a two-year sentence. While in prison, Thach did heavy labour and was occasionally tortured. His health seriously declined. Mennonite church leaders are grateful to all who prayed and “supported our workers imprisoned because of their faith.” Another positive development for Mennonites in Vietnam is the recent official “recognition” of Ho Chi Minh City’s Mennonite congregation by the city’s Committee for Religious Affairs.

—Compass Direct

Scent-free: that’s a commitment Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, is trying to fulfill on its campus. Two CMU students have a scent allergy known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, which causes reactions ranging from watery eyes to asthma-like attacks. CMU encourages students and staff to switch from scented personal products like deodorants and shampoos to unscented or light-scented products. (Lists are provided.) The university has also switched to unscented or low-odour cleaning and maintenance products.

—CMU release

Guns for work: Christy Sprinkle, a Mennonite Central Committee worker in Mogadishu, Somalia, helps collect machine guns that local people turn in to be destroyed. A local partner organization, SAACID, is collecting the guns from 512 militia members in exchange for vocational training. When the vocational training is finished, SAACID will destroy the guns in a public ceremony. Rival warlords and militias have been fighting for control of Somalia’s capital since the collapse of the government in 1991. “People are ready for peace,” Sprinkle writes, “and society has to reintegrate those fighters into society, when all they’ve known for years is the gun.”

—MCC News

Korea’s first Anabaptist church turned 10! Jesus Village Church (JVC), a body of about 40 believers, celebrated their first decade with various festivities in January. JVC began in 1996 after three years of intense study by a cell group concerned with the professionalism, hierarchy, institutionalism, and legalism of the traditional church in Korea. Members learned of Reformed and Anabaptist churches and felt led to join the Anabaptist–Mennonite community.

—Mennonite Mission Network

Letters from Dad: Greg Vaughan, a Christian film producer from Texas, has seen more than 5,000 men take the course “Letters from Dad,” which encourages and teaches men to write periodic letters to their children, wives, and parents, in order to leave them a legacy of love and blessing. Vaughan’s curriculum (and a book) grew out of his experience upon receiving a shotgun and fishing tackle box after his father’s death. “All I really wanted was a slip of paper with his name on it, a note that said he’d loved me.”

—Oregonlive.com

Delton Franz, first and longtime director of the MCC Washington office, died March 6 at 73, after a lengthy illness. Franz was pastor of Woodlawn Mennonite Church in Chicago, one of the early inter-racial Mennonite congregations, and then, at the peak of the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War, he went to Washington in 1968 to open a government liaison office for Mennonite Central Committee. He served 26 years as director.

—MCC News

Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT) in Hebron has been asked by one of Hamas’ victorious candidates to document Israel’s administrative detention of Palestinians without charges or trials. “There are thousands of Palestinians who have been detained for more than 60 months,” Sheikh Nayef Rajoub told local CPTers in his request. Their treatment, he said, is similar to the abuses of Iraqi detainees by the U.S. military that CPT has been reporting for almost three years.

—The Mennonite

The Canadian government posted a warning on its Foreign Affairs Canada website to potential investors in the Caobo Company’s land restitution efforts in the Ukraine (see “Mennonite groups oppose land speculator” Feb. 3) advising them to “proceed with extreme caution.” The North American–based Friends of the Mennonite Centre Ukraine is pleased with the warning and reiterates that Caobo’s initiative will hinder humanitarian efforts in the Ukraine.

—Canadian Mennonite

“What good is it to help people rebuild their homes, if there are no jobs?” That question coming to Mennonite Disaster Service workers in the Gulf Coast region will receive an answer, at least in part, through a recently announced grant of $450,000 US from MDS to Mennonite Economic Development Associates to assist New Orleans business owners and others get back to work.

—MDS–MEDA release

Micah Challenge Canada, a broad-based network of Christian denominations and relief and development agencies that seeks to influence national leaders to fulfill their pledges to Millennium Development Goals, issued a challenge to the 39th parliament to make global poverty reduction a priority. Co-chair Geoff Tunnicliffe said, “This is an historic opportunity for our Conservative-led government to . . . justify our reputation as a compassionate global neighbour.”

—release

Canada’s new government also got a letter from Mennonite Central Committee Canada, expressing appreciation for financial support through the Canadian International Development Agency. MCC values the “open dialogue” that has been established with the government over the years, said board chair Ronald Dueck of Winnipeg in an interview. He said MCC’s many international partnerships give the organization credibility in its relationship with government.

—MCC News