• BC Christian News • JANUARY ISSUE 2001 • VOL. 21 #1 • Formerly "Christian Info News" •

'Wind of God' blowing through northern communities
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By Meg Johnstone

A "MOVE of the Spirit" in parts of northern Canada is moving south, and beginning to touch some troubled communities in Labrador, according to Roger Armbruster, director of Canadian missions with Maranatha Good News Centre in Niverville, Manitoba.

Armbruster has worked among the Inuit of northern Quebec and Baffin Island for several years. He is convinced the transformations he has witnessed in those regions will also occur in Labrador, which has been crying out for help with the same issues.

Ross Maracle of Spirit Alive Television.

Recent CBC documentaries brought attention to two troubled Labrador communities, Sheshatshiu and Davis Inlet. CBC Newsworld also recently interviewed native Christian leader Ross Maracle of Spirit Alive Television, prior to his making two trips into these towns to assess the breadth of the problems.

"There has been no breakthrough in Labrador yet, but I am believing that the pattern of transformation that has occurred in some of the Inuit communities of Nunavik and Nunavut will become a role model for the communities of Labrador as well," says Armbruster.

"There is definitely an ongoing river of sorrow and pain in [Labrador] due to suicide, abuse, alcoholism, gas and glue sniffing," says Maracle.

Maracle has made two "humanitarian and friendship" missions into Labrador this month, and is planning a third after Christmas.

On the second trip, he gave out 50 sets of mitts, toques and scarves to the children at Sheshatshiu Community Centre.

Because of the favourable response to the all-native team, they were invited back to Labrador to participate in their community Christmas concert. Maracle presented each child with a gift box, Christian comic books donated by Indian Life, gospel music cassettes and CDs, and a booklet written by Maracle.

Until now, the Inuit of Labrador have been cut off by the Torngat Mountain range from their Inuit 'cousins' in Nunavik (northern Quebec) and Nunavut, even though 60 percent of their Inuktitut language is the same. Many of the social problems of suicide, substance abuse and domestic violence are also the same, says Armbruster.

Inuit missionaries

Some Nunavut and Nunavik communities have undergone near total transformation, and many northern Inuit now see themselves as missionaries, says Armbruster. He recently accompanied 12 Inuit from northern Quebec and Nunavut on an outreach trip to Nain, Labrador, a community that has seen a large number of suicides -- 22 since January, 1999.

During that visit, one of the women, Annie Tertiluk, declared that at one time some 90 percent of the adults in her community were alcoholics; and of those, she said, "we [she and her husband] were some of the worst."

Today, however, Tertiluk can testify that in her community of Kangiqsujuaq in northern Quebec, the situation is exactly reversed. Now only about 10 percent of the adult community are alcoholics, and 90 percent have been set free by "the truth of the gospel, and the liberating power of the Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and that now lives within us," reports Armbruster.

Puvirnituq transformed

Another example is the town of Puvirnituq in northern Quebec. In 1990 - 1991, the town also had an "epidemic" of suicides, Armbruster says. A CBC documentary called it "the worst place to live in Canada." There was a suicide "every month for two years," in a town of only approximately 1,000 people.

"The leadership began to get desperate and say 'we need God,'" says Armbruster. "'We need to have the family pain healed. Government programs just build buildings.'"

At a Christmas Eve service in 1995, the Holy Spirit moved so powerfully that they continued to meet together to worship God "every day for three months straight." Eighty-five percent of the community received Christ in the following months.

The mayor of Puvirnituq officially declared 1999 the 'Year to Support the Believers,' Armbruster says. The council realizes that "each person helped by the church is one less person for the government to look after."

He adds: "The move of God is greatest among the very young people that the devil tried to destroy" through substance abuse and suicide. "God is raising up leaders who are first of all being healed. Fathers will get up and repent publicly for abusing their families, and then the young people start to respond. I've never seen this anywhere else in the world," he says.

Where's the media?

Why isn't the secular media reporting this? "The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed; the rest of the world is oblivious to it," says Armbruster. "The media are more attracted to something negative -- they covered the glue sniffing and the suicides. But the kingdom of God comes from the inside out, not with outward show and sensationalism."

However, the story is being told in an upcoming video to be released in early May, as part of the 'Transformations' series. George Otis, Jr., who narrates the videos, interviewed Armbruster for the new presentation.

In addition, Ruth Ruibal, who is involved in a dramatic transforming move of God in Cali, Colombia, told Armbruster they have heard about what happened in Pond Inlet. "We are praying for the northern wind of the Spirit to come to all of the Americas," she told Armbruster.