ONWARD Page 2 April 2006

NEWFOUNDLAND/LABRADOR COMES INTO RICHES

For the 250 years that the Moravian Church has labored in the Artic North of Labrador, the beauty of the natural mountains and valleys was always contrasted with the poverty, harsh weather and difficult life of the native people. The religious and economic resources of the European Moravian Church were seriously challenged in founding about a dozen centers, each with a church, a school, a clinic or hospital and all the needs of the population with stores, postal service, and to bring in the yearlong material needs with the ships of the Moravian Navy each summer. But all that has now changed.

Instead of being the poorest province in Canada, Newfoundland/Labrador now has a gross domestic product growth of 5.2%, the highest in Canada. This is the result of good economic news in N/L and the booming economy of China and the global thirst for oil and nickel. Last November saw the opening of a new offshore oil industry near Newfoundland and a giant nickel project in Labrador.

This is one of the largest nickel deposits in the world. When it was discovered in the 1990’s the price of nickel was below $2 a pound, but today the price is just under $7. With the worldwide demand for nickel and the needs of China, the future is strong.

The land where the nickel is located was found on land owned by the Moravian Church since 1773 when the King of England bestowed it in gratitude for the Moravians coming to help the plight of the Eskimos, as they were called in those days. In all the British Crown granted over one million acres of land to the Moravian Church. As the government of Canada saw the opportunity, they took the land from the Church a few years ago and refused to reimburse the Church. A court trial encouraged the government to award $1,000,000 in January to the Labrador Church.

The Inuit and Innus (Indians) made the government promise to hire half of the labor needs from the local aboriginals. Because of the cost of building a town to house outsiders, other workers are flown in and out every two weeks and live in a camp on site. One Inuit woman had struggled with some seasonal work driving a giant truck. But since November, she now earns nearly $40,000 near Nain hauling nickel ore.

But even bigger than the nickel project is the new oil field, called the White Rose. It is situated just over 200 miles off shore in the North Atlantic. It is now producing 70,000 barrels of oil a day. It has a life supply of at least 10 years. Now the need for a new refinery is being planned. It will supply mainly the NE United States. It will be able to refine over 300,000 barrels a day.

The new work will soon stop the exit of workers from N/L, as there has been an unemployment rate of over 15% with about 1.5% of the labor force leaving the area each year. Because of the lack of work, families are smaller each year which complicates the situation. The offshore oil industry does not require many workers, but the increase of money means other jobs will open to meet the new needs.

The whole problem is worsened because the biggest traditional opportunity has always been in fishing. The Moravian Church has always warned the people to not sell off a large amount of fish because it was their traditional food, and depletion of that would cause real trouble. But the demand for cod around the world, especially in the Caribbean, was too big to be ignored. So fishermen from all over the world, especially from Canada and the USA have caused the industry to destroy this huge source of fish. The depletion is so bad that even with the closure of fishing of cod now, the supply will probably never be able to regain its prominence. During our visit to Labrador in August we saw only a few people able to find employment is the diminished fishing industry.

The one place that has benefited most was the city of St. John, the capital of the province. Real estate has shown a tremendous inflation in the past four years. In the last economic boom of the 1940’s, the iron ore industry caused a railroad to be built across southern Labrador. Then the Trans-Canada highway was completed with the Trans-Labrador link in the 1990’s. The world’s largest under ground electrical plant is part of this growth.

But the only way to get to the Nain area, where the nickel is located, is by dogsled or by skidoo overland. Otherwise it is by plane, and, in the summer by ship. These dramatic changes will bring money to the area but will also bring great changes to the people who have many problems already. They need our prayer. JHG

A Lower Opinion

On my visit to the beautiful country of Thailand, I was struck by the courteous behavior of so many Thai people. A custom that helps to reinforce this is the wai – it is a system of greeting that takes the place of the handshake. The palms are placed together in a prayerful position, and the placement of the palms (either over the heart, under the chin, near the nose or near the forehead) shows the relationship with the person being greeted or recognized – the higher the placement, the higher the perceived “status” of the recipient of the greeting. While I was flattered to receive a hands-to-the-forehead wai, I realized that, as a Christian, my goal should be, in a sense, to work toward giving people a lower opinion of me! So, it was a source of personal satisfaction when, on the last day of the conference, the staff responsible for setting up the keyboards and other equipment that I had been using in worship gave me what I considered to be the highest compliment: the lowest level of wai, the one reserved for those perceived as equals, the ones closest to the heart. By Sam Gray