'Those tools are not only 'secular;, but spiritual.'

A Pentecostal church ministry in Iqaluit whose seeds were sown 24 years ago when a young Bible college student in Ontario felt herself called to a northern capital city, may soon have its own church building.

Theresa and Richard Rodrigue will make a permanent home for their Northern Lighthouse Ministries when they move a building they hope to get from the soup kitchen society to a lot on the ring road they plan to lease from the city.

That's if the new soup kitchen and thrift store opens on schedule, and the city's rezoning plans work out.

The process is still far from nailed down, Theresa admits. But she is working hard to get the ducks lined up.

"A lot of things are intertwined," she says. "It's the sequences that get you."

Russ Blanchet, the Anglican church's outreach minister who runs the soup kitchen, says he would like to give the Rodrigues the old building after the new soup kitchen facility opens – projected to happen by May.

The city is in the process of rezoning the land from residential to institutional.

Theresa has already signalled her desire to lease it, and will do so, she says, as soon as the rezoning is complete, which should also be sometime around May.

The city lot is situated across the creek and across Queen Elizabeth Way (ring road) from the RCMP building – at the corner of Amaaq.

The old soup kitchen sits on land owned by the Qikiqtaaluk Corp. QC donated the building (sold it for a dollar) to the soup kitchen society when it was still a committee of the Anglican church, and Blanchet says the society's best option would be to hand the building on to the Rodrigues so QC can redevelop its property.

But that's a decision that remains to be made by the volunteer board of the soup kitchen society.

The Rodrigues say having their own church building, besides giving a more visible presence to their ministry in the community, will let them offer a whole new set of programs aimed at providing faith-based life skills and drug and alcohol counselling to those in need.

Theresa was a young ­single mother studying at a Bible college in Oshawa, Ont., when she felt the call to the Arctic, and specifically to move to a capital city.

An introduction to an Inuk woman from Pangnirtung living in the south led to a trip to Pang, and in 1991 she moved to Iqaluit to work for Air Baffin, now Air Nunavut.

And when Iqaluit became the capital of Nunavut, her original dream of doing ministry in a capital city in the Arctic became a reality.

At the same time, Richard moved north from Quebec. He and Theresa met, married and have built a life and a shared Pentecostal ministry here that began in 1999 with children's Sunday school classes in their own home.

Now, 10 years later, they run both a "Children's Church" and a "Youth Power Hour" at the Abe Opik Community Centre in Apex on Sundays, plus a prison ministry, and adult bible study out of their own home on Tuesday evenings.

Last year, up to 80 children were involved to one degree or another in the children's church, Theresa says.

Her dream now is to be able to offer an education series developed by her United Pentecostal denomination, called Life in Focus.

The website (lifeinfocus.org) describes it as "a faith-based community assistance program that offers training and course studies in drug education, anger management, finance management, grant writing, and employment development."

"It's a type of community training and education that to me is highly needed," says Theresa, who has taught at Nunavut Arctic College and served on city council. "There are so many social issues, from residential schools to drug and alcohol addiction."

The program's aim – and her own in offering it – she says, is to give people the tools to survive and thrive in today's technological, bureaucratic and scientific environment.

"For me," she adds, "those tools are not only secular, but spiritual."

Rezoning of the land for the Northern Lighthouse Ministries church has already passed first reading at city council.

The city will hold a public hearing at council chambers at 6 p.m. on March 24, and will proceed with second and third readings if there are no objections.

The rezoning will still have to be approved by the Nunavut government's Department of Community and Government Services before the property can be offered for lease.

The Rodrigues will be waiting.