Somewhere It's Snowing!

Outside our front window...that's an elementary school across the street.  It's SNOWING!

"Somewhere It's Snowing" - that's the song I'll be singing at church on Sunday morning for special music and guess what? It's snowing outside my classroom window right now!  We've had snow here and there all week this week.  I'm so thankful for my cozy, warm home and the fireplace in our basement.  God is so good!

At the Children's Christmas Musical at Grace Church

It's been a while since I've updated this blog and for that I am so sorry!  These past 4 months have gone so well here in Montreal, and at the same time, so difficult.  I've had some of the most rewarding experiences in ministry already, but I've also had some of the most difficult, overwhelming days, too. 

I thank God that we see growth spiritually in the lives of those we are working with.  It's such a joy to be in a place where you have sensed God calling you....we know God has put us here and we love being here! 

On Dec. 10 in NY where we bought our Christmas tree

We continue to meet with youth on Sunday nights and Jerad & I love it!  The kids are so great.  Each one is unique and we've enjoyed getting to know them in the short time we've been here.  The youth leaders God has brought us have been such a blessing - each one adding something specific and necessary to our little team.  Thank you for praying for this ministry.  Continue to uplift them in your prayers.

At our formal Christmas party with the Youth Group

If you'd like to know more specifically how to pray for our family, I'd love to give you the specifics. You can leave a comment here on this blog with your email address or you can email us at jmellette@fim.org.

God bless you all and thank you for your interest in our ministry in Montreal, y'all!

Finally! An Update!

Jerad and I apple picking today

Mellette Moments from MontrealJerad, Wanda, Gabriel & Morgan

Thank you for your prayers & support - We covet your continued acts of love!!!

Going apple picking

In the basement of church

Bonjour!  
Salutations de la vers le nord!

 Impressed?  It means Hello.  Greetings from up north! Don’t be too impressed, I used Google Translate. Jerad continues to be the sole French speaker in our little Mellette family, but we’re trying!  Very soon we will have a French tutor who will attempt to immerse us in the French language.  Appreciate your prayers regarding such an acquisition!

At a local park

Synergy Youth Group

at Grace Church

What is “Synergy?” Synergy is created when things work in concert together to create an outcome that is in some way of more value than the total of what the individual inputs is.

Youth Group Room
(We set up and tear down every Sunday night)

 

Quick Facts:

• We meet on Sunday nights at Grace Church from 6:30 – 8:30.
   
• We are comprised young people ages 12-18.
  
• We started out with 6 youth and 7 leaders. The next week we grew to 13 youth and 9 leaders!
• We had our first movie night and showed “October Baby” – 17 came out!

 

At a local park

 

Prayer Requests:

• We are already outgrowing our space at Grace Church – Please pray for a store front we’d like to rent to use for a youth center.
    
• Please pray for the leaders who are helping with youth group and for the young people attending youth group.

Youth Member and Youth Leader

 

 

We’re going on week 5 of living in Lasalle and the transition has had its highs and lows.  We’ve all had our moments of tears, as well as, our moments of giggles and fun.  We are all drawing on the Lord for strength and wisdom as we adjust to living in a city that is so dark spiritually.  Most people who hear that we’ve moved from the states quickly ask, “Why? Why would you ever move to Quebec?” We are just as quick to tell them about our passion for youth and for God. 
 
Homeschooling is going well, although it has been an adjustment, to say the least.  Overall, Gabriel, Morgan and I are so thankful to be in our home for schooling. Their favorite subject is Art.  Of course!  That’s the one I don’t teach them…I have a Christian art curriculum on DVD. J
 
To briefly describe the shock of the culture change, a friend from Grace Church recently told me about a trip she made to New York City.  She shared how “wholesome” NYC is compared to Montreal! If you can wrap your head around that reality, that’s where we’re living!
 
Please continue to pray for our transition & our ministry!

 

THANK YOU!!!!!

 

Our Cat is Enjoying the New Place!

 

 

God is at Work in Montreal and in the Mellette Family!

My family on the day we left PA...sniff sniff

It's been 3 weeks since we moved into our new place in Lasalle - a predominantly English area on the island of Montreal, Quebec.  These past 3 weeks have been filled with highs and lows, joys and struggles, but our constant has been our great God!  He truly is our Father, watching over us and providing for us, His children, every step of the way.  Let me give you an example of how awesome God is...

I, Wanda, have felt like I'm in a dream some days.  There's a LOT of changes, things to learn, and opportunities to step out of my comfort zone.  I've cried over the fact that my children hear or see curse words every day - even outside my bedroom room.  I've cried because of the spiritual darkness that surrounds us here in Montreal.  I've cried for no reason at all, too.  But this evening, I cried tears of JOY!

I've heard a LOT this week regarding the environment some of the people I interact with live through every day.  I've heard some very sad things and this evening I was feeling like I needed a little pick-me-up, but first, I had to bake something for the potluck I was about to attend.  What to bake?  Hmm. I had some of my parents' Shoofly Cake mix, so I decided to bring some Lancaster County to French Montreal.  Why not?!  After baking the cake, I had 5 minutes before I needed to leave so I tried FaceTiming (similar to Skype) my parents, my sisters, one of my best friends, but to no avail.  No one was available.  Bummer. 

Jerad drove me and a friend from Grace Church to the women's potluck dinner at another English church on a different part of the island.  The evening was nice.  When Jerad came back to pick us up, I went to retrieve my shoofly cake and some twin ladies began freaking out about that stuff I made. They loved the shoofly cake!  Go figure! 

Another lady by the name of Virgina came over and began fussing over the shoofly cake and said how she loves wet-bottom shoofly pie, too!  I couldn't believe my ears!  Turns out Virgina is from ALLENTOWN, PA!  When I mentioned that Jerad's very good friends, the Brownbacks, are from Allentown, Virginia said, "Do you mean Steve Brownback?" Steve is one of Jerad's oldest friends from Word of Life Bible Institute!

Turns out this Virgina lady is a missionary, too!  One of her friends just "happened" to stay at her house last year.  That friend happens to attend my home church - Christian Fellowship Church!  Another connection!

The Christian community in Montreal is SO small.  This is not like the Lancaster County I grew up in where planning the "Mennonite Game" is a common activity.  This is rare to find a Christian....one from America....from PENNSYLVANIA!  TOO COOL!

The welcome card Grace Church of Lasalle gave us

 
I could give you story after story about how God is showing us that He is right here with us through it all.  Like when we went to the library and found out that our local library has the largest comic book collection in ALL of Quebec....and most of them are in English!  This really spoke volumes to Gabriel.  He adore comic books!

Or how the night we moved into our new home, Uncle Shawn found a snail at our front door.  This snail, "Sticky" has become Morgan's new pet.  I heard her saying to a new friend, "This snail is very special to me - it means a lot to me because my Uncle Shawn gave it to me."  She plays with that snail and just loves it.  She had to give some of her pets (frogs, fish, hamster) away before with left for Canada, so this little snail means so much to her! 

As for Jerad, he is in the process, LORD WILLING, of his "Oh, thank you, God" moment.  He has been on the hunt for a building that we can use as a youth center and may have found the right one.  He was finally able to track down the owner of the corner store that has been vacant for about 7 years. Jerad's plea is that we'll fix up the corner store - do all the renovations - pay the utilities, etc. and give the owner a tax receipt for letting us use the building as a youth drop-off center.  The owner will be back on Thursday - hopefully with an answer. 

At one of the local parks - there are over 1,000 parks just on the island of Montreal!

Please be praying that God would provide this building or one like it that is close to Grace Church and would accommodate this ministry.

Homeschool!

Thank you for your ongoing support, love and prayers as we continue to settle in to our new routine and life here in Quebec.  We are enjoying homeschooling, our new home and Grace Church very much.  We just miss you all so much! 

Much Love,
Wanda (Jerad, Gabriel & Morgan) Mellette

Blessings Upon Blessings

Tears of JOY in the Mellettte Household! Our doctor's office called (Dr. John Cotter) and they have our medical files copied....they waived the $20 PER patient fees AND the $1.79 per page fees! They just said, "Godspeed to you!" GOD IS GOOD!

 

So many other blessings to share, but PACKING is calling my name!  THANK YOU for your prayers!  Things are going much better than last week.  We sense the prayers of God's people! 

THANK YOU!!!

MeMa is having a fun day with her Mellette grandchildren!

 

With God, All Things are Possible...Even in the Desert

For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. 1 Corinthians 16:9

An Oasis in the Desert. 

Jerad traveled more than 1,500 miles from early Saturday morning to Tuesday evening visiting his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and supporters in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia.  We praise God for His provision, safety and refreshment Jerad experienced.  It was his oasis in the desert.

We have great challenges ahead of us and yet we serve a GREAT GOD!  We're calling on God's people to earnestly pray for our family.  As Jerad drove home from his long journey, he asked God to do something big - to really move and He has.  We have experienced great showers of blessing throughout this deputation time, but this evening showers - a literal shower - came into our 1/2 bath.  We now have a hole in our ceiling. 

If that were it, that'd be manageable I guess....Jerad and I will be the first to admit that home repair is quite unnatural to both of us, but we can make phone calls, that's doable.  To compound the situation, yesterday I came home to 4 large medical bills.  To further stretch us, we have some outgoing expenses to settle in the next 10 days.  And, lastly, we still need that last 7% of our support.

Have you ever felt physically sick because you are overwhelmed with concern as to how God will provide?  We're feeling that right now and yet, we know without a shadow of a doubt that God will provide for us.  So, why the nauseating feelings in the pit of our stomachs?  Why the lumps in our throats?  I don't know if I can answer that other than to say, we are human.  In these moments of frustrations and worry, we rely on God. 

Please pray.

Our Sendoff Service

We're excited to see our unmet support need dropping quickly (we only have 7% more to raise!!!) and based upon the Lord's blessing are hoping to depart on September 19.  Our home church, Christian Fellowship Church, will be having a commissioning on Sunday morning September 9 and a SENDOFF SERVICE that evening at 6 pm. You are welcomed to come!

 

So, mark your calendars...

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9

8:15am, 10:45am and/or

the SENDOFF SERVICE at 6pm.

 



 

 

 

and

 

 

Sniff sniff

August 23 Update

Dearest Friends and Family,

We're so excited at how God is working in our lives and in the lives of His people.  The encouragement, prayers, financial support and acts of kindness from family and friends have been overwhelmingly wonderful.  Thank you all!

Here's where we are at...

We have a home in Lasalle - 5 minutes from Grace Church - on the island of Montreal, in the province of Quebec. 

 

 

We have renters for our home in Lancaster!  The couple has a 2 year old and a dog.  We praise God for Rob Hess who has generously offered to manage the property for us.

We are still in need of more monthly commits of support - we need approximately $1300 more per month.

We have settlement on our home in Lasalle on September 20.  In a perfect world, we would love to be fully supported by that date, so that when we go up there to sign papers we can stay up there and get started with our youth ministry.

We are already experiencing all the emotions that come with moving!  This week has been particularly emotion-ridden as Gabriel, Morgan and I didn't start the school year with everyone else at Lancaster County Christian School.

We are kept very busy in the meantime.  The process of raising support is truly a blessing and we consider it a joy to meet with God's people and to see how God brings in the support.  We are packing up our things, meeting with people, speaking at various venues, praying and serving where we can. 

THANK YOU for your interest in our ministry and for partnering with us as we move to Montreal - a mission field where less than 1% claim to be born-again. 

Much love and appreciation,
Wanda  Mellette (and Jerad, Gabriel & Morgan, too)

A Wonderful Whirlwind Weekend to Montreal

This time we got to take Wanda's parents AND our beautiful niece Kaylee with us to Montreal!

Lasalle, Montreal, Quebec

Eldest Mellette Cousin
Reading to the Youngest Mellette Cousin

Girl Mellette Cousins

Jerad's brother Brad and son

Grace Church of Lasalle





Friends from Grace Church of Lasalle



Getting ready for the outdoor baptism that had to eventually be switched to inside

My parents visiting Grace Church
for the first time...on my dad's birthday!

Busy nursery!

The rain held off just in time for
Brad to conduct the actual baptism

116 people came out for the baptism!
It downpoured before and after the baptism.
God is good!

The Mellette Grandchildren

We bumped into friends from home in between the rain...friends from Lancaster County!

Dad's birthday dinner.  His Lancaster friends came by and surprised him with a cake.  So fun!

MeMa lovin' on little Lauren

Our sister-in-law, Melissa, and our amazing realtor!

The people responsible for helping us find the perfect home!

Morgan and Kaylee.

Our new house!

For those of you who have been following our blog, this last picture may look quite a bit different than the previous picture we showed claiming as our new house.  Well, here's the story.  We wrote a "condition" on us buying the first house...we wanted to see it first before we actually bought it.  We're so glad that condition was there!  As it turned out, Jerad was TOO TALL for the house!  I know, I know...sounds funny.  But, to get to the room that would have been "Gabriel's bedroom", Jerad would have had to practically double over each and every time he went into the basement.  We value Jerad's head and feared that if Gabriel was sick one night and Jerad ran downstairs he may end up knocking himself out in the process!

So after seeing that house, we withdrew from our offer.  We were pretty bummed.  But, the church service on Sunday put things in perspective.  We witnessed 4 adults get baptized after giving their testimony about how/when they put their faith and trust in Jesus.  It was very moving.  116 people came out to the service. 

After a birthday lunch for my dad, we met with our realtor and toured the home that we saw months ago and thought would be perfect but was too far out of our price range.  Recently, the sellers lowered the price significantly, and as of yesterday, we have a HOUSE!  We praise the Lord! 

The house is 5 mintues from church and there is a huge mission field right across the street...a French and English Elementary school!  God worked it all out!

GOD IS GOOD!  Please stop and thank God for His provision and timing.  Thank God for our realtor, Brad & Melissa, and my parents who have all been instrumental in helping us find the perfect home for us. 

Settlement is September 20 and move in day is Septemeber 23!