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