I’ve been to Canada before, but that was when I was in high school, and it was a trip to Ontario, not Quebec. I entered into Quebec on Saturday morning and had no delays crossing the border. I drove 9 hours to Saint-Jérome and enjoyed the beautiful countryside, especially since I traveled next to Lake Ontario almost the whole time.
My DVD is, of course, in English, so to show it in Quebec I thought I could just play a music-only version while I read the script live in French. Since I didn’t have much time to prepare my presentation or my sermons before I left Grand Rapids, I had to do most of my preparing Saturday evening. After I settled into where I was going to stay for the night and began preparing, I quickly realized that reading my script in French while also keeping up with the photos on the DVD was going to be basically impossible for me. There were two main problems: I can’t read quickly in French, and what I had to read had grown. I’ve discovered that it often takes a few extra words to say the same thing in French that was said in English. I began to get pretty stressed out about my presentation, especially since I also needed to work on my SS lesson and sermon (thankfully, I was going to preach only once). I was hoping the pastor would volunteer to read it for me, but that didn’t happen… at that moment.
So I went back to the DVD to see if I could learn how to read faster. I decided to cut out a few extra details in the script and I abbreviated some of the names. Then I realized the only other thing I could do was make good use of the pause button. So that’s what I did the next day at church. I believe it went quite well under the circumstances, though it took twice as long to complete, leaving me only a few minutes for my lesson. Thankfully, the Lord also helped me to preach my sermon in French. The people said they understood me quite well.
After the service, the two pastors came to me and volunteered to help me with my presentation. Praise the Lord! The one pastor (Simon Ouellette), who is a BMM missionary and a native Québécois, said he could transfer the music and photos of my DVD onto another DVD and also add the text read in French. The other pastor (Benoit Carrier), who is not a missionary but who is also a native Québécois, volunteered to read the text for me, though Simon read the recommendation by Pastor Minnick (he enjoyed playing that part!). The final product is quite good, and it has the Québécois accent, which the people will understand better than mine.
Speaking of the Québécois accent, I’ve found it to be quite difficult to understand. Though I am a little rusty in my French, I’m not that rusty! But I’ve been having a hard time understanding the Québécois French. I think if I were in Africa, I could pick up on it much more easily. I’ve found the Québécois up north here to be much easier to understand. Pastor Maxime Rioux is the pastor of a small church here in Riviere-du-Loup, and I’ve enjoyed speaking with him. He is also a native Québécois, though he is supported as a missionary, so I can speak to him only in French. The Lord gave me a good meeting with his church on Tuesday night. I leave for Quebec city this afternoon to be with Pastor Mike Webster, who is an American missionary. I will be with him for around a week.
Going back to the first church, I wanted to add that I greatly enjoyed the fellowship at Benoit Carrier’s church. I stayed with him from Saturday to Tuesday morning. He was one of the pastors that I met at the preaching conference at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. I stayed at Benoit’s house, but I was also able to enjoy a day of fellowship with Simon. We had a great time fellowshipping about many different things and were able to develop a good friendship very quickly.
I also enjoyed getting to know Jonathan, a new believer who attends their church. He was drafted second in the NHL draft a few years ago. He started training to play for the Florida team, but the Lord took away his heart for hockey. He started playing the guitar, but the Lord removed his desire for that as well. Unbeknownst to him, the Lord was pursuing him for salvation. Someone at his work witnessed to him when he was going through some other tribulations, and the Lord had prepared him for that encounter and was soon after saved. He wants to serve the Lord; in fact, he said he would be disappointed if he couldn’t serve the Lord full-time. But he wants to be sure that the Lord is calling him. Please pray that the Lord would give him clear direction.
Praise the Lord for keeping me safe as I’ve already traveled over 1,000 miles in my yellow rental car. Pray that the Lord would continue to keep me safe, protect me from evil, and bless my ministry. The Lord has already graciously provided through generous gifts from the first two churches.
