Serving with Our "Portion" (Day 4)

1,400 pounds of pretzels... no problem!

 As I write this, we just finished a wonderful dinner prepared by Isabelle, one of Pastor Daniel’s daughters. I am quite embarrassed to say how much of her dessert I ate, which was so good; a cinnamon roll type pastry baked in a maple infused milk, and topped with a maple-sugar ice cream made right here in Quebec. Shamelessly, I had somewhere between 2-5 helpings (you guess the amount), but it was amazing! I just love all things maple. I tried to prepare our team for how they would be feed here. The church members here are so grateful for our presence, they try to shower us with their best dishes, as well as showcase the great foods of Quebec!

Katie and Haley - Service with a Smile

Our fourth day in Quebec saw our team leaving the confines of Eglise Chretienne le Rocher to travel into the Southern Shore of Montreal to spend the day working at Mission Nouvelle Generation (New Generation Mission). This is an organization that the church in Chateauguay partners with to receive food items to distribute each week. The New Generation Mission touches about 800 families each week in the Southern Shore region of greater Montreal, with 120 of those occurring here through the church’s work in Chateauguay. So the work our team did today was not only to benefit the recipients of the food ministry who come through the doors of Eglise Chretienne le Rocher, but their efforts will touch over 800 families in the region.

            The mission’s warehouse, which was formally a Nestle yogurt factory now retrofitted and being updated to meet the missions needs, is a large space complete with a large refrigerator that houses perishable items, storage and workspace for separating and organizing vegetables, breads, and other items, as well as a thrift store, furniture sales, and many other things. After about a 30 minute drive to reach the mission’s warehouse in the city we spent the next 7 hours on a variety of tasks, mostly portioning out food items for distribution to individual families.

Rachel & Bayley portioning rice grains

            We started working with pretzels, which came in large boxes containing 700 pounds of pretzels each! Our team managed to sift through and individually bag 1,400 hundred pounds in about an hour and half. Their competitive sides came out as various groups were having some “friendly competition” to see who could do the best, not only in number, but also quality. Their drive to work always inspires me. Next on our “menu” was portioning out grains of rice. The rice came in bags weighing about 50 pounds each, and our group was able to get through almost 50 bags before we had an early afternoon break to tour the facility at Mission Nouvelle Generation (given by their founder and director Stephan), and hear all about the mission’s work to provide for needs in their community and to reach the lost in Quebec. We finished off the afternoon separating pork chops, which was a much more comical experience than I think most thought it would be, but they powered through and knocked out a large amount of the meat before we ended our work and headed back to Chateauguay.

            Our team was exhausted after a full day of working in the warehouse. However, it was a great way for them to see the work that is being done by those who are Christ followers here in Quebec. Groups like Eglise Chretienne le Rocher and Mission Nouvelle Generation are attempting to counteract the low number of believers in the Quebec population, where less than 1% of the people identify as Christian. Our team not only hears first hand from people like Stephan at the mission, and of course Pastor Daniel here at the church, but join in with these groups in working to show these communities God’s love through the blessings of these food ministries.

            Tomorrow, we head out to the farms east of Chateauguay and Montreal to gather produce for the distribution on Thursday and to meet with local farmers and here about their experiences working in this area. I suddenly hear a large commotion of laughter out in the main hall, so I am going to go join in on the fun and fellowship with this great group of students! Come back for updates tomorrow!