Richard St-Pierre Newsletter
Hello my fellow brothers and sisters from Harbour. Time as gone by so fast since our last time together in July. This was really a highlight in our summer as a family. We had a blast connecting with all of you and serving at day camp. We really were looking forward to connecting with you again during the Christmas season, but many things prevented us from planning a visit and leaving our local church, one of them being the fact that our senior pastor’s wife gave birth to their 4th child beginning of December. It is a subject of joy for our congregation and we support the fact that he takes the time to care for his wife with this new addition to his family by taking some time off from his daily schedule as the lead pastor here at Oasis Baptist Church in Deux-Montagne.
Here’s an update of our family; throughout the summer and fall, my wife kept working hard on her certificate in business management and got some rewarding results. I am so proud to see how God is blessing this project for her life and I am happy to see her experience, in a really concrete way, how God takes care of her worries. The kids are finally all attending school and it changed a lot of our daily routine. Nicholas, our younger boy, is more than happy to finally be at school making friends, instead of being home with mom all day. It is a strange feeling to say that; «ALL» your kids are attending school. We definitely feel older all of a sudden. Haha. Our older girl Lee Ann turned 12 in October and we took her out to a nice dinner at the restaurant to celebrate this stepping stone in her life. We had such a good time talking with her and I made an alliance with her on that night. It was so touching for me to stand in front of her and tell her how precious she is to God and to us. We are blessed as parents to help our kids go through steps in life. We get so many occasions to teach them about Gods character and love. For me, it is a privilege to be a father and a husband and lead them towards Gods plan for their life.
On a personal note, the rest of my working season, going from beginning of May up to the end of November went «Ok». It was the first year that I was struggling with the fact that I’d rather be involved in church then working my construction job. Seeing the needs in people’s life and not being able to be there was the hardest part. Our presence in July at Harbour was a breath of fresh air and made the rest of the summer seem shorter. When our kids went back to school in September and everything got busier for us, both at home, at church and at work, it got harder for me to be concentrated at my daily task as a project manager in construction. My head and my heart were always torn between what needed to be done at home, in ministry and at work. My head was filling up with all of this information and desires and it really got hard to go by every single day. I was always physically and mentally tired and I felt like I couldn’t get enough rest, no matter how long I slept. Prayer was my main source of comfort and the Lord blessed me with patience and energy throughout the rest of the year. I am sure that a part of this feeling had to do with very good news that I needed to keep for myself for a while during my working season.
Here are more details on that «Very good news». On our last trip to Harbour we had the opportunity to tell you a little bit about a new program that was now available in Quebec called; Immerse. It is a new initiative from our seminary, Sembeq. It focuses on training and equipping men for ministry in a more intensive and intentional way, putting them into a full time context, both studying and applying ministry within a local church. At the moment of our visit to Harbour in July, we were investigating the requirements of such a program and the impact it could have on our local church here at Oasis. We wanted to take the opportunity and use the momentum we had to go ahead with this new program for my training. So, starting in August of 2016 I will be a part of that new program for the following 4 years, as of December 2015 I am officially a full time pastor intern at Oasis. It is quite good news if you ask me! As a family, we are still wrapping our heads around that idea, but we are so grateful for every door that God opened for us the last couple years. It brings us new challenges and new adjustments on many levels. Starting this January, part of my new task as an intern will be to raise my support for the coming 4 years. As a student of the Immerse program, a third of our support will be provided by our local church, a third by the seminary and the last third will be our responsibility to raise as it is a part of the training every future church planter has to go through. We will keep you informed of our challenges as 2016 comes along, but it is such a blessing to have you as our partners already. We had so many occasions to trust God and see his hand in the last 3 years, we know we are following Gods plan for our life and it is the most exciting part. Every step of faith we had to do so far led us closer and closer to our great God and there is no better place to be.
We really wish we could have been with you for this holiday season to celebrate our Saviors birth. It is only a question of time before we see each other again somewhere during the winter or in the spring. We’ll keep in touch for that.
Until then, we wish you a merry Christmas and a new year filled with our Lords grace and love.
With a lot of affection, your brother and sister in Christ.
Rebecca and Richard St-Pierre.
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