Hello to all our friends and family
Bonjour, mes amis et la famille
We have loved Quebec and Sherbrooke and will miss the character and culture here. We have come to love and appreciate our fellow sojourners and students in the work of Our Lord who are going to many different places throughout Africa. The question often raised is: are we bilingual now? Being fluent in a language cannot be accomplished in one year. Can we generally make our needs and wants expressed and can we understand much of what the other person says, yes it is coming. We have been taught international French and not Quebecois French so there are different expressions. And as it is with languages throughout the world, they change and adjust in each region.
You can see pictures on our blog taken on May 2, 2010, just after we did our first French presentation at a French service at Sawyerville Church. This church has been historically English, but they been praying to reach out to the French community. Following the service we shared in fellowship with these folks. We then attended the English service and joined their potluck lunch. We had a great time and met great people who loved God. We felt our presentation was well received.
2 Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
We know the truth of these verses, God uses the weak and least likely, like David slaying Goliath, to demonstrate God's might and not our own. This has been our experience this past year. This year has been a learning year not only in the French language but also about us. Grace fully expected to struggle in the language as she has had throughout her school life. She was fully prepared and willing to experience the hardship to be obedient to the call placed on our lives. However, being more mature, we recognized the struggles were not due to a lack of intelligence but a learning style problem. With the help of a dear friend in Sherbrooke, Grace was able to get some testing and shed light on the problem and solutions. We are amazed with how well she has done despite this problem. It is a testimony to God's grace and provision, hard work and determination.
Our original plan was that the fall months would be for continuing with our support rising, but this will now also includes working on finding skills and tools for Grace to help her with learning style and continuing with our French language learning. In Niger, we will have another language to learn and it is not necessary that she experience the same level of stress and frustration as she has experienced this past year.
Praise items:
· We needed a replacement vehicle. God answered our prayer and we were able to purchase a 2000 low mileage van from a gentleman from our Church in Sherbrooke.
· We have accommodations in Calgary for the end of September, October and November
· We had 2 successful French language presentations, at a French Churches.
· For God's provision and protection over the past 10 months while we have been studying French here in Quebec.
We need your help
Can you give us ideas of how we can attain our goal? We need 100% of our support raised by October 31, 2010 so that we can make final preparations to leave for Niger. We are currently at 53%. We also want more prayer partners for this mission journey. We are open to suggestions. We are attaching a tentative itinerary of our travels if you have some ideas that would work while we are in your area. As well, we are open to invitations during our travels.
Current (tentative) schedule:
July 2-July 8 Southern Ontario and meeting at SIM head office
July 9-12 travel to Manitoba
July 13-21 in Manitoba
July 22-28 Saskatchewan
July 29-Mid Sept Alberta - we would like Lloydminster to be our base
Another area that can significantly help is the current Aeroplan promotion through a number of products. Here you simply collect the PIN labels off these products and give these labels to us. Details are on our blog site.
Prayer items:
- We need to raise the rest of our financial support.
- We would like more prayer partners
- Strength and wisdom to complete the final session of language school
- Wisdom as we plan our post school schedule
- Opening of doors and relationships in future deputation
- We are looking for some accommodations from July 29th to mid September in the Lloydminster area, during our travels,
Orest was excited to receive an email from a nurse at Galmi Hospital expressing how they were looking forward to us coming there. There is a lot of work to do and they are short handed. Nurses have to do extra duties, such as covering accounting, which is currently unmanned. God has called us to this vital missionary hospital in a severely poor part of the world. God has called us to serve in areas that allow others to do their work more effectively. We eagerly await the moment that we can get on an airplane and fly to West Africa and serve our awesome and glorious God in the mission field.
Telephone: 780-871-1168
Skype: orest.pelech
We greatly appreciate all of your love and support.
Blessings to all of you
Orest and Grace Pelech
SIM missionary appointees to Niger, Africa
# 030699
Permanent mailing address:
5507-37 Street
Lloydminster, AB., T9V 1J4
SIM Canada
10 Huntingdale Blvd.
Scarborough, ON., M1W 2S5