July 13: Sunday in Montreal

We found The Montreal City West Baptist Church on the internet. Attending required walking 20 minutes in the rain to the subway, a 17 stop subway ride, and a 20 minute walk from the subway stop along a park to College Street where we found the church. This church building was built in 1956, but was just purchased by the Baptist about 4 years ago as their congregation was growing. This was a very interesting experience.

The church is primarily a Chinese Christian church who held their worship services in Cantonese. They were very friendly to us as we arrived during the Chinese service and waited for the English service which was scheduled to start at 11:30 am. One of their young pastors, Ben Leung, took us on a tour of the church in the interlude between services. Ben spoke Cantonese and English but not French. As it turned out, the English service was primarily for second generation Chinese and Tom and I were by far the oldest people in the congregation. We sang praise songs to guitar and piano music, had a congregational prayer time to share personal needs in small groups, and heard Pastor Karen Wong’s message on becoming a new creation in Christ Jesus from Ephesians 2:1-10. We celebrated the Lord’s Supper along with them and prayed for God to continue to bless their work in Montreal. They are a part of the BCOQ, Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec (www.baptist.ca)

After church we returned to the boat with the intention of heading out this afternoon, but the drenching rain discouraged us. So we are going to wait for morning to set out for Saint Anne de Bellevue where there is a lock at the west end of the island of Montreal. So we had waffles for supper with a very quiet tonight compared to last night.