A Life Transformed: Rachelle Demosthene

An aroma of roses, lilies and daisies fills the air in the small shop in Montreal. Vases, ribbons and cards line the shelves by the counter. Warm sunshine cascades through the windows and the atmosphere is busy in Pouvoir des Fleurs, translated Flower Power. Here Rachelle Demosthene creates beautiful floral arrangements and fills orders to meet her customer’s needs.

Rachelle Demosthene is one of MCEC’s newest pastors/church planters. She and her husband, Ronald Alexandre, minister together at Église de Dieu Réparateur de Brèches (RBD) in Montreal. She is a wife, mother of three daughters, pastor, and president and owner of a flower shop.

God is bigger and greater than what I knew. I began to see that God is beyond our borders, our culture and the colour of our skin. I still get chills when I think of that retreat.

Born and raised in Quebec, Rachelle’s parents emigrated from Haiti. Her parents had run small businesses and had worked hard in Haiti to support their family. Her father was a minister. Rachelle decided to follow the path of her father and became involved within the church. She led the youth choir faithfully, but her heart was not in it.

It was during a trip to Atlanta, Georgia for a multicultural event where God began to transform her heart. Rachelle had never been outside of her Haitian church community in Canada. In Atlanta, she saw people from many nations worshipping God together with an intensity that surprised her. “God is bigger and greater than what I knew. I began to see that God is beyond our borders, our culture and the colour of our skin,” she says. “I still get chills when I think of that retreat.”

God changed my heart and that is when my ministry really started.

Rachelle returned to minister in her father’s church, but she still struggled and asked God to increase her a love for his people. “I remembered the scripture that says the Holy Spirit will change our heart,” she recalls. Looking back, Rachelle realized that God changed her heart instantly. She says, “It was the biggest transformation in my life. God changed my heart and that is when my ministry really started.”

From that point forward, the services and the ministry Rachelle led felt different. “I was no longer ministering as a task that I had to do – I was doing it in partnership with God – and that changed everything.”

Rachelle eventually moved into a corporate position and found herself working as an executive advisor for a multinational corporation where she excelled for 19 years. “It was a good lifestyle but something was missing. I felt as though I was passing by my mission,” she says. As she continued to look for meaning in her life, she found that there were days when she even struggled to find energy. Rachelle began a yearlong sabbatical and looked to find something more creative to do so that she would come back to her corporate job refreshed and reset.

When you are so close to death you have that moment where you make a list and figure out if you did everything that you wanted to do.

However, she continued to struggle with her health, she lost weight as her health deteriorated. Doctors ran many tests and finally came with a diagnosis - Rachelle had lupus. Lupus is a chronic disease that can cause inflammation and pain in any part of your body. It is an autoimmune disease, which means that your immune system - the body system that usually fights infections - attacks healthy tissue instead. There is no cure.

Rachelle had little energy and lost all of her hair. She could not feed herself; she could not care for herself; she was hospitalized. She was ill. The church was very distressed to see this happen to their much-loved pastor.

“When you are so close to death you have that moment where you make a list and figure out if you did everything that you wanted to do,” she says. She reflected on ministry and recalled how God had changed her heart, and she was grateful. She reflected on her family and felt she had done her best to care for her husband and her three girls, and she was grateful. She reflected on her career and felt some sadness; perhaps she could have done better. She had had an excellent job and she excelled in every way, but she had not done something that she had truly enjoyed.

“I realized that I wasn’t brave enough to live my dream,” she says. God transformed Rachelle once again. “The second biggest transformation in my life was when God rid my life of fear. I hadn’t followed my dream because I was afraid. There are a lot of things that we don’t accomplish in life because we are afraid and often the things we fear don’t even exist,” she says. She realized that she was afraid because she did not trust God to provide for her. She made a decision that fear would no longer guide her life.

As her health improved and the time drew near to return to work, Rachelle was unsettled. She had been away from corporate work for a year and knew it would take some time to get back into the rhythm of that work. She also had a sense that she might still be missing her purpose.

She recalled that she used to love creating floral arrangements and she immediately signed up for a floral design course. “During that first week of my course I felt as though I had been under water for a long period of time and finally was able to come out of the water and breathe once more!” she says.

She prayed that God would show her the way. She soon learned that her favourite local florist, a friend, needed to close his store. The two met and Rachelle bought his business. She left her corporate job and adjusted to her new role of president and owner of Pouvoir des Fleurs.

Throughout her life, Rachelle remained connected to the church in a ministry role. Recently Rachelle covered a sabbatical as interim pastor at Hochma, an MCEC congregation also in Montreal.

“I stopped being afraid and started trusting God,” she says. “I realized that the only thing I need to do is ask God if this is what God wants me to do.”

I experience the body of Christ on a different level.

Rachelle did have some familiar doubts when she thought about stepping into the role of interim pastor but she followed God’s leading and took on the six-month position. “The first day when I went to worship with Hochma I felt at home,” she says. “It was a good experience for me. I really love to see that even if we worship God with different tools and in different ways, God remains the same.”

She meets regularly with MCEC church planters and is a part of the MCEC Transitioning into Ministry (TiM) program for pastors new to MCEC. “When I meet pastors from different backgrounds and see how much they love the Lord, I am so encouraged. It reminds me of my Atlanta experience,” she says. “I love being able to worship together and work with each other. I experience the body of Christ on a different level.”

Transformation has happened in Rachelle’s life in unexpected ways and will continue to happen into the future. “My task is to leave the transformation in God’s hands and not try to figure out how to do it myself,” she says. She still has lupus but that doesn’t stop her. She currently ministers at RBD and creates lovely flower arrangements at her shop while continually asking God, “Is this what you want me to do?” And she then follows God’s lead.