Moving Day

By Karen L. Willoughby, UI Connections July 10, 2025

Layton, Utah – Eleven members from Mountain View Baptist Church in Layton recently returned from a week-long mission trip to Quebec City, in Canada’s Quebec province.

The 11, plus Associate Pastor Tyler Penalber from Calvary Baptist Church in Idaho Falls, Idaho, could have driven the entire 35-hour trip all the way on Interstate 80 to a point due west of Maine, but instead they flew Air Canada going and American Airlines returning, cutting travel time to nine hours each way.

“It wasn’t the hardest work it could have been, but it definitely wasn’t easy,” Penalber said of their assignment for the week. “We had a mindset of reaching the people where they are, so there would be no task too hard for the sake of the gospel.”

Mountain View Layton joined with more than 140 volunteers – 74 from six churches in the U.S. churches and the rest from sponsoring church Eglise Urbaine 180 – to move 54 families from one residence to another. Each team moved four to six families a day.

“In Quebec City, all [rental] leases end June 30-July 1. If you’re going to move you have two days to do so,” Discipleship Pastor Ron Jones told UI Connections. “We went there to serve alongside Eglise 180 in helping people move who might not have friends, family or the money to move. This included low-income families and recent immigrants to the city. 

“This is a huge witness to the community,” Jones continued. “They don’t understand why Americans would come all this way to help Quebecois’ move.”

Jones, a 27-year International Mission Board missionary, spent his last five years before retirement as a church planter catalyst in Quebec City, working with the church plant Eglise 180 to establish other churches. Today he serves as an associate pastor at the Layton church where his son-in-law Charles Cutrera is the senior pastor.

It was the church’s third multi-generational mission trip to Quebec City since Covid. Before Covid, youth from the church had made three short term mission trips focusing on youth activities with Eglise 180.

Quebec City is a mostly-French-speaking city of about 500,000 people, and fewer than 1 percent of them are evangelical Christian.

“In Quebec the belief was that in the past the church took from people; so to have a church that gives, that helps, this is new,” Jones said. “The last two years a local television station reported on it, so the word is spreading. One of the objectives [of the outreach] is to get the population curious about Christ and the church.”

Moving people’s goods can be especially daunting in Quebec because of the architecture that has winding outdoor staircases on many structures up to three or four stories, so interior spaces can be larger and not waste heat in severe winter temperatures. 

The strongest of the volunteers carry large furniture and appliances such as couches and refrigerators up and down stairs, while a “chain gang” of other volunteers pass boxes, plastic sacks, and other items down the stairs one by one to trucks and trailers arranged by Eglise 180.

The ministry has grown through word of mouth and connections Eglise 180 has with community social services.

“Because we are moving, we don’t have a long time for conversations,” Jones said. “We’re the hands and feet of Jesus while the church members are the spokespersons.”

This is practical as most people speak French.

“After every move we ask the families if we can pray for them and most are happy for us to do so,” the French-speaking Layton discipleship pastor said. “It’s very encouraging when we move somebody and they say, ‘thank you, thank you’ and the husband says, ‘Next year I want to help others.’ And we’ve seen some of them do so!”

Perhaps the most dramatic situation this year was that one of the elderly people being moved caught her wheelchair in a hole and fell over, Jones said. A mission team member called for an ambulance, and some of the hospitality team went to sit with her in the hospital where they were told she had broken her leg. Meanwhile the mission team continued moving her items.

The hospitality teams took snacks and meals out to where each team was working and presented a welcome basket to each family.

The Moving Day ministry was started about 15 years ago in Sherbrooke, Quebec by a Southern Baptist church planter. He then helped Jones working with Eglise 180 to start the outreach in Quebec City.

Moving Day is a tradition in Quebec that started with a French law fixing the date of annual rental lease terminations. Formerly in May, it was moved to July 1 in 1973 so children could continue in one school through the end of the term, and because the weather normally is good on July 1.

July 1 also is “Canada Day,” akin to the 4^th of July in the U.S., a patriotic celebration.

Penalber, from Calvary Idaho Falls, told UI Connections, “Our church has been really interested in what missions looks like for us. I went [to Quebec City] to get a vision for what this multi-generational team could do. My goal was to catch the vision the church in Quebec City is casting. That will help me explain the need to our church and hopefully get more people to a community that needs the gospel.”

What did Penalber see?

“The main thing really is how lost Quebec City is,” the associate pastor said. “It really breaks my heart when you see a community that doesn’t even have a longing for the gospel. The people are not only lost but they don’t have a longing to know Jesus at all. Quebec City is six times as unreached as is the Salt Lake City area.”

Calvary Idaho Falls hasn’t been involved hands on in overseas missions since Covid, though they are among the largest givers in the UISBC to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

In addition to the annual trips to Quebec City, Mountain View Layton has a partnership with missionaries in four other nations, unnamed for security reasons. 

“We go [to Quebec City] for a week, do some prayer walking, and this trip we also [made a point to] connect with the youth,” Jones said. “It’s good for them to connect with other believers. Christianity in Quebec is small so it’s a blessing to the church as well as the community that we’re there.”