If you want to 
make Jonathan Delfosse’s day, let him help you with something.
Or encourage him to let down his guard and be real about the struggles of life.
Or let him practice his Greek with you.
He’s Paraclete’s newest staff member, servant, and leader—the manager of operations. And he’s ready to help.
“I’ve always been a person that if I see a need, I’ll go ahead and take care of it,” he said.
Delfosse was the first of his family born in America. His parents immigrated to the United States in the 1970s in the midst of political and civil unrest, taking their three kids with them. He’s not the first, however, to work in ministry. His aunt and uncle did missionary work in the Caribbean. His parents always served in the church: his dad working as a deacon, his mom working in the church office, and both doing youth followed by prayer ministry. His brother is a pastor in Nebraska and one sister teaches at a Christian school in Seattle.
“Growing up there was definitely this, ‘the way you act, the way you conduct yourself…remember that you represent God and you also represent this family,’” he said.
Delfosse felt called to ministry himself as a teenager, taking to heart the advice from his youth pastor to prepare to serve in both big and small ways. His youth pastor’s first task to serve the church? Scrub the toilets. Since then, Delfosse has spent many years volunteering in his church, meeting needs like youth worker, media director, trustee, and leading men’s Bible studies.
But he also, at times, felt intimidated by high expectations and his own perfectionism, afraid he’d disappoint others.
“When I was younger, I always had to keep up the façade, in the sense of I had to do all the right Christian things,” he said. “It was exhausting.”
But these last few years, he and his wife, Wendy, have experienced challenges beyond what they can muscle through on their own. Seven years ago, Wendy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, sending them on a path of relapses and remissions, figuring out symptoms and medicines.
And in 2017, when Hurricane Irma struck his family’s home and his parents’ business in Florida, he didn’t want to ask others for help. Wendy, though, encouraged him to reach out.
“My wife put out a message on Facebook and members of our church started coming out, picking up debris, helping with whatever they could,” Delfosse said. “We had people donate food, resources, material, time.”
His pastor personally took in him, Wendy, and his dad for a week-and-a-half since they didn’t have power restored yet, his pastor even telling Jonathan’s sister over Facebook that he’d just tucked in her septuagenarian father for bed when she was concerned about him from several states away. For a long time, people would find pockets of time to help.
It was a lesson he never forgot.
“God’s people showed up in an extraordinary way,” he said. “We’re like, ‘we’ll do it on our own or we’ll figure it out ourselves.’ But God taught us so much about the value of his people and his church.”
But the day-in and day-out of caregiving for his wife, working a busy job, and responding to needs around him can be difficult.
“I’m dealing with my inability to live up to the American male standard of being able to be the breadwinner and provide for his family,” he said. “Like, guys in their 40s should have their own homes and be able to do this. You should have X amount of kids. I’m not the stereotypical American. And I struggle with that.”
But the struggles have become opportunities to trust in God, to grieve the pain and brokenness of life, and to also be open with others when he needs support.
“When I’m more real about my brokenness, I can also then be real about my repentance and my restoration,” he said. “And that then leads other people to be real about their need for restoration and their own brokenness.”
It’s a lesson he keeps learning repeatedly, alongside a new language he’s learning—the language of grace.
“We know we don’t have it all together,” he said. “God will still walk with us through it. Even though we may not see it, we may not feel it, even though it might not come about the way that we normally expected it to, He’s still here.”