March 2024

“… choose this day whom you will serve…” Joshua 24:15

Dear PRAYing family and friends,

Mom writing: Lately I’ve been thinking about the choices I make daily—even hourly. As believers we have been set free, but not to “use our liberty as an occasion for the flesh.” So very often I find myself choosing the “easy” path—not looking to God for His guidance in my life. To let someone else do it, when I see a need, to sleep an extra hour and have less time for the Lord in the morning, and the list goes on and on, choosing to love someone you don’t like, choosing to forgive one who has wronged you.

Tuesday the 27^th of February was quite a day of choices. Monday night we knew snow and ice storms were between us and Bozeman, where we were planning to be for a missions conference Tuesday—Monday the 4^th. We went to bed Monday night not knowing what we should do. Tuesday morning we were advised to delay a day and we chose to take that advice as from the Lord.

Sure enough, the next day the weather was better, so Wednesday morning we loaded up and headed for Bozeman. We had a wonderful 5 days reconnecting with friends from the church that has been a big part of our family and ministry since 1975. The conference was a great blessing to us! Darcy was given a couple of opportunities to share at church on Sunday. In addition, she was invited to talk about Bible Translation at a Toastmasters meeting. It was also wonderful to get to spend some time with family living there.

Since we had chosen to stay home that Tuesday, we thought it would be great if Darcy could copy a missionary video onto her computer to share with people in Bozeman. When it didn’t copy completely she decided to delete the “large” file. That was a bad choice. She ended up deleting many current work project files along with it. It was a huge disappointment but gave her the opportunity to realize how much she could praise the Lord for, including the fact that all recent translation files were not affected, having in print some of the files so they could easily be reproduced, etc.

One of our co-workers will be spending some significant time in West Kalimantan helping our teams in the areas of Bible translation and literacy. They will certainly be a huge blessing to the teams there on the ground. Please be in prayer for Stephen and Carolyn Crockett as they make this trip in the next couple of months.

Please keep remembering in prayer the new teams moving into two new areas, one in Maluku and one in West Kalimantan. Pray for protection, for good opportunities to meet people and develop relationships, for open hearts to the gospel, provision of their daily needs and for their getting settled in a new place.

PRAISE AND PRAYER:

• Praise for recovery of some of Darcy’s files
• Praise for the wonderful time with our church and family in Bozeman
• Praise for the Lord raising up additional prayer partners to join our team
• Praise for peaceful elections last month
• Pray for Darcy, Oke and their translation team as they work together
• Pray for boldness to share the gospel with those we come in contact with
• Pray for sensitivity to the Spirit’s guiding in our lives as we make daily choices
• Pray that we will love one another well

May we all make choices that please our Lord today! Your partnership in the gospel means so much to us!

And may you have a blessed Ressurection Day celebration,

Ron, Nita and Darcy Berglund