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| Hope you had a joyful celebration of Resurrection Day! Forgive us for the long silence. Last month was quite busy and I wasn’t able to get a letter out, but we’ll try to get you caught up. Missions Weekend at Coronado Baptist Church in El Paso On the first weekend of March, Steve traveled to El Paso to attend the annual Missions Weekend at Coronado Baptist Church. They have continued to be faithful partners with us since we lived and served there. I really enjoyed reconnecting with old friends. The worship team even invited me to sing with them, which was the icing on the cake! Finally!!! A trip to Canada to visit our kids and grands A couple of days after Steve returned from El Paso, we flew to Nova Scotia, Canada, to visit our daughter and son-in-law, Esther & Curtis Bergman, and our grandchildren. We were very happy to be able to return after nearly four years of not being allowed to cross the border due to governmental Covid restrictions. Their oldest, Natalie (19), is in her first year of the two-year missions-oriented Bible school program at Ethnos360 Bible Institute in Waukesha, Wisconsin. She is very happy with the environment there and with everything she is learning in her studies and discipleship. Natalie is trusting the Lord to make it possible for her to make a missions trip to Brazil this summer. (See her prayer letter in the P.S. below!!) Reuben (18), is in grade 12 and is hoping to attend Prairie College in Alberta (formerly Prairie Bible Institute), with a special interest in their aviation program. We’re praying that the Lord will supply for that. Also, pray with us for Kaylie (grade 9) and Kegan (grade 5) as they study at Colchester Christian Academy and continue to grow in the Lord. Speaking of grandkids, Art’s daughter, Kaylene, (in Texas) just had her 8th birthday! She is still doing Brazilian JiuJitsu, but has gotten very excited about soccer again. She must have inherited the ball-kicking gene from her daddy. Spanish Language Resources (SLR) Team Meetings Our team’s annual review and planning meetings are scheduled for Tuesday thru Thursday of next week. Our teammates (Duff and Jim) will be coming from Georgia and Indiana to meet with us at the Ethnos360 home office here in Sanford, Florida. I still have reports to finish! We’d also appreciate your prayers for our team supervisor, Jerry McDaniels, who has been receiving treatment for cancer and is feeling quite miserable (it’s not life-threatening at this point). Engage & Stages Roll-Out seminar in May On May 20th, my compadre, Duff Gustafson, and I will be driving to the Ethnos360 training center near Camdenton, Missouri, for a week-long seminar, introducing the newly developed “Engage” program for Culture and Language Acquisition (CLA) and the accompanying “Stages” smartphone app.These are powerful tools developed by very gifted people in Ethnos360, at great expense, to enable our church planting teams to learn languages and translate God’s Word more efficiently. Our Spanish Language Resources (SLR) team will be translating the Engage software and the accompanying three-volume manual as well as all the text for the Stages app. At the roll-out, we will learn how these resources work so that we can produce good Spanish-language versions for our Latin American missionaries. July trip to Colombia On July 1, I plan to fly to Bogotá to participate in a second ECELA regional training coordination workshop. This is a follow-up to the one I attended last July. The ECELA group meets each Thursday afternoon online via MS Teams. Our immediate objective is to produce a core curriculum for our four Latin American training centers for cross-cultural church planters (in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and [a country we can’t name]). The long-term purpose of the group is to serve as a coordinating team for the training programs on our Spanish-speaking fields. I was included initially as an interpreter, but over time I’ve become a contributing member. I’m hoping to spend another week in Colombia after the workshop, taking advantage of the opportunity to touch base with the Latin American colleagues we are serving with Spanish-language equipping materials. Thank you so much for your faithful partnership with us in prayer and giving, Steve & Eida Irwin Ethnos360 Spanish Language Resources P.S. We thought you might be interested in seeing Natalie’s first newsletter. (She’s the one in the flannel plaid in the center picture, and she’s on the right in the other two photos.) We’re very excited about all the things that the Lord has in store for her as she steps out in faith! ——————————————————————  I just wanted to take some time to let you know what’s been going on in my life lately. In August 2022, I moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin to start my first semester at Ethnos360 Bible Institute. I never would have thought that I would ever move so far away from home, but here I am! Ethnos’s program is a two-year program that works through the Bible chronologically, emphasizing missions and God’s heart for all people. The classes have been so good and so encouraging in my walk with God. I’m living on campus in a dorm with four other amazing girls who have quickly become some of my closest friends. Among other things, I have learned to lean on the wonderful people that God has put in my life to help me navigate the stress of life, from work to school to social life. They have been such a blessing to me!  As my first year at Ethnos comes to a close, I have something else super exciting coming up to share with you. Lord willing, I will be going on a missions trip in Brazil this summer!! I will be going with Ethnos360 Interface for a five-week college-level program designed to give you a better understanding of what church planting and cross-cultural missions look like. I have learned a lot about both of these things this year at school, but this will give me the chance to see it up close and interact with missionaries involved in sharing the Gospel with people in a different culture. I don’t know what God has for me in the future, but I want to be a part of sharing His message of salvation with all people. On this trip, I’ll be able to see first hand how Bible translation works, learn a little bit about a different culture and language, and see all the other things that go into sharing the Gospel and starting a church of new believers in another culture. I can’t wait to see how God is working through missionaries in Brazil! As I start preparing for this huge step, would you consider supporting me through prayer? There are still many things that I haven’t quite worked out yet that I am trusting God for. I will meet the team that I will be working with in Florida before we head to Brazil, so please pray for unity between members of the team. I am also trusting God to provide the finances I need for this trip, so prayers for that would be much appreciated. In order to go on this trip, I need to raise $3,375 USD by April 20. Please pray that I would trust God for His timing and His ways and that I would not rely on my own strength for this trip, but His. His ways are perfect and right, even when I don’t understand what He is doing. In Christ, Natalie Bergman  If you would like to support me financially, you can donate on my website: (USA): https://ethnos360.org/missionaries/Natalie-Bergman (Canada): https://ethnos.ca/missionary/natalie-bergman/ If you have any questions or want to know more… E-mail me at natmaeflower@gmail.com Or you can mail letters to: Ethnos360, 915 North Hartwell Ave., Waukesha, Wisconsin 53186 US |
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