Richard & Ruth Jertberg
Missionaries to Madagascar

Baptist Missions to Forgotten Peoples

May 2025

Thank you so much for your prayers for our family and the ministry here in Nosy Be, Madagascar. March was filled with “normal” life of classes and church and school and caring for a big family. Hadassah had an abscess next to her tooth and had to have a root canal. Moriah had a ruptured eardrum. Jeremiah is growing and now has 6 teeth through. He is 9 months old and has become quite mobile! For most of the month of April, we were gone on a trip to the capital. The trip to get there (a three-day trip) was quite eventful with 3 flat tires and having to hitch a ride at night with some strangers to get to town. We needed to get a picture of Jeremiah for his visa, so we decided to time that trip with the Baptist missionary retreat. The retreat was a great time of reconnecting and refreshing (both physically and spiritually) with some of the other missionaries working in Madagascar. All our heat rashes went away while we were in the cooler weather of the capital. Because we were not home, we celebrated the resurrection of our Savior a little differently this year, but we DID celebrate! Often people do a lot to celebrate Christmas and not much to celebrate Easter. We are working on changing that for our family and doing more to celebrate Easter. This year is the first year to use our new countdown picture that I made. It tells what happened each day and something to do and has pictures to put on the background. We read through most of the passages about the events leading up to and surrounding Jesus’s resurrection. We celebrated a Passover Seder with some friends and did a craft and some other activities throughout the week. We were also able to celebrate Easter with a special meal at the Brown’s house. It is the most amazing thing that the Creator of the universe would love us enough to become a man and die on the cross to save us from the penalty of sin! We serve such a loving God! After Easter, we made the LONG trip back to Nosy Be. The trip was even longer than normal because we attempted to take over 1000lbs of solar panels on the roof of the car… after about 5 hours of driving that way, it seemed as though that was not going to work to carry the solar panels on top; so we stopped and found a place to store the solar panels until Richard could go back and get them. We left that day at 12:15pm and arrived at the hotel at 5am = 17hours!! (14hours of driving and through the night. We had to drive SO slow over the bumpy roads with the solar panels!) After leaving the solar panels, we had a better trip with normal days of driving (which was still long). Richard went back on another 5 days of driving to retrieve the solar panels. Traveling was a long adventure! It was 3 days there and 5 days back (with a 2-day detour). Along with all the other things that happened, we had the back driver’s-side tire actually leave the car and go rolling across the road (while we were all in the car driving). All of these things with a car full of stuff, people, and babies over quite bad roads. We saw God’s provision and protection so many times through these situations. We were able to cross paths and share the gospel with some people who we otherwise would probably never have met. Despite the many obstacles and twists, we had a good trip with good attitudes most of the time. Sometimes, I can sense when people are praying for us. Thank you so much! We saw a national park for the tsingys (huge limestone formations). During our hike in a cave, the babies were protected from what could have been a very bad accident! A large rock was knocked loose and fell inches from their heads! Praise God it only grazed Grace’s leg! It certainly made our hearts beat fast and made us thank God over and over for His protection for our precious little people! After arriving back, we jumped right back into the ministry and classes here. Richard is teaching the Bible institute class on Saturdays and is on the rotation to preach. It is exciting to see people grow and learn. We are looking for a new location for the English class and Bible study that is closer to the people we are trying to reach. We started our Malagasy dialect class again. There are quite a few differences in the dialect of Malagasy that is spoken here that we need to learn. We celebrated our 7th anniversary on May 5th. We also celebrated many birthdays! Kezia and I had birthdays before we left; Matthew, Nate, and Abby’s birthdays fell on the travel days; then we had Rebekah and Sarah’s birthdays. We started up school again! Hadassah is doing well learning how to read; everyone else are plugging along; and the babies are running around. We are almost finished research paper season. Yay! Please pray for all of our hearts! This coming fall, Matthew will likely be starting college at Ambassador Baptist College and leaving the home. He is ready to take this next step in life, but we will miss him so much! We praise God for the solar panels; they seem to be working quite well and making it possible to run things during the day. We run exclusively off solar during the day and mostly into the night. Last letter, we asked prayer about purchasing a piece of property. We were able to buy it and should be getting the paperwork back any day now! We are still not over the blessing of God in our lives in letting us have this particular piece of beautiful property in this location! Our good Heavenly Father has blessed us over and abundantly! We are now in the planning phase for building. We would like to get started soon and get something built to be able to store our stuff while we go on furlough and possibly live in when we get back. Please pray that God would make His will known to us in all the decisions and details! Also, pray that God would bring honest workers for a fair price. We just finished getting a family picture. Trying to get all the kids and babies to be awake and in a good mood and cooperating at the same time for a family picture is quite a FEAT and exhausting! If you would like a high-quality picture, you can download it from our website. We are looking at coming back for furlough maybe by the end of the year (depending on how things go with the building project and other things). This will require getting all the things ready for that! If your church would like us to come sometime between Jan – July 2026, feel free to contact us now. Thank you so much for lifting us up before the throne of God! In the service of the King, Richard and Ruth, Matthew, Sarah, Nate, Abby, Kezia, Hadassah, Moriah, Grace, and Jeremiah JERTBERG

Prayer Requests:

• Wisdom for planning furlough
• Preaching, teaching, and classes
  would be well understood
• People would be saved
• People would grow
• Kids in school: good attitudes,
  understanding
• We would learn this Malagasy
• Health and strength and healing
  for sores and heat rash
• A new location for English class
  and Bible study
• Honest and good workers
• Enjoy our last bit of time with
  Matthew
• We would not be weary
• Furlough preparation
  
• Praises:
• Safety on the roads
• Health and strength and healing
• Protection for our family and
  babies
• Solar Panels
• A beautiful piece of property
• Visitors coming to church
• Rebekah being here helping us
• The privilege to serve God here