Richard & Ruth Jertberg Family
Madagascar
Baptist Missions to Forgotten Peoples
Our exciting news: we are expecting another baby sometime around the end of October!! As is normal for Ruth in her first trimester, she started feeling sick, tired, and nauseated about a week and a half before our big trip. It is hard to feel sick and tired especially when you are traveling and trying to adjust to a new country and time! Richard and Sarah have done a great job picking up the slack while Ruth gets through this trimester of pregnancy! Children are a gift and blessing from God; we are so thankful that He has given us this little baby that is in the process of developing and growing!! Thank you so much for your prayers for our trip! The trip went smoothly except for the beginning! There is a policy that if your passport expires within 6 months of arrival, you cannot fly. Kezia’s passport expires at the end of May… the people at the airport said that she could not fly!! We did not know what to do!! We were at the airport in DC with ALL our stuff and now we could not all go! Richard called the Malagasy embassy several times and got special permission to go! This was a HUGE relief! By the time we got this worked out, we were very short on time to get everyone and everything through security and on the plane! We arrived at the boarding gate literally 4min before they were closing the gate and we would miss our flight! We breathed a big sigh when we were all sitting on the flight! We were actually going! Again, thank you so much for praying! We made it to Madagascar with ALL our luggage! It is a rare event that no luggage would be lost… especially when there is as much as we had! We do not plan to ship a container at this point, but plan to try to find what we need in country. We did pay for an extra 10 pieces of luggage. We had 35 pieces of check-through luggage, 9 carry-ons, 9 backpacks, 2 guitars, a viola, a wagon, a stroller, a baby seat, and pillows for everyone! We had a LOT of stuff! They checked everything except the instruments, backpacks, and pillows. We are so thankful that we only had one layover that we had to carry all the stuff! When we arrived, we stayed in a hotel for 2 days of quarantine. We mostly slept and tried to get on the new time zone. It is a little trickier for babies to get on a new time. Moriah did not go to bed before 3-5am for the first several days and Kezia woke up around 5:30 am for quite a long time. It has been getting better recently with everyone getting more on a schedule. After our quarantine, several of the missionaries here in the capital picked us up from the hotel and helped move us to the house where we are staying. We are so thankful for God’s provision in a furnished house! A missionary who is not here in the country right now, offered for us to live in the house that they were renting and use all their furniture! It has been very nice to already have the house waiting for us!! God has been making a way for us to be here! We plan to start language studies as soon as we can, but we plan to wait for several weeks until Ruth gets past the sick and tired part of pregnancy. In the meantime, we are helping out as possible in a local church here that is led by a missionary friend. Richard and the kids had the opportunity to help pass out over 3000 John and Romans and the church passed out over 30,000. They also helped move the church from one location to their new location. We also continue to get settled in the house (and get things like the water fixed) and figure out cooking and shopping and taking care of paperwork in this new country. The kids have started their home school up again. The kids have also enjoyed any opportunity to get out and go for a walk down the road, pass out John and Romans, visit with other missionary kids, try new foods, and enjoy time together. Though we miss our friends and family who are back in the States or in the Ivory Coast, it is a blessing to have each other and to know that we are on this new adventure together. We have God always with us no matter where we go! There is no place that we can go that God is not there with us! Thank you for praying for us. We have had several opportunities to share the gospel. Please pray for more opportunities. In the Service of the King, Richard and Ruth Jertberg, Matthew, Sarah, Nate, Abby, Kezia, Hadassah, Moriah, and new baby