Y2K marked, among many other things, the closure of the Burning Berglund Brothers' House (also known as beta-rho-omega), and, with our moving to another house, a new beginning for all of us.

	Dancing on the front porch...

The Lord Jesus rewarded our seeking Him with many situations, exciting and trying, to cause us to turn to Him, depend on Him, and be built together as one.

Living at the brothers' house is a lot more involving than your ordinary frat house because of our spiritual relationship with God and with one another. We all made the decision to live together in harmony not just for the convenience of being near the UW campus, but so that we could participate in God's economy and His building up of the Body of Christ. More often than not, the Lord works on us by limiting us in our environment and then supplying us with the all-sufficient grace to pass through that environment, gaining Him all the while. This results in a life where God and man are mingled together in oneness. The brothers' house is such an environment.

...now in the kitchen!

Before the Lord's death and resurrection, His twelve disciples often debated who among them was the greatest. However, after the Lord's resurrection He breathed into them the life-giving Spirit. Having received the actual divine life, they now acted together as one, rather than sparring against one another to see which one would end up on top.

As brothers living in close proximity, we experienced both the problem of living with someone who thinks he is greater than he is (or despising him as not as great as one's self) and the blessing of being one in the Spirit.

Of course, the good news is that even though there are problems, everything can be worked out through fellowship. So when the Berglund's decided that Andrew could not live in the house until he was 18, offenses abounded. But all was smoothed out through open fellowship and forgiveness, and we all learned the lesson of authority and the seriousness of rebellion. I think it's safe to say that this problem actually brought us closer in the Lord because it forced us to go to Him together in prayer and also realize how much we cared for Andrew.

Having said all that, we really had fun this year! When Josh finally got DSL, the long-time dream of networking all of our computers suddenly had a compelling motivation: free-loading on Josh's fast Internet access! And of course, with networked computers came network computer games (read: Half-Life).

	Singing on the stairs!

(But, as all you brothers know, no amount of cajoling, daring, or bribing would move me to even touch that game, though I did squander countless hours watching you guys kill each other several times a minute.)

And let us not forget Roger's endless striving for the best (and spiciest) hot wings. Or Andy's last night as a member of the "Single Brothers Association". (I've got a picture of the occasion, but to spare Andy, I won't post it here.)

Lest you get the wrong impression, we also had fun in the Spirit. I can never forget how we sang "The Son With the Father" during our evening revivals (more frequently attended than morning revivals this year).

Oh, and never a year passes in the Berglund Brothers' House without some major renovation work. This year, as the Berglunds prepared the house for sale, we lived with plastic covering our beds and desks as the ceiling was torn out and repainted, we saw a porch added, and we crawled through scaffolding on the stairs. Phew! It's all over now.

[In case you haven't figured it out: click on the pictures on this page to get the humongo versions of the photos.]

Kenta and his going-away cake