Now with 4449 Participants!
News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
[Pass this issue to a friend! To subscribe, see instructions at end.]

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In this issue….

* LATIN AMERICANS SAY “SI” TO WORLD EVANGELIZATION
* THE BEST INTERNATIONAL NEWS . . . FOR FREE!!!
* AN APPEAL FOR SECURITY PROTOCOLS
* “LOOK OUT! THE HEAD HUNTERS ARE COMING!”
* RADIO-EMAIL FROM SOUTH AFRICA FOR FREE!
* BUSINESS ON THE NET . . . FOR HIS GLORY
* GET READY FOR THE “NIGHT OF POWER” (PRAYER FOR MUSLIM FRIENDS)
* WANT TO HELP WITH URBANA FOLLOW-UP? – You can!!!
* WANT TO KNOW WHERE’S THE NEAREST PERSPECTIVES CLASS???
* GLOBAL GLIMPSE FROM MONGOLIA
* CALLING ALL TRAVEL AGENTS FROM EUROPE!
* HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT “PRAY USA”?
* RAMADAN… THE FREE POSTER
* WEBWATCH
* MAYBE ASK ONE QUESTION AT A TIME?
* DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE FREE MOBILE HOME BRIGADA IS GIVING AWAY?
* WANT A GREAT CD ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR $79?
* “DID YOU KNOW?” – FROM OUR UKRAINIAN CORRESPONDENT
* HUB-CAPS

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LATIN AMERICANS SAY “SI” TO WORLD EVANGELIZATION
From December 27-30, Panama City, Panama was host to Christian leaders and university students for LatinoAmerica 2000, a conference on world evangelization sponsored jointly by AD2000 and Beyond Movement and Campus Crusade for Christ. Over 3600 people from nearly every country in Latin America heard the challenge to take a vital role in world evangelization from well-known speakers like Bill Bright, Josh McDowell, Luis Bush, and Loren Cunningham. In the end, all delegates stood and then knelt to consecrate themselves to go and do whatever God might ask to bring “a church for every people and the gospel to every person by the year 2000.”

Is this goal possible? “According to your faith be it unto you,” challenged Dr. Bright.

Latin America has 60 million evangelical Christians, with thousands of seminaries and megachurches. Many speakers emphasized their gifts of passion, of creativity, of cultural diversity, and of faces which can pass as Middle Eastern, assets which bring strong enabling for cross cultural witness. Speaker Peter Wagner noted the spiritual maturity of Latin American intercessors able to support the work of missions.

Three hundred delegates put feet to their commitment right away, and agreed to stay on in Panama for three weeks in order to take the Jesus Film to every area of the country.

(Thanks to Debbie Wood, of the AD2000 & Beyond International Office staff, for submitting this summary and her daily updates to Brigada!)

For a daily journal or a more complete press release about LA2000, go to http://www.ad2000.org or Email Debbie@AD2000.org. To get a copy of the complete text of the conference “Declaration,” send email to hub@xc.org with only this line in the text of the message:
get brigada la2000dec

Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!

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THE BEST INTERNATIONAL NEWS . . . FOR FREE!!!
We continue to be very impressed by Mercury News and its free feed to email inboxes! For more information, write NEWS@MERC.COM or visit their web site at http://www.merc.com. The summaries can be selected by region… so you get only the focus you want, and each little “Brigada-like” summary paragraph has a URL to click on to get the entire new story. All for free! Incredible bargain. If you’re taking cable just to watch CNN, I bet you’ll unsubscribe after you start reading this!

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AN APPEAL FOR SECURITY PROTOCOLS
Do you have a one-page summary on security protocols for your organization, church, or project? I’m talking about ideas like, “Don’t ever use the ‘M’ word in email to us. Instead, call us ‘on-site workers’ or anything else. Avoid asking questions like….” Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated. Send your security recommendations to DLucas@TeamExpansion.org with subject, “PROTOCOL” and we’ll assemble a copy for all Brigada readers. Thanks to Bev (a Project Coordinator for an adopt-a-people project) for the request!!! (Bev, we’ll make sure you get a copy!)

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“LOOK OUT! THE HEAD HUNTERS ARE COMING!”
Thanks to Paul & Joy Hattaway, who recently shared the following story on the Brigada-Peoples conference: “Look out! The head hunters are coming! Until recently, this was the cry of countless inhabitants of the mountains of northern Burma and southern China, who lived in utter terror of the Wa minority group. Amongst all the tribes of Asia, the Wa are one of the most bound and desperately needy. … The Wa are well-known for their practice of head-hunting, which is rumored to still continue today in some of the remote parts of Myanmar’s Shan State. For centuries the Wa head-hunted for the purpose of ensuring a good harvest. The demons that grip them demand the sacrifice of humans to assure the crops will not fail. … But God looked down from heaven and prepared the hearts of the Wa to receive the Gospel of His Son. An amazing testimony of God’s love and power took place in northern Burma in 1906. … At that time a witch-doctor in a certain Wa village owned three white donkeys. He laid his hands on the middle donkey and told the village elders, “If you follow this donkey, it will lead you to the True God.” For weeks the elders followed the donkey for a distance of 200 miles across remote terrain. One day it stopped outside the house of William Young, an American Baptist missionary who was working amongst the Lahu tribe. Young became the first to take the Gospel message to the Wa. Salvation swept many areas as hundreds of hearts already prepared by the Holy Spirit converted to Christ.” Thanks Paul! (Paul Harvey eat your heart out!)

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RADIO-EMAIL FROM SOUTH AFRICA FOR FREE!
That’s right! Have you heard about the guy in South Africa that has set up a ham radio station that is somehow linked to the Internet to receive email, convert it to ham radio signals, then send it out into the air waves for the intended receiver to pick up, re-transmit back into email text??? What a system! To use this system, you’d need a ham radio license (which means you’d have to learn morse code and theory/laws), the ham radio rig (nice antenna and transmitter/receiver can cost $1000+), and the time to get it all figured out… but once you were up and running, imagine how great it would be if you’re, say, out in Northern Luzon, beyond the end of a telephone’s reach! That’s exactly the way it is for one missionary who is serving there in the Philippines, receiving email from his father-in-law on a regular basis! So… if you’re interested, check out the South African ham operator’s web site at http://goofy.iafrica.com/~joost or, if you don’t have web access and if you’re absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt interested in using the service and you have a ham license and an antenna/receiver, you could so write the South African guy’s direct email address at joost@iafrica.com. But please be sensitive and don’t just write him with mere chit-chat. The guy is doing a tremendous service and we don’t want to take him away from his ministry! For more information about how the service works in practical ways (yes – it really works!), write the father-in-law (Dale Leathead, of World Team, in Warrington, PA, at 102626.3217@CompuServe.COM ). Remember, you heard it first on Brigada! Thanks for the tip, Dale!!!

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BUSINESS ON THE NET . . . FOR HIS GLORY
Have you heard about the Business Executives Consultation that’s going to happen in Pretoria next summer (in conjunction with GCOWE 97)? Check out their new web site at http://www.iccc.net/ad2000. “As believers in the marketplace, many of us are burning to take the Gospel to the nations, using our businesses as the vehicle, or if you like, as a weapon in God’s hands. ‘Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, ‘I am strong!’ Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, O Lord!’ Joel 3:10-11.” Thanks to James Lockett, Vice President of the International Christian Chamber of Commerce! (See their site at http://www.iccc.net. )

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GET READY FOR THE “NIGHT OF POWER” (PRAYER FOR MUSLIM FRIENDS)
Have you heard about Day 27 of Ramadan (approx. Feb. 5), which apparently is a special night for Muslims? They evidently consider this a “Night of Power”? Anyway, one Brigada participant suggested that we organize prayer vigils that evening in hopes that Muslim friends would learn about the power of the Christ, the true Messiah. For more information about the possibilities for Feb. 5th, write Missionary Action/FLAME (Fund for Latin Americans in Muslim Evangelism) maflame@juno.com. Thanks Lee!

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WANT TO HELP WITH URBANA FOLLOW-UP?
You can!!! … via the web! Phil & Teri Barker, of Word International Net Services wordintl@xc.org, are brainstorming about options that should be placed on the Urbana follow-up web pages. Wow … they’re first class. See the ACTION follow-up page at http://www.gospelcom.net/iv/urbana/action.html and the RESOURCES follow-up at http://www.gospelcom.net/iv/urbana/resources.html. Great book list, good articles, and tremendous job taking it into html! Good work, Phil and Teri! Anyway, if you have some ideas to send them, or would like to volunteer, join by sending email to hub@xc.org with only the message command:
subscribe urbana96-www

Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!

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WANT TO KNOW WHERE’S THE NEAREST PERSPECTIVES CLASS???
Now you can find out. Just send an email message to hub@xc.org with only this line in the text of the message:
get brigada perspectives

A full list/schedule will automatically be mailed to you within moments. Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org! Thanks Steve!

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GLOBAL GLIMPSE FROM MONGOLIA
Not long ago, some very strangely dressed people burst into a Christian meeting in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator. It turned out that they were from the Gobi Altai, a region hardly reached by the gospel. They had once seen the “Jesus Film” and since then had been meeting in one of the village leaders’ houses to read the Bible. The question, that they made the long journey to ask, was: when can someone come to start a church?
(Source: DAWN Friday Fax, 49-96, © DAWN Europe; WWW: http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/ for more info.)
Global Glimpse is compiled each week by John Hanna, Caleb Project, Littleton, CO.

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CALLING ALL TRAVEL AGENTS FROM EUROPE!
A recent participant to brigada-travel-bids remarked, “… I live in Croatia, I was willing to travel to Germany or Austria, or Italy for departure, but no bids. Perhaps we could recruit agents in Europe???” Amen! Let’s put the word out. Travel Agents in Europe please write to hub@xc.org with only this line of text in the message:
subscribe brigada-travel-bids

By the looks of it, this has been the most active of all Brigada conferences so far this month, with some 173 messages! Only travel agents need join. All others just mail their RFQ “request for a quote” to brigada-travel-bids@xc.org. Travel agents, please be ready for business!

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HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT “PRAY USA”?
April of 1997 has been designated PrayUSA!, 30 days of prayer and fasting for the United States. PrayUSA! is a partnership of national prayer ministries, churches, parachurch groups, and denominations seeking to mobilize prayer and fasting throughout the whole Church for revival and spiritual awakening in the United States. PrayUSA! is a Mission America prayer initiative chaired by Steve Bell, Concerts of Prayer International; and coordinated by Eddie Smith, of the U.S. PRAYER TRACK. For more information or to volunteer to help, write 104224.3107@compuserve.com. Maybe you’d like to organize a “Pray___!” campaign for your own country??? I’m sure they’d give you ideas!

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RAMADAN… THE FREE POSTER
Just a few days ago, I was meeting with friends in a small restaurant in N. Africa as the news started traveling the streets of the city we were visiting. The Muslim cleric in charge of the country had seen the moon in just the right position… Ramadan had begun. Sirens wailed, and soon the call to prayer mustered the citizens to begin their 30-day fast. We joined them throughout their first day of Ramadan… and many have been praying for them ever since as a part of the fifth annual international “30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus” (Jan 10 to Feb 8). Over 30,000 adult Prayer Guides (and 5,000 “Just for Kids” booklets) have been distributed during the last few weeks within North America alone! To further promote prayer for the Muslim world, the North American office for the “30 Days” is now offering illustrated two-color posters for postage & handling charges only (a $7 value)-over 1,000 are available. U.S. $1 for the USA, Canada and Mexico; U.S. $2 for the rest of the world. To get your 14 x 22 inch poster, send your request with the postage cost to:

WorldChristian News & Books
PO Box 26479
Colorado Springs
CO 80936, USA

And don’t forget to pray for your Muslim friends throughout the world!

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WEBWATCH
Have you checked out http://www.xc.org/helpintl/mrd.htm, http://www.sim.org, and http://www.gmi.org/research/websites.htm? They all offer some good links to cross-cultural ministry. Thanks Bob! And thanks for your page at http://www.xc.org/world-christian.html Also, check out http://www.bible.org for “The Net Bible.” Thanks Terry!

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MAYBE ASK ONE QUESTION AT A TIME?
We get mail. Boy do we get mail. We recently received this request: “Could you send me information on Manila Philippines, Mexico City, Bogota Colombia, and Sao Paulo Brazil? I would also appreciate up-to-date information on Rwanda, Zambia, Ethiopia and Mozambique? The information I really need is the situation with the evangelical church, number of missionaries, etc.” I mean, why don’t we just broaden the question a bit… “Define the universe; be brief, be precise. Give examples.” Tip of the week: If you write a volunteer for help, ask a specific question to get a specific answer. Brigada volunteers can come up with some great help – but they aren’t miracle workers! So – the best place to ask questions about specific people groups or cities is in brigada-peoples and brigada-cities. To join those conferences, send email to hub@xc.org with only these two lines in the text of the message:
subscribe brigada-peoples
subscribe brigada-cities

Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!

Read the welcome messages. They will explain how to get more help and how to use the system. You can unsubscribe at any time. And . . . yes… if you send a message to the brigada-peoples conference, there are hundreds of volunteers there ready to try to help you get information on a specific people group (probably better than hitting “reply” to this copy of Brigada Today). But even to the hundreds of volunteers in brigada-peoples, maybe you still ought to just try one question at a time??? :-)

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DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE FREE MOBILE HOME Brigada IS GIVING AWAY?
(I’m not kidding, sort of.) It’s true. Overheard on the brigada-medicine-for-poor conference, . . . “A relative of mine has a mobile home 12X68 that he is willing to donate to a charity. …This unit is available for donation to a charity. … Merry Christmas … Robert Jaquiss robertj@teleport.COM ” Merry Christmas indeed! The ultimate stocking stuffer – a mobile home! [ ] Try wrapping that baby under the tree for junior! :-) How ’bout that for marketing giveaways… “Brigada – the people who give away mobile homes!” (Actually, it was a Brigada participant giving it away, . . . but when you have no marketing department, you have to take advantage of any possible angle you can get, right?) So… if you’re interested in a mobile home for your charity, just write Robert. Hope you’re not too late! And yes, you probably would have to move it from its current site in Oregon. :-) (that’s like saying, “batteries not included,” O=== right? :-) )

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WANT A GREAT CD ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR $79?
[][] Greg Parsons, Exec. Dir. of the US Center for World Missions, recommends that you run (don’t walk) to call (in the USA) 800-747-2194. (If you live overseas, ask a friend in the USA to call for you.) The normal price for the Encyclopedia Britannica is $800 – but for a limited time, try getting the on-line CD for $79!!! Shipping should be about $8. And they even have a MAC version! Windows req. on a PC. This is a great deal… with perhaps 10 times as much info. as other CD encyclopedias on the market. They say it has the entire text of the written version!!! I just ordered my copy!!! Still $79 instead of $800! Thanks for the tip, Greg!

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“DID YOU KNOW?” – FROM OUR UKRAINIAN CORRESPONDENT
From a reader living in Ukraine we begin a regular 4-line column called, “Did you Know?” These are the kinds of lines that I’m sure will make their way onto the wall beside your desk. They’re the items that you’ll ponder all day long. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if board rooms of agencies and churches across America become so involved with conversation on these issues that we see a complete doubling of mission efforts within the coming 12 months. ( :-) Actually, maybe we’ll smile once and awhile and it’ll help take our minds off the problems we’re facing?????? :-) )

This week’s “Did you know?”

[drum roll please]:

Did you know that 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

[Are you excited or what!!! :-) Thanks to Chris in the Ukraine! You win this week’s prize for the most amazing “Did You Know?” item. Your subscription to Brigada Today has been extended for a full year absolutely free!!!]

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HUB-CAPS (Recaps about computing with Brigada)
Brigada is a system of email “conferences” (some people refer to these as “list servers”, but we prefer the word conference, in most cases, since it better illustrates that there are dozens of people working together to solve problems and address needs). It is run totally by volunteers. There is no “office”. (You can’t “dial Brigada.”) There is no budget. There is no marketing division. The “hub” email computer is located in Columbus, Ohio, and where it is operated by MAFxc, a division of MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship – the people with the airplanes). The MAF people who run it are actually located in Redlands, CA. They are very much partners in the work, especially as it relates to developing technical wizardry that we can all use. But at the same time, they would be the first to admit that Brigada doesn’t belong to them, per se (they host 937 such conferences in all, some quite busy!). They’re the hardware/software/connectivity providers – and each of them has a passion for world evangelism! This is their ministry! A couple of us in the Brigada network voluntarily pitch in the money to pay them the $160/year for the web page – and conference-moderators pitch in $52/year for their xc.org addresses. Every once-and-awhile, we’ll pitch in $80 to ‘hire’ them to develop some new conference capability. E.g., it was the Brigada family who pitched in the cost to help offset the time to develop the “get” and “put” commands.

There are several conferences that have experienced significant growth.
Brigada-peoples has 281 participants,
brigada-job-shop has 301,
brigada-orgs-missionmobilizers is next with 307,
brigada-pubs-gcowenews has 354 and
brigada-pubs-globalprayerdigest tops that with 634!
Brigada-us-prayertrack now has grown to 870 participants, and
Brigada-pubs-missionfrontiers is the second largest group with 1625 subscribers.
And this conference (which is actually more like a list-server, I suppose) is the conduit for Brigada Today (the publication you’re reading), which attempts to tie together the “family of conferences” below it in the hierarchy. There are currently 4449 readers each weekend. If we were to mail this news bulletin via the postal service to 4449 readers within one particular country (say, the USA), we estimate that the cost would be around $1000/week just for postage alone. Add in paper and printing cost and before long, you’re talkin’ some major bucks! Subscription would run you around $25/year if there were no salaries involved, but there’d be tons more work doing the printing, labeling, sorting, grouping, and posting. All together, over $100,000/year would be required to keep it running, and that’s just for the top level of Brigada alone! Try multiplying that times the zillions of messages being exchanged in every conference in the Brigada family and before long, it makes you ask…

Assuming we already have email access, how is it we can get all this practically for free?

(Okay – I’ll admit; they charge us $52/year for the xc.org address and the ability to create conferences. But with that $52, we’re mailing to thousands of people every week!!!) Whoever said computers didn’t save us money? Thanks to the visionaries who started MAFxc! (If you’d like to invest in MAF and/or start your own email conference for your mission or project, write helpdesk@xc.org. And by the way, we are not employed by MAF nor do we get our xc.org address at a discount for bragging on them. We just like what they’ve created!!! :-) Oh and by the way – did we tell you about their web page hosting ability? :-) )

For a complete list of MAFxc conferences, send an email message to hub@xc.org with only this line in the text of the message:
conferences

Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not brigada@brigada.org!

Thanks to all those moderators who are working to make the Briagda family of networks a reality!!! We appreciate you! Thanks, too, to all the contributors who send in items for Brigada Today (esp. Mark Kelly, John Hanna, Kerstin Hack, and the AD2000 IO), to volunteers Bob Mayhew (for the amazingly consistent volunteer work on the web page) and Revis Ann Massey (for her tireless volunteer ministry as the Customer Service Manager for this “top level” conference, the one that sent you this message), and to all the others that make Brigada a reality!

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TO SUBSCRIBE TO BRIGADA TODAY, send email to hub@xc.org with only the following message:
subscribe brigada

TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to hub@xc.org with this line in the text:
unsubscribe brigada

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BRIGADA TODAY IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FOLLOWING TEAM OF REGULAR VOLUNTEERS:

*Global Glimpses: John Hanna, Caleb Project, jhanna@cproject.com
*ADVANCE: Mark A. Kelley, Kainos Press, 70420.1057@compuserve.com
*Brigada Website: Bob Mayhew, Brigada Volunteer, mayhew@xc.org
*Technical Development: Jonathan Marsden, MAFxc jonathan@xc.org
*Brigada Customer Service Manager: Revis Ann Massey, RevisAnnMassey@xc.org
*Brigada Coordinator: Doug Lucas, Team Expansion & Brigada, DLucas@TeamExpansion.org
*and many other occasional contributors too numerous to mention!
But thanks for working together! That’s the dream of Brigada!