- LATEST GUIDANCE ON TRAVELING & CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET
- TRAINING IN CHRISTIAN MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT & MICROFINANCE
- TERM LIFE INSURANCE
- PREPARE TO RAISE SUPPORT IN MUCH LESS TIME
- BIBLE STORYING RESOURCE WANTS TO HELP YOU!
- GET PRE & MID FIELD RUSSIAN LANGUAGE TRAINING THIS FALL
- SHARPEN YOUR INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
- FREE ONE YEAR SCHOOL OF PRAYER
- TEFL TEACHER TRAINING IN ISTANBUL
- WE GET HELP… WE BE THANKFUL
- THE BACKPAGE: HOW TO CORRECT A PEER (OR NOT)
- CLOSING STUFF
- LATEST GUIDANCE ON TRAVELING & CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET — Those involved in outreach activities in foreign countries would be wise to us a HotMail account. While well known ISPs such as AOL have world wide accessibility, using them identifies a person with the nationality associated with that ISP. HotMail is country neutral and doesn’t draw attention. Use of an Internet card with HotMail is usually cheaper too.Most countries have AOL access and AOL has online storage. Messages can be read at a Internet cafe, replied to, and saved on AOL for later retrieval when you get back home.
Here’s a pay-as-you-go service called Budget Dial Up:
is a recommended when traveling. You purchase time in blocks and only pay for what you use. There are no monthly fees. They have a subsidiary for travelers called
Thanks to Stan, Mark, Fred, George, and Mike.
- TRAINING IN CHRISTIAN MICROENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT & MICROFINANCE — The Chalmers Center for Economic and Community Development will conduct its next Christian Economic Development Institute (CEDI) on July 31 – August 5, 2006 at the Jumuia Conference and Country Home in Limuru, Kenya, located outside of Nairobi. This training institute is sponsored by the Anglican Church of Kenya along with Five Talents International. It is appropriate for anyone doing outreach or ministry among the poor in the Two-Thirds World – pastors, church planters, church members, ministry staff, missionaries, and relief and development workers. The institute provides training on practical, church-based strategies for ministering to the poor without creating dependency. Specific topics include how to implement a relief or development intervention for your community without doing harm, how to promote rotating and accumulating savings and credits associations, how to partner with microfinance institutions, and how to offer small business training to low-income entrepreneurs. Prior financial or economic experience is not required to attend the training. The cost for this CEDI is $550 USD and covers room, board and tuition. For specific information about the courses taught and to register for the CEDI, visithttp://www.chalmers.org
and click on the Limuru, Kenya link located under the Christian Economic Development Institute heading.
- TERM LIFE INSURANCE -– There are an increasing number of term life insurance options available for the international worker. If desired, coverage can be limited to AD&D (Accidental Death & Dismemberment) only. Amounts of coverage can be as low as $50,000 and up to and over $1,000,000. If purchased together with health insurance, term life coverage can be found for any country in the world. For term life quotes: name, age, overseas residence (country and city) and type of work are needed. For more information contactjeff(at)gninsurance(dot)com or call 480/813-9100. [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .] Toll free in USA: 866/636-9100. Visit
- PREPARE TO RAISE SUPPORT IN MUCH LESS TIME -– It doesn’t have to take years to raise your support for mission service. There are proven, transferable attitudes and skills that you can develop which will make support raising quicker, easier and much less terrifying. A new training option is now available through live, interactive video conferencing. You can receive, on loan, a high tech video conferencing unit which is easy to plug in and use. You need high speed internet access and a TV monitor. You meet live on line with an experienced trainer for five hours a week three weeks. It is low cost and it will equip you with the communication and relational skills you need to be successful in partnership development ministry for a lifetime.http://www.kingdomcometraining.com
jerry(at)kingdomcometraining(dot)com [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
- BIBLE STORYING RESOURCE WANTS TO HELP YOU! — Please tell story4all about your storying work, training or events and your ministry could receive a highlight on the story4all podcast, with events listed in the web site “Calendar”. story4all is here to help those who want to learn more about Bible storying, oral strategies, those who want to make disciples of oral learners, as well as to facilitate networking between agencies and individuals and vice versa. Check out the story4all web site and podcast, and contact story4all by visiting:http://story4all.com
Have you heard the story4all podcast yet? Cut & paste this URL into your “podcatching” software to freely subscribe to the weekly show:
feed://story4all.libsyn.com/rss
- GET PRE & MID FIELD RUSSIAN LANGUAGE TRAINING THIS FALL — Studying at the Institute of Strategic Languages and Cultures (ISLC) (formerly Russian Language Ministries) will give you a good head start in learning the needed language and culture. Their experienced staff is called by God to equip you with the language & cross-cultural skills you will need to be effective in ministry to Russian. Courses are tailored to your learning needs and offer an intensive and focused experience with, gradual effective immersion in the language, communicative learning methods & flexible duration for all programs. Their U.S. based courses are taught in an encouraging spiritual atmosphere with a focus on future ministry. Classes now forming for our 16 week fall course (Aug. 28- Dec. 15). US toll Free: 1-800-799-7976 or 1-803-333-9119.RLMoffice(at)juno(dot)com [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
- SHARPEN YOUR INTERPERSONAL SKILLS — International Training Partners offers Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills Workshops in different parts of the world. These five-day, highly interactive workshops focus on biblical application of skills in relating effectively to one another and to the host people.A workshop hosted by Arab World Ministries will held near Sanary-sur- Mer, France September 10-15, 2006. Please contact Carrie Lyon at clyon(at)marnet(dot)org for information. [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
Go to
for details on all of the workshops and information on ITP. If your mission is interested in sponsoring a SYIS workshop, contact Paul Lere at plere(at)itpartners(dot)org [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
- FREE ONE YEAR SCHOOL OF PRAYER — There are keys to answered prayer. Best-selling authors, prayer leaders, and conference speakers, Eddie and Alice Smith, with the U.S. Prayer Center now offer their 52-Week School of Prayer online! Imagine receiving a unique lesson on prayer in your email inbox each week for an entire year! You’ll never need to leave home to attend a class or pay an enrollment fee. They will teach you how to have a fulfilling quiet time; to experience intimacy with God through prayer; to pray our family and friends to Christ; and more. Appropriate across denominational lines. Offer it to your friends, your church, or ministry. Be one of 100,000 the Smiths will mentor with this free course. Receive as a bonus for enrolling the amazing PDF report, “138 Ways to Mobilize Prayer.” Simply enter your first name and email address at:http://www.TeachMeToPray.com
- TEFL TEACHER TRAINING IN ISTANBUL — It’s slated for July 6 – 8. Here is an opportunity to learn how to teach English to non-native English speakers. Teaching techniques, language skill development and curriculum selection and options will be just some of the topics. The primary focus of the seminar will be Conversational English.
- WE GET HELP… WE BE THANKFUL — Thanks to the church in Tulsa, OK, which sent $125 along with a thank-you note for the “resources Brigada keeps on supplying.” Well we’ll be honest — your support helps us keep on supplying. God be praised! Thanks! Want to help Brigada spread the news about missions resources, unreached peoples, and outreach conferences all around the world? Just go tohttps://brigada.org
and click on “sponsor” in the top menu (to use PayPal or a credit card), or if you prefer, send a check payable to Team Expansion to: Team Expansion (Brigada secretary), 13711 Willow Reed Dr., Louisville, KY 40299. As always, be sure to let us know if you’d like us to promote any particular service or ministry, or if you’d prefer your gift be anonymous. In any case, thanks for considering Brigada in your estate giving, your monthly church missions fund, and/or your own personal giving for this calendar year.
- THE BACKPAGE: HOW TO APPROACH A PEER (OR NOT) — Last week we talked about the concept of approaching “the head man” in a tribe . . . or a company. Our basic premise was: go to the person in charge. But what if you have an issue with someone who is your peer… someone “across departmental lines” or someone in the team across town. You feel funny going to his/her team leader or boss because you’re afraid you’ll get him/her in trouble, right? Good answer. What’s more, the boss might not know you or accommodate your desire to discuss the matter. He or she might think you’re stepping out of line to bring up something that had nothing to do with your work area.So what if you observe shoddy or less-than-best performance on the part of the guy across the hall, who serves under a different boss? My own take is — it depends. If the team member has a reasonable team leader (one who is reasonably gifted in leadership), sometimes it might make more sense for you to report the troubling behavior or less-than-best performance. Speak directly to the person’s overseer. However, if the team member’s point-man is seemingly less understanding… or if you’ve had a hard time getting your point across to him or her (sometime before), then there are times where you’ll feel uncomfortable going to the team leader of the friend. In cases like these (where the team leader isn’t as present), you might decide to throw out the “head man” rule and approach the struggling brother or sister directly. Here are some important and easy tips to maximize your chance of success:
*** Focus on one thing at a time, in a positive way, if possible: Refuse the temptation to bring up a laundry list. For example, if the I.T. guy can’t train, can’t program, can’t write instructions, and can’t show up to work on time, and, to make matters worse, if his boss is unreasonable as well, yes you might have to approach him directly, as a peer. But don’t make a list… or at least, don’t *show* him the list. Just decide on the highest priority item and approach him on that item first. In the previous case, maybe you begin by pulling him aside and asking him to help you understand a particular protocol or command. In the process, you coax him to train you in a friendlier fashion, then you tell him, “It really helped me when you described the solution in such-and-such a terms.” Make sure the guy knows you *appreciate* what he just did (the helpful training behavior). Truth be known, you’re mentoring him… but it’s perhaps team-member-specific-mentoring, in that he’ll probably interpert it as being the kind of behavior he ought to show *you* and you alone. That’ll be ok at first. At least it’ll help you do your job better.
*** Go one-on-one: Trust us… If you go as a group, it’ll feel more embarrassing, more overwhelming, and bigger than life. Go one-on-one.
*** Uplift the positive: Whenever possible, try to “catch her in the act of being good” rather than criticizing her errant behavior.
*** Try to establish a relationship first, *then* correct: It’s a *ton* easier to take correction from a *friend* rather than someone at a distance. What’s more, we’ll *care* more when a friend gives us feedback. We seem to always be able to rationalize or justify when it’s someone about whom we have little invested interest.
*** Whenever possible, use metaphors if appropriate: For some reason, people remember stories better. So if you can say it with an illustration, without it becoming hokey, do it.
Using these 5 simple approaches, perhaps you can turn a lemon into lemonade: The person with troubling behavior just might become a close friend, believe it or not. And friends are good, … because it’s truly a jungle out there!
Doug
Recent Comments