We have expenses. We pay for some secretarial help (when we can afford to). We cover costs of an office and web hosting. If there’s any leftover, we the bulk of it for missions mobilization. This past week, we received …

$200 from a missions mobilizer in Spokane, WA

$100 on behalf of Qashqa’i Partnership, Dallas, TX

$100 from a mobilizer in Holt, MI

$75 from a prayer warrior in Newburgh, IN

$100 from Anacortes, WA

$100 from Bothell, WA

$25 from Sterling, KS: “We have read Brigada from many places in the world for many years. One of my interests is to facilitate information to people who need it. I have cut and pasted parts from many of your BT emails to folks needing that information.  Mind you I give the web address where they can find the original version of the information. God be with you!” (God bless you sir!)

Thank you to these, and all our other friends who gave a total of $8,882.90 during the past 12 months. It’s true that our goal was $17,120. But it’s also true that 2010 was a tough year for several churches and organizations. So we soldier on and thank God for what we’ve got. We’re still in business. We didn’t fold. We didn’t quit. We hope and pray 2011 will be better. Yet again, we’ll keep our goal/budget exactly the same and hope to do better. But as we promised last week, we won’t mention fundraising this year — at all — until November. If someone dares to give anyway, we’ll *thank* them… but we won’t appeal. So, if you can invest heavily in the greatest stocks in the world, and insure that come November, you’ll have some spare change in your back pocket for Brigada, we’ll be grateful — but this is the last you’ll hear about it ’til then. May Brigada be at least a speck of a small blessing for someone, sometime, throughout the year. Amen.