19991107 Brigada Today

In this issue….

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS BRIGADA?

Brigada, pronounced “bree-GAH-dah” (rhymes with armada), is the rough equivalent of a “brigade” — in Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Albanian and even Filipino! Founded 25 January 1995, the idea is to stand side by side to pass buckets of hope for those most in need of Christ’s eternal message! Check out nearly 5 years of weekly back issues at https://brigada.org. See recent back issues and links at http://www.eGroups.com/list/brigada-today. Brigada Today is compiled by Doug Lucas DLucas@teamexpansion.org, Louisville, KY.

TOP 10 REASONS TO COME TO BRIGADAFEST 2000

Why would anyone want to come to BrigadaFest, this coming Feb. 3-5, in Louisville, KY???

10 – Take in Interdev’s super-seminar on partnership development
9 – Do Caleb Project’s training on People Group Advocacy
8 – Hear about Antioch Network’s experiences in unreached outreach
7 – Learn what “PACE” stands for and how to do a PACE Project
6 – Participate in an Unreached People Group “Track”
5 – Meet some of the members of the Brigada family in person
4 – Attend a “Huddle Group” with others in similar roles
3 – Help your local church select and reach an unreached group
2 – Meet personally with an AD2000 & Beyond representative
and [drum roll] the Number 1 reason to come to BrigadaFest 2000,
Find out how you can the registration for an entire 3-day seminar for just 60 bucks!

For more information, write AKeeran@TeamExpansion.org in Louisville or register on the web by going to http://www.teamexpansion.org.

NEED MORE JESUS VIDEOS?

You can still get them from Keith Keithk@idmail.com for the low low price of $5 each in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and a ton of other languages too. Thanks Keith!

MINISTER TO ENGLISH SPEAKING MUSLIM STUDENTS AT METS

The Middle East Training Session (METS) is set for May 25 to July 6, 2000, in Istanbul, Turkey. The program includes orientation to Islam, (College credit available if desired) and opportunities for hands-on ministry to Muslim university students under the direction of experienced missionaries. The program costs $995 plus airfare and personal expenses. For more information and applications contact IDEA Ministries ideamin@ideaministries.org, tel. (616) 698-8393 in the USA.

HEALING THE LEPROSY OF OUR SOULS

Vishal Mangalwadi’s booklet addresses the call for a national debate in response to widespread persecution in India. It’s available in the USA from The Maclaurin Institute maclurn@tc.umn.edu, tel 612-378-1935 ($2.50); and in the UK from South Asian Concern 100126.3641@compuserve.com, tel 0181-770- 9717, and elsewhere from Good Books ruth@nda.vsnl.net.in, tel +91-135 630891.

INQUIRY ON TRAINING AMIDST ANIMISM

Have you ever had to set up a training center in the middle of a tribal area bounded by those caught up in witchcraft and animism? If so, Norman and Rikki gpf@hms.co.zw would love to hear any lessons you learned while doing so. They have to set up a non-denominational leadership training center in Zimbabwe, near lots of small churches with inexperienced leaders. Basically, they’re asking for your help. We’ll ask them to assemble a summary report of what they learn through your responses. Thanks!

FREE LONG DISTANCE TO THE USA

Someday one of these Internet long distance gateways is going to hit it big. My friend Rick likes http://www.dialpad.com the best. Check it out. Free long distance to the USA . . . and maybe someday, to other countries too! Rick says it sounds better with a headset. I tried it . . . and it’s promising!

TRANSLATORS NEEDED

Don’t forget about Uniscape.com if you’re looking for job opportunities in translation. Registration is free to translators as is the use of Uniscape’s translation tools. http://www.uniscape.com. Questions? Email Seda smansour@uniscape.com.

ELECTRONIC LIBRARY LOOKING FOR PARTNERS

The International Electronic Library is looking for assistance from those who are familiar with resources in French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Indonesian, Korean And Vietnamese. They’re looking for help with OCR scanning, as well as in selecting the best books available in these ten languages for training pastor and church leaders around the world. If you can help, write Wendy wludo@megsinet.net.

CALLING ON PRAYER WARRIORS FOR TELECAST

Ramesh Richard Evangelism and Church Helps (RREACH) International wants to mobilize prayer support for its Reach for Life telecast, a year-end evangelistic half-hour program on secular TV, primetime, in over 50 countries and four continents. The program targets English-speaking, computer literate, opinion leaders in weaker economies and is to be shown on Dec. 30 and Jan. 1 and 2. Conservative estimates of the potential audience are around 100 million. If interested in praying for this global evangelistic effort, send an email to info@rreach.org with the subject line: Y2K PRAYER. A prayer email will be sent that will contain relevant details to pray for. For info by snail mail, write to RREACH International, P.O. Box 261802, Plano, TX 75093-1802, U.S.A.

UNLIMITED WEB PAGE HOSTING FOR FREE

That’s right… Ray has found a place on the web that will offer that and more at: http://unit1.myfreeoffice.com/mfo/signup.cgi?sponsor=raymholt Note that Ray is serving as sponsor… (so we presume he gets some kind of credit from your using this URL

)… but the free services include unlimited web page hosting, free-for-life unlimited space domain hosting, web page design wizard, fax to email, fax to anywhere in US, two email accounts, Office 2000 Compatible Software, autoresponder messaging, mailing list manager, graphics library, group chat, bulletin board messaging, document sharing, online scheduling, technical support, and more. I checked out this service and it indeed appears to offer all these services . . . and the only downside I could find is that you will receive quite a bit of commercial ads from MyFreeOffice sponsors. Plan on at least one per day… and maybe more… from various vendors hoping to catch your attention. So . . .for now, I think I prefer the eGroups model — where the only ad is the tiny one at the bottom of this newsletter. But you might like some of the other perks, so feel free to check it out! Thanks Ray!

GET YOUR CALCULATOR BACK IN WORD

For all those users wishing they could restore the calculation feature from Microsoft Word 2 (even if you’re using Word 2000), go to the Tools|Customize menu, then choose “Commands” and scroll through the list of tools ’til you find the “ToolsCaluculate” command. Drag the command up to the Toolbar and drop it in the location of your choice, maybe at the far right. Then choose “Close” to close the Customize dialog box. Now you can easily calculate selected expressions in Word! Just highlight the expression (such as 100+200*(50/3), click on the toolbar and watch the status bar.

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COPYRIGHT — This issue of Brigada Today is Copyrighted © 2001. However, permission is granted to freely redistribute these materials, including those available through email autoresponders, provided that such redistribution is to those who will help the Good News of Christianity to reach the unreached. But please include this phrase: “For a free subscription of Brigada‘s weekly missions publication, write <brigada-today-subscribe@egroups.com>.”
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DISCLAIMER — Please note that there’s no way we can possibly screen all the text on all the web sites or items we recommend. We try to check them out first… but if we miss something, please don’t assume that the opinions on those sites are identical to those of the Brigada family of networks. “Eat the corn, leave the cob!”
For subscription questions or problems, write help@brigada.org.

SUBMITTING CONTENT — To submit content or ideas to Brigada Today, first please get a copy of “Guidelines for submitting items to Brigada” Then, once you’ve composed your item in keeping with those guidelines, send your item for Brigada Today to DLucas@teamexpansion.org.
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Emphasis is placed on items relating to unreached peoples and challenges faced by those reaching them cross-culturally.

PLEASE DON’T SUBSCRIBE US TO YOUR LIST — It’s always better to ask before manually force-adding anyone to your list-serve or mailing list. Recently, tons of well-meaning people have been subscribing Doug to their lists. Since he often travels overseas, he doesn’t join many of those, for obvious reasons (like being charged big-time for overseas access). So as a general rule, please don’t bulk-mail us! See the note above if you’d like to submit items for Brigada Today. Thanks for understanding. Bottom line: We will never create Brigada Today items from bulk mail. Bulk mail gets deleted immediately — sorry. Nothing personal. We suggest you apply the same standard to everyone. Ask first!

WARNING ABOUT FORWARDING EMAILS — Please, before forwarding any kind of request (even if it says “please send this to all your friends”), please check to make sure it has a VERIFIABLE ORIGIN, a VERIFIABLE PURPOSE, and a VERIFIABLE CLOSURE (OPC). By following this simple approach, many “email viruses” could be nipped in the bud… at least in the Brigada family. More information about the full Brigada OPC protocol is available. Thank you.

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

Global Glimpses: John Hanna, Caleb Project, jhanna@cproject.com
Brigada Website: Bob Mayhew, WebServant@brigada.org
Brigada Customer Service Manager: help@brigada.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!