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News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
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In this issue….

* PRAYING THROUGH THE WINDOW II – A LOOK BACKWARD
* SCAM-WATCH: BEWARE AREA CODE 809
* AZUSA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY TO HOLD “URBANA-LIKE” CONFERENCE IN MEXICO CITY
* HAVING TROUBLE FINDING THE RIGHT FONT FOR YOUR FAVORITE LANGUAGE???
* LAST CHANCE TO PLAN FOR MEDICAL MISSIONS CONFERENCE IN LOUISVILLE
* RETIRED BUT NOT THROUGH!
* AFGHANISTAN!
* CSERVERS CAN DO MIME
* RAMADAN IS COMING FAST
* ALL 1739 JP2000 PEOPLE GROUPS TO BE REPRESENTED AT ENVISION ’96
* YOUR CHANCE TO VOTE… “SHOULD BRIGADA TODAY CONTINUE?”
* TO SUBSCRIBE TO BRIGADA TODAY

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PRAYING THROUGH THE WINDOW II – A LOOK BACKWARD
Bev Pegues, Director of Christian Information Network, wrote this past week to announce the upcoming availability of a recap book on “Praying Through The Window II,” which, as you’ll recall, focused on the 100 Gateway Cities of the 10/40 Window. The book, WindoWatchman II: You Prayed, God Responded, Witness the Impact is nearing completion.

Bev wrote, “WindoWatchman II is MUST reading and belongs in the hands of every Christian who is serious about the Great Commission. As it chronicles the journeys of prayer warriors and sets forth priority targets for the year ahead, this moving book will stir your heart to pray more. Your faith will be strengthened and your heart encouraged as you join with fellow believers around the world in pressing on toward the fulfillment of the Great Commission in our lifetime.”

Spearheading this effort were teams of “prayer journeyers” who traveled to many of the “Gateway Cities” to pray on-site for the Gospel’s ability to penetrate these strategic centers of influence. There were a reported 403 teams who took 607 prayer journeys. The teams originated from 48 different nations. … As you know, most of the inhabitants on Earth live in the 10/40 Window, every major non-Christian religion — Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism — has its headquarters in the 10/40 Window and the 10/40 Window represents Satan’s greatest remaining stronghold. For this reason, prayer is our most significant tool in cracking the code to outreach among these most desperately least evangelized peoples.

Bev tells us that pre-orders received before December 1, 1996, will be available at the pre-publication price of $9.99, plus shipping; orders received after December 1, will be priced at $14.99 each, plus shipping. Contact Christian Information Network, 11025 STATE HIGHWAY 83, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80921 PHONE (719) 522-1040 FAX (719) 548-9000 E-MAIL: 73422.3471@compuserve.com. Web Page: http://www.christian-info.com

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SCAM-WATCH: BEWARE AREA CODE 809
For all of us who have friends and/or relatives living overseas, apparently there’s a new scam out there. And we’re prime candidates. We get home and find a message on the answering machine informing us that a relative is sick and we need to call 809-xxx-xxxx to get more info. Trouble is, “809” area code is apparently another form of “900” area codes… only off shore! . . . in the Caribbean. Maybe someone pages us and leaves an 809 number on our pager. Either way, when we make the call, someone on the other end barely speaks English and after 15 minutes, we dismiss it as a hoax. Then our bill comes from the phone company (we did actually make the call, so the phone company isn’t going to adjust the price!) and it’s for well over $100!!! So.. bottom line: toss the messages to “809” area code…. unless your daughter works for a psychic in the Bahamas! :-) (Thanks to Heather V. M. Viles hmccowen@mail.smu.edu for the tip!)

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AZUSA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY TO HOLD “URBANA-LIKE” CONFERENCE IN MEXICO CITY
If you have high schoolers in Mexico, or know someone who does, you might want to consider sending them to “Conquest ’96”, an “Urbana-like” conference in Mexico City, Dec. 26-30. For more info., contact Beth Plumb at bplumb@msmail.apu.edu.

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HAVING TROUBLE FINDING THE RIGHT FONT FOR YOUR FAVORITE LANGUAGE???
Try checking out http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/ on the SIL web site. “Fonts in Cyberspace” will probably be able to direct you to your answer!

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LAST CHANCE TO PLAN FOR MEDICAL MISSIONS CONFERENCE IN LOUISVILLE
Southeast Christian Church medical/missions volunteers remind you to “mark your calendar for the November 16th, one day conference at Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on medical missions. Four experts in tropical medicine, infectious disease, pediatrics, and ob-gyn will give practical advice from first hand experience on how to practice medicine on the mission field. And our keynote speaker, Doug Lucas, will speak on the role of the health professional as a missionary for God by integrating his or her faith in Him with their professional skills in treating the whole person. The course is free. For more information or to receive a brochure, call Stephanie Garling at 502-451-5317 ext. 725 or write to: Southeast Christian Church, Missions Committee, 2840 Hikes Lane, Louisville, Kentucky, 40218. Open to anyone with interest in the health care field and/or mission service.”

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RETIRED BUT NOT THROUGH!
If you’re retired but not through serving the Lord and would like to get ideas and opportunities for service, you could contact Senior Ambassadors for Christ, a job-matching service for seniors. According to Art McCleary, President of the agency, who wrote Brigada this past week, “Opportunites abound in the areas of financial services, office services, publications, medical, engineering, camping, administration, fine arts, foodservice, library services, computer specialties, teaching, transportation, stewardship, telecommunications, parenting, hospitality, child-care, as well as, construction/maintenance.” For more information, write srs4christ@aol.com, or contact the USA office on the campus of the U S Center for World Mission — call – 800-638-2854 or 818-398-7373; write – Senior Ambassadors for Christ, 1605 Elizabeth St, Pasadena, CA 91104.

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AFGHANISTAN!
Here’s your chance to learn more about this complex country. You can get a 7 minute professionally edited and narrated video highlighting church planting work among the Dari speaking people of Afghanistan. The video includes footage from Kabul and Mazar-i-Sherif. It demonstrates the difficulty of travel, the danger of war, and the wild sport of buzkashi (goat pulling), among other things. For security reasons the producers will only ship it to a verified church address. The cost is $8 plus postage and handling ($3 to points in the USA, for a $11 total). Contact John Marion, 76623.3676@compuserve.com.

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CSERVERS CAN DO MIME
Are you a CServe user frustrated by your service’s lack of built-in MIME support? (We’re talkin’ compression/coding and not clowns/actors here. :-)) Do you wish for UUEncoded e-mail attachments at the drop of an internet hat? Well your wishing days might be over. Check out CServe’s Internet Resources Forum on CompuServe (GO:INETRE), and look in the library under the search word “MIME”. There you can find MIME2CIS.ZIP, which places MIME2CIS.EXE in the inbasket subdirectory of the CServe filing cabinet. According to tipster DavidHousholder@xc.org, “When the user runs that file it looks through the inbasket, finds files that came from outside CompuServe and strips off the Internet routing headers then finds any files that have MIME or UUEncode content and decodes them, leaving the decoded file either in the inbasket subdirectory or in the download subdirectory, depending on the setup. The program is a $10 shareware program.” David also recommend Wincode… a long-time standby for Cservers. David added, “Wincode is … freeware and now includes MIME encoding/decoding as well as UUEncoding. It is fast, slick, and nicely done. It works easily with an attached file located in the download directory. To use it on an e-mail message in the inbasket it is best to save the message as a text file then run Wincode on that.” So folks… there you have it! Mime users are no longer silent!

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RAMADAN IS COMING FAST
(Get it?) Coinciding with the annual Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the 30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus is an international movement calling Christians everywhere to learn about Islam, and to pray for Muslims, so that they may come to know God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ. This fifth annual 10/40 Window project (endorsed by a number of international Christian ministries, including the Praying Through the Window movement) will take place during the next Ramadan (annual Muslim month of fasting), Jan 10 to Feb 8, 1997. For more information on published materials, see the related web page at http://www.ywam.org/prayer/30days.html. (By the way, . . . did you know that on many current browser releases, it’s no longer necessary to type in the “http://”??? The browser assumes it even when it’s not there! Save those keystrokes for something more important! :-))

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ALL 1739 JP2000 PEOPLE GROUPS TO BE REPRESENTED AT ENVISION ’96
If you’ve been thinking about hosting an exhibit at Envision ’96, the missions conference and celebration in Lexington, KY, Nov. 1-3, you’d better call soon. Only 15 or so exhibits remain (out of 350) and 20 or so mission agencies are considering these last few spots. (Call 1-800-972-1137 in the USA or email wbirney11@aol.com for more information.) Over 45,000 registrations have been rec’d as a tremendous show of support for the conference, which is set to feature A 1000-voice choir, 28-piece orchestra, state-of-the-art technical support, and a 34-mile Olympic-style torch run from Cane Ridge to downtown Lexington’s Rupp Arena and Heritage Hall Convention Center, along with premier showings of new missions videos, an arena balloon drop to beat the bands, and a chance to glorify Christ and lift His name toward the nations. An electronic messaging center will provide each and every delegate (who wants one) with an electronic convention mailbox to promote information sharing and networking. [A paper-based message center will help those who consider computers the “mark of the beast”. :-) Workshops, special plenary sessions, and an Adoption Center add to the full slate of activities… with all 1739 Joshua Project 2000 People Groups represented in arena seating (since there aren’t that many Christians from these groups, convention planners are using professionally-produced signs — “place-holders” — to save their seats for the future!). At the Adoption/Decision Center, delegates can register their intentions to pray for a group, take part in a research expedition or prayer journey to the 10/40 Window, and/or become a people-specific advocate. Watch the web site unfold throughout the weekend… in “real time” as media volunteers post transcrypts and news stories on http://www.xc.org/brigada/e96/.

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YOUR CHANCE TO VOTE… “SHOULD BRIGADA TODAY CONTINUE?”
Now on a more personal note… [from Doug, the editor] — Nearly two years ago, Envision ’96 was the vehicle that served as the catalyst to bring about the launching of this whole “Brigada” thing… (When asked to serve as President of Envision ’96, I began searching for resources and networking possibilities. Brigada was born out of that search.) Obviously, the dozens of individual conferences under the Brigada heading have a life of their own. They continue because their moderator/owners give countless volunteer hours to make them possible. But what about Brigada Today, the ‘top level’? Is there life after Envision ’96 for Brigada Today??? We’ll let you decide. If you’d like to see Brigada Today continue after Nov. 3, please send the following message to hub@xc.org
subscribe brigada-vote-a

If you could care less, make your message read…
subscribe brigada-vote-b

If you think Brigada should definitely be shut down on Nov. 4th, make your message read…
subscribe brigada-vote-c

or… if you prefer, just unsubscribe from Brigada by sending this message to hub@xc.org
unsubscribe brigada

The results will be reported on in next week’s Brigada Today, so please send your “vote” by Thursday noon, Eastern Time. Thanks! (By the way, . . . in case you were wondering, I am not a member of any of the 3 conferences and will not join. You have my word that I’ll not look at any of the subscriber lists. As far as I’m concerned, the membership of the lists will be a total secret. I’ll only be given a subscriber count in the weekly summary “activity report” next Thursday.)

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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
*Web Wizard: 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!