Brigada – 2024-04-14

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Copyright — This issue of _Brigada Today_ is Copyrighted 2016. However, permission is granted to freely redistribute these materials, including those available on the Brigada website, provided that such redistribution is to those who will help the Good News of Jesus Christ to reach the unreached. To copy or reproduce Brigada Today for any other reason is illegal and is not permitted.

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Compiled/Edited by Doug Lucas and Tina McCormick, Team Expansion. Your gift to Brigada will help get motivation, resources, and news/trends out to thousands of Christian workers throughout the globe on a weekly basis. Search over 2 decades of weekly Brigadas using the search box below.

In this issue…

1) Olive Tree Offers Brigada Users Best Bible Study Bundle Ever
2) Another Great Site to Search for that Hard-to-Locate Book
3) Two More Titles for Your Five-Star Book Set on the Refugee Crisis
4) Need a Phone Overseas? Be Jealous of Your Friend with Verizon
5) Are You an Angry Cross-Cultural Worker?
6) Looking for a Free Alternative to Microsoft Word?
7) Hospitality Options for Missionaries
8) Help Your Missionaries Thrive: (The Book)
9) Train and Place Your Church Mission Team in 12 months
10) Catch this New 10-minute Video on Immigration
11) For Those Who Thrive on Bible Studies: The Longing in Me
12) This App Will Keep Your Kids Busy on the Plane : )
13) Yikes: Did I really Switch to Microsoft OneNote?
14) 14) The BackPage: Feedback to “Discovering the UPG Near You”
15) Closing Stuff

How ’bout this? Olive Tree, the makers of what might be the best and most affordable Bible Study App on the market these days (the one we use here at Brigada, by the way) has just noticed Brigada! They saw our recent promotion of Olive Tree’s Bible Study app and offered to give Brigada users special pricing. First, they let us choose which translations we preferred. We begged and begged for two in particular: NIV and Holman Christian Standard. We were hoping to get the price down for Brigada users — so we were shocked when they came back with the idea of offering it to the Brigada audience for FREE until September! Can you believe it? They threw in several other translations, commentaries, maps, devotionals, and an index or two. And it’s all FREE! And the app was already our favorite anyway. When I (Doug) downloaded the app some time ago, I had to PAY to get NIV. Now, Brigada users get it for free! Even if you use Logos or any other app, please try this. You’ve nothing to use. Options are also available for just about every digital device you own.
https://www.olivetree.com/store/giveaway.php?promo=brigadateamexpansion16&full_description=show

Please let us know how you like it.

Thanks to the virtual army of Brigada participants who continue to scout out great sites for locating hard-to-find books. Cory recently sent us to…

http://www.Dealoz.com

And, sure enough, it’s a great one to add to the list of sites like bookfinder.com, half.com and allbookstores.com, all featured in previous editions of Brigada over the past few weeks. DealOz automatically searches some 200 online bookstores! We tried a couple of very unique titles and it just might take honors of being the best search spot of all. (Thanks Cory!)

Thanks to Neal (Pirolo, no less) and Janet for suggesting the following titles to add to our best bookshelf on migrants and refugees:

Internationals Who Live Among Us: Doing World Missions at Home

http://www.dealoz.com/prod?gtin=09781880185087&query=&op=&op2=buy

and Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang Yang

http://www.dealoz.com/prod?gtin=09780830833597&query=&op=&op2=buy

See the previous six titles at…
https://brigada.org/2016/04/10_18227

If you’re from the USA (as about half of our readers are), but you would love a working cell phone on your next international trip, and you’re not rich, and you use Verizon, you just might be in luck. Check out this feature, available to all Verizon users (the rascals):

http://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/travelpass-countries/

I (Doug) have been a Sprint user since 1997 — so nearly 20 years — but they can’t compare to this plan. Basically, on any international trip (to any covered country), pay $10 if you need to use voice, send texts, or use data — and get all you can eat. (Note that the data limit on your normal plan will be your free data limit on this international plan.) We confirmed with Verizon — there are absolutely no charges levied by the overseas grid. This is amazing. Many carriers would charge 20 cents per minute … and up to $2 (Two DOLLARS!) per minute for the same voice plan, let alone getting free text-sending and web-browsing. And the coverage is broad too. Amazing. I’m now convinced: Verizon users are all rascals. : ) (But I still love my unlimited data plan on Sprint and I hate to switch. Rats.)

Thanks to Jenny for calling our attention to Jonathan Trotter’s recent article about “Anger Abroad.”

http://www.alifeoverseas.com/anger-abroad/

Fascinating read. Have you seen angry cross-cultural workers where you serve? (Are you one of them?) Hats off to Jonathan for bubbling up this intriguing topic.

When the computer became “personal” (around 1984), word processors were in infant forms. I (Doug) remember trying out titles like Enable, Amipro, Wordstar, Perfect Writer, and a start-up called Microsoft Word. Yikes. That last title seems extremely lonely these days, doesn’t it? Competition is good. It encourages innovation. But who has the audacity to challenge Word, with some 90% of the PC market, and more than 25% of the enterprise market (Microsoft Office Online has a great free version now and has recently outpaced Google Docs for market share. Well there are challengers in the PC world — still. Take AbiWord for instance:

http://www.abiword.org/

There’s LibreOffice, too. But, of all that we can find, perhaps the most promising is…

https://www.openoffice.org/

A new version was just released in October (2015) and you know — it’s actually not bad. Your thoughts?? (Thanks for suggesting this item, Pete!)

Headed out on a “journey for His name’s sake?” There are people who want to help (in the same manner as Gaius did, in 3rd John). You can always go to A Candle In The Window

http://acandleinthewindow.com/

They provide missionaries with a free meal or night housing throughout the world. Another is Christian Hospitality Network

http://thechn.org/
They provide discounted rates to missionaries at B&B’s throughout mainly the USA. (Thanks to Chad of Engineering Ministries International for reminding us these, both of which have been featured in Brigada in the past.) Do you know of other networks like these? Have you had good experience with them?

GMI’s new book, Help Your Missionaries Thrive commits to provide you with Leadership Practices that Make a Difference. The authors, Ken Harder and Carla Foote, asked 1,771 North American cross-cultural field workers 74 questions each about their job satisfaction,
field-role fulfillment, agency support, and agency leadership — and the results are intriguing. Ask yourself: Why would we not ALL want to read this book? (I’ll see if they’ll give us a review copy here at Brigada.) They came away with details on positive practices, as well as those where improvement is needed. Learn more at…

http://www.gmi.org/products/books/gmibooks/help-your-missionaries-thrive/