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Brigada Today
14 Oct 2005

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In this issue...

  1. GLOBAL MISSIOLOGY
  2. ABC, AIDS, AFRICA: CONFERENCE EXAMINES HARVARD RESEARCH
  3. PREPARE YOUR ENCRYPTED "BUG-OUT BACKUP"
  4. ARE YOU TRYING TO STRIP AUTOFORMATTING FROM WORD?
  5. UNITED EFFORT TO PROMOTE MISSIONS IN GHANA
  6. GREAT INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC CALLING RATES FROM THE USA
  7. PERSONAL TESTIMONIES TO THE LIVING GOD
  8. ASIAN INDIAN WORK LOOKING FOR TEAMMATES
  9. THANKS FOR SHARING THE LOAD
  10. THE BACK PAGE: LET'S DO OUR HOMEWORK (SOCCER SCOUTING)
  11. CLOSING STUFF
  1. GLOBAL MISSIOLOGY -- Global Missiology is a quarterly publication with original research and contributions from researchers, practitioners and scholars of international representation with global perspectives. By God's grace and with your support, this humble free e- journal is entering the 3rd year in circulation starting "Volume 3" and marked by the new color and layout. Theme: Holistic Missions/Ministry. Feel free to browse the following distinct English and Chinese communities within Global Missiology. http://www.globalmissiology.org email editor(at)globalmissiology(dot)org [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
  2. ABC, AIDS, AFRICA: CONFERENCE EXAMINES HARVARD RESEARCH -- The 10th annual Global Missions Heath Conference will gather Nov. 11-12 at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky. (And by the way, on the day before, Nov. 10, Edward C. Green, senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, will address the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization's North American Consultation on the Role of the Church in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic.) Green will speak about ABC programs in Africa. More than 100 additional workshops are offered, as well as sessions with World Vision's Richard Stearns, Food for the Hungry's Ben Homan, and Geoff Tunnicliffe of the World Evangelical Alliance. For information or registration for the consultation or GMHC, see http://www.medicalmissions.com or e-mail jsnipp(at)secc(dot)org [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
  3. PREPARE YOUR ENCRYPTED "BUG-OUT BACKUP" -- Thanks to Ray, who wrote us this past week to recommend that missionaries make a disaster plan that includes putting all one's personal info on an encrypted thumb drive (aka: flash drive, USB drive, memory stick), so they can quickly establish or rebuild their official identity. My 16-year-old son, Caleb, has been telling me about survival kits and their importance. So taking a page from a recent term he used, let's call it... our "bug-out backup". :-) Ray suggested including emergency phone #'s of family and co-workers, scans of all personal ID's (drivers license, passport, visas, credit cards, etc.), scanned photos for emergency visas, etc., and perhaps even personal email or mailing lists. These could all be stored on a medium-sized thumb drive and easily carried while traveling (or fleeing!). Encrypt the contents using a file encryption program such as PGP, available at: http://www.pgpi.org or http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware.html
  4. ARE YOU TRYING TO STRIP AUTOFORMATTING FROM WORD? -- Maybe you compose a document in Word, then wish you could email it to someone in the simplest form, as an ASCII text message? Here's the most foolproof method I know... and the simplest too. In Word, open the document, then use "file|save as" to save the document as a "plain text (*.txt)" file. Then close the file, reopen this new plain text version (it will be document #1 in your numbered list under the "File" menu), select all using shortcut keystroke "ctrl-a", then copy using "ctrl-c", then switch to your email application with "alt-tab", then use "ctrl-v" to paste the text into your email. That should do it.

    One sticky point: publishers' quotes and other MS Word advanced features will convert to ugly boxes. So, it's better, in my opinion, to keep these options shut off permanently. (In Word, go to "Tools|Autocorrect" and uncheck *everything* under the "autoformatting" tab.)

    Another sticky point: If you've pasted in emails, then you might have to wrestle with hard-coded carriage returns in the body text. These might cause the text to "wrap" in locations that break up the reading - - with shorter lines of text. To fix this, you'll need a good macro in Word. Try inserting this one into the Word macro editor:
    Here's a Visual Basic Macro to remove unwanted carriage returns from emails in preparation for inserting them in a Word template:

     

    Sub stripcarriagereturns()
    '
    ' stripcarriagereturns Macro
    ' Macro published in Brigada Today 14 of Oct., 2005  issue
    '
    With Selection.Find
            .ClearFormatting
            .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    '        .Execute Findtext:="^p^p", ReplaceWith:="@$$@", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    '        .Execute Findtext:="^p", ReplaceWith:=" ", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    '        .Execute Findtext:="@$$@", ReplaceWith:="^p^p", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
            .Execute Findtext:="^l", ReplaceWith:="^p", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
            .Execute Findtext:="^p ", ReplaceWith:="^p", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
            .Execute Findtext:=" ^p", ReplaceWith:="^p", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
            .Execute Findtext:="^p^p", ReplaceWith:="%$#@", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
            .Execute Findtext:="^p", ReplaceWith:=" ", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
            .Execute Findtext:="%$#@", ReplaceWith:="^p^p", Replace:=wdReplaceAll
        End With
    End Sub
     
  5. UNITED EFFORT TO PROMOTE MISSIONS IN GHANA -- Globeserve Ministries and the Ghana Evangelism Committee have organized an eight-week missions-awareness lecture series that will run from October 27th to December 15th. Leaders from the major denominations and ministries are teaching in the course, and an accredited university -- Pentecost University College -- is making it possible for participants to get college credits. For more information, please contact Jeff Korum. His e-mail address is awakentotheworld(at)hotmail(dot)com [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
  6. GREAT INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC CALLING RATES FROM THE USA -- Get great calling rates for domestic (starting at 1.9 cents/min to continental US and Canada) and international calls (200 countries for less than 10 cents/min ... UK 3 cents, France 3 cents, Russia/Moscow 2.5 cents, Israel 3.2 cents, Colombia 4.2 cents, South Africa 9 cents). Call from any touchtone phone including cell. It's a prepaid service. There are no contracts, no monthly, activation, or connection fees, no need to switch carriers, and up to 470 free minutes on signup plus lots of convenience features. For more info go to: http://www.tel3advantage.com/?agentnumber=837371 An agent affiliate program with good income potential is also available at no cost to sign up. (By the way, just FYI: Brigada is not linked with this service in any way.)
  7. PERSONAL TESTIMONIES TO THE LIVING GOD -- Check out witnessJesus.org, a collection of personal testimonies to what God is doing in the lives of people. The testimonies are shared over the internet with people from all over the world. Contact witnessJesus.org if you would like to contribute your own. Visit http://www.witnessJesus.org Contact at cbrook(at)witnessJesus(dot)org if you have questions. [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address, please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
  8. ASIAN INDIAN WORK LOOKING FOR TEAMMATES -- They are looking for teammates! Their life calling is to the high caste (Jat & Khatri) Sikhs in an urban location in Punjab, India. Their approach is reportedly very culturally relevant, living as part of the community reaching out to friends, and neighbors. They have a for-profit business which serves as a role, platform, and network for outreach. If you or someone you know has an "until the job is done" call to see an indigenous movement of multiplying churches established among high caste Sikhs in the Punjab, contact Gurmeet & Nitu gurmeet(at)pqsa(dot)net [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
  9. THANKS FOR SHARING THE LOAD -- We appreciate those readers and organizations that want to step up to the plate and share in making Brigada happen. This past week, we appreciated support from an anonymous worker in Sweden (he sends $5/mo., every month of his life!), and $20.58 from Blessed Hope, in appreciation for the Brigada Today participants that have subscribed to that service. So if you need regular long distance, and if it's all the same to you, might as well check 'em out if you don't mind. Every little bit helps! If you'd like to pitch in toward our future just click "Donate" (to use PayPal or a credit card), or just send a check payable to Team Expansion to: Team Expansion (Brigada secretary), 11327 Jefferson Trace Blvd., Louisville, KY 40291. 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. Thanks for any support you can give. No amount is to small. We're about halfway there in raising finances to cover the 2005 budget. We need about another $8,000 (of $16,576) to finish out 2005's expenses. (Just over $8,200 has come in so far this year.) If you or someone you know could write that amount out in one check, we'll stop mentioning the need for finances for the remainder of the year! :-)
  10. THE BACK PAGE: LET'S DO OUR HOMEWORK (SOCCER SCOUTING) -- Since July 15th, I've had the privilege (and responsibility) of coaching a high school boys varsity soccer team at Christian Academy of Louisville (CAL). We weren't fortunate enough to be handed any natural-born stars, but we worked hard, night after night, week after week, and finally found ourselves in the District Tournament, facing the #1 ranked team in our region.

    Now I have a question for you: If you were in my shoes, would you enter that game blind? Of course not. I'm sure you'd ask some questions. I know I did. I began doing my homework and found out that there was only one other team in the city that had managed to beat this particular team (they were like 17-1-1). So what do you suppose I did? Of course: I called the coach that beat them and asked how he managed to do it. He had nothing to lose. (The truth was, if we beat them, then his team would play our team instead! So his response was, "Heck yeah I'll tell you everything I know. I'd lots rather play you than them." :-) )

    The thought occurred to me that we often go into life situations much less prepared. Maybe we have the opportunity to present our story to a prospective supporter. Or maybe we're given the opportunity to lead a small group study or guest-instruct in a college class or chapel service. Do we invest the same amount of energy for that God-event as we do for my sports event? I hope so. Because we might find out that the prospective supporter prefers helping on projects that address the needs of kids, so we can suggest an appropriate focus on children. Or maybe we learn that the small group Bible study happened to focus *last* week on the passage we were going to present *this* week. Or that the class loves powerpoints, but falls asleep during lectures.

    So next time we're asked to come up big in a special presentation, let's do our homework. Let's find out the score in advance.

    Oh... almost forgot... we learned that the opposing team had a star striker that couldn't be stopped, once he got the ball at his feet. He led the state in scoring, averaging 2 goals per game. Our solution? Try to control the ball at midfield, hoping nobody could ever pass to him. Then we'd pray for a chance to sneak in a goal somehow. If the ball *did* ever get to him, we'd have our fastest player haunting him like butter on bread. Well the night of the big game came. We knew our roles and responsibilities. The hot-shot striker only got the ball about 5 times the whole game, and our defender came up big. The keeper made a few great saves, ... everybody pitched in, ... and when the dust settled, we had upset the 1st ranked team by a grand score of 1-0. But that's all we needed. One goal. We went on to regionals because of that game. Our opponent had lost only once throughout the entire season! 17 wins. Only 1 previous defeat. Until that night. To make it even more exciting, it was the first time in history that a team from CAL had won a birth in the regionals. Exciting stuff. And it happened, at least in part, because we asked some questions in advance. So let's do our homework. Because it's a jungle out there.

    Doug
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    COPYRIGHT -- This issue of _Brigada Today_ is Copyrighted 2005. 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. * When you quote or paraphrase material from Brigada, please include this phrase: "For a free subscription to Brigada's weekly missions publication, write brigada-today-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and/or visit Brigada on the web at www.brigada.org."
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