- CONSULTATION ABSTRACTS AVAILABLE ONLINE -- The Global Consultation on Music and Missions (GCoMM) is offering an amazing palette of choices at its July 11-15 event. Registrants will select from over 50 seminars, panels, plenary sessions, and media presentations. Experienced leaders from more than 20 organizations will present seminars within the following tracks: Foundations, Media and Related Arts, Contextualization and Case Studies, Methodology, and Overcoming Obstacles. Break-out sessions organized by geographical area and interest group will provide networking opportunities for participants. Check out the speaker information and seminar abstracts online at
http://www.gcommhome.org
Register online today!
- TAKE CHRISTIAN VIDEO GAMES TO THE MISSION FIELD WITH YOU -- Now you *can* take it with you: Breakthrough Gaming has released its third video game title: Zippy the Circle. For the PC platform, Zippy the Circle is a 3D, adventure game with 13 exciting levels, each with a different style of play. The player takes the role of Zippy the Circle who must save his sister Tina from Jagged, who has taken over his home island. Zippy learns that even though bad things happen, God is still good! Zippy the Circle is available at:
http://www.zippythecircle.com
and has a MSRP of $9.95.
- TRACK THE AVIAN FLU -- Through Google Earth it is possible track the spread of the Avian flu outbreak across the world. The information is easily downloaded. Organizations that go one step further and make placemarks for their missionaries and works will be easily be able to track the vulnerability. (Thanks Wayne!)
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/03/enhanced_avian.html
http://declanbutler.info/Flumaps1/avianflu.html
- BRING THE FACES OF THE 10/40 INTO YOUR CHURCH FOR PRAYER! -- Volume 3 of "The Waiting World" unreached people group prayer series can help your church or small group pray more effectively for the lost of the 10/40 Window. Thirteen five-minute prayer videos are featured on this volume and offer a mixture of Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim peoples. Special features on this volume are the Iraqi's, as well as a general Arab video. Produced by YWAM Strategic Frontiers, the suggested donation for a DVD of Volume 3 is $29.95 (USD), plus shipping. Order all three volumes on DVD for a suggested donation of $69.95, plus shipping. E-mail Mike at klausmeierm(at)ywamsf(dot)org [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
- TEACH ENGLISH AND REACH THE NATIONS -- Take a 4 week training course and learn how to teach English at the YWAM base in Lakeside, Montana USA. The course runs from July 24th - August 18th. For more information go to
http://www.ywammt.org or email schoolinfo(at)ywammt(dot)org. [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address, please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]You can also call 406.844.2221.
- 21 DAYS OF BREAKTHROUGH FOR NORTH KOREA -- God's been moving, promising, and doing a new thing for His work inside North Korea. NK Missions invites you to join them in praying into North Korea during the 21 Days of Breakthrough for North Korea. (April 3-23) Log on at
http://www.nkmissions.com/to download prayer videos each day from 4/3-23 to pray together.
- FREE PROJECTORS -- Equipping the Saints will provide slide and 16MM movie projectors free to ministries for the price of shipping (or pick them up at our warehouse!). Over 100 of each are available; some may need repair. Contact Equipping the Saints at
http://www.etsusa.orgemail at etsusa@rica.net or call at 540-234-6222.
- SUPPORT RAISING TRAINING -- The BodyBuilders "Personal Support Raising Boot Camp" is a two day intense training for first-time support raisers and under-funded veterans. Their goal: Getting you to 100% in 100 days!
Upcoming Boot Camp dates: Seattle, Washington – April 17-18th Atlanta, Georgia – May 11-12th Austin, Texas – June 8-9th Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – July 17-18th Register online today.
Learn more at
http://www.thebodybuilders.net or email info(at)thebodybuilders(dot)net [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
- LOVING LAS VEGAS -- Mixed in with thousands of tourists exploring Las Vegas every summer, you will notice groups of high school students joining hands in prayer inside casinos, feeding the homeless, and talking about Jesus Christ to locals and tourists all over the city. Braving high temperatures, a blazing sun and the wild party atmosphere of Las Vegas, they stand firm on one unchanging truth: God loves the people of Sin City! In order to host these students, several adults are needed to serve as summer staff for Youth With A Mission - Las Vegas from June 24 – August 12. If you would like to have a blast this summer sharing Jesus Christ to a lost city, call or e-mail Renee at 702-658- 5450 or reneeb(at)ywamlasvegas(dot)org [As a means of preventing spam for our contributors, in the preceding email address(es), please replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]
- WHAT WOULD YOU SPEND ON JUST ONE MEAL OUT? -- $10/plate, including tip, for a family of four? So how 'bout this: Consider "eating in" just one night a year instead, and send the difference to Brigada. $35 would go a long way if even 100 courageous partners took that stand. Just write in the memo line (or in the PayPal comment line), "eating in" :-) Just click on "sponsor" in the top menu (to use PayPal or a credit card), or if you prefer, 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. In any case, thanks for considering Brigada in your estate giving, your monthly church missions fund, and/or your own personal giving for this calendar year.
- THE BACKPAGE: UNSOLICITED ATTACHMENTS ARE OBSOLETE -- I've said it before and I'll say it again: the whole idea of sending unsolicited attachments is obsolete, broken, and just plain wrong. They're dead. They should be outlawed. They're no longer useful. They're old- fashioned technology that no longer works. This past week, I've been visiting one of our newest teams, a five-person team in New Orleans, seconded to a great partner of ours called CrossRoads Missions. They're working out of a fantastic center with a lot going for it... except they don't have electricity or Internet yet. (In spite of that fact, they'll host 4,000 volunteers by Sept. 1st! If you'd like to learn more, just browse to: http://www.crossroadsmissions.com ) So, without electricity and without Internet, it was pretty much like being in a third-world country, at least when it came to connecting to the Internet. I connected via my cell phone at the racing 192K downstream and about half that upstream. (Even so, that's a ton faster than connecting via a satphone from Sudan, something I had to do just a few short weeks ago.)
So perhaps you can understand my frustration when friends will unknowingly attach 1 megabyte snapshots of mooing cows, complete with audio. And then there are *enemies* (or vandals) who attach viruses, trojans, and/or worms or other kinds of malware -- without asking my permission. The mooing cow can be 25K or 2.5 meg, depending on whether or not it's compressed, and/or whether or not they compress it first. Sure I can sit there and look at the email on my pop3 server first, manually deleting the emails that look suspect. But remember that I'm sometimes using up valuable satellite minutes.
Turns out some of my friends agree. Here's an email just in from Africa, for instance: "... Now living in Africa, I have greater appreciation for the pleas I had often heard from residents in Africa requesting that the missions community reduce the size of emails, use less graphics on websites, do not send unsolicited attachments, and do not require web use. Internet and phone service here is very slow and expensive. In South Africa, for example, I have 'unlimited' web access. However, the phone company charges me by the second to use the phone line even for a local number. When traveling in other African countries it can be even worse. I once paid $5 to load the weekly update to my anti-virus software. Obviously, I am not keen to be online for unsubscribing to something I did not request. Thanks for hearing the perspective from another continent!" (Thanks for lending me a sympathetic ear, Barb!)
So here's my request: Whenever you're tempted to send an attached file to a list of people that haven't requested it, post it, instead, to a website or FTP site, then send a reference to the URL, so the recipient is in the driver's seat to decide yes or no on downloading the file. (Notice even in this step, please don't encode the URL to a hot-link word like "click here". Go ahead and give your recipient the full name of the URL, so he or she has the option of copying and pasting the URL directly into a web browser. This approach insures you're really going where you think you're going.) Maybe it's a soapbox, but in this day of digital-picture-bloat, it's the only way we're going to keep our sanity. Oh.. and please be careful out there: It's a jungle out there (and jungles sometimes have narrow Internet pipes).
- CLOSING STUFF -- SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION -- Important! Please don't just hit "reply". Subscriptions are automated. First, you need to determine the mailing source of your individual copy of Brigada Today. We're now sending them from 2 sources. To find out, just look at the "From:" address of your last edition. The domain will tell the tale. Here's how to do it:
If your Brigadas come via YahooGroups: To unsubscribe, write to brigada-today-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com To subscribe, write to brigada-today-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
If your Brigadas come via GoogleGroups: To unsubscribe, write to brigada-today-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com To subscribe, write to brigada-today-subscribe@googlegroups.com
To change your address, you must unsubscribe using your old address then subscribe anew using your new service. If you are receiving this email via some "alias" that you'd like to unsubscribe, try putting that alias email address in the "From:" box of your email client temporarily, then send the unsubscribe message (mentioned above). It'll probably "spoof" the server into unsubscribing that old address. Then just change your "From:" box back to your new address.
TO SUBMIT AN ITEM -- We love to feature your news & resources! To find out how, read our submission guidelines on the web at: http://www.brigada.org/submissions.html
TO LEARN MORE -- Interested in learning more about Brigada? Read our site at: http://www.brigada.org and you'll learn the who, what, when, why and where of Brigada. By the way, we no longer provide server-sent files via email-activated commands. Just read all about us on the web!
NEED SUBSCRIPTION HELP? -- If you're a sponsor, you can now write to help(at)brigada(dot)org [replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .] and get a real human response. For information about becoming a sponsor, log on at: http://www.brigada.org and click on "Sponsor" in the top line menu. Note that due to the large number of subscribers (literally thousands) only sponsors get human help.
DISCLAIMER -- We can't screen 'em all. Please forgive us if a particular site contains offensive information -- or no information at all! We *try* to visit them in advance, but often write "on the road" so we simply *can't* preview everything.
PLEASE DON'T SUBSCRIBE US TO YOUR LIST -- Sorry -- nothing personal -- but we're already deluged. We'll eventually teach our spam filter to just delete it anyway, but in the meantime, we'll have a sad face because of the volume of mass mailings we receive. :-(
WARNING ABOUT FORWARDING EMAILS -- Just say no! :-) Read our thoughts about forwarding emails at http://www.brigada.org/articles/opc.html
WHY DO WE SAY, "[replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .]"? -- More and more shady marketing types ("spammers" and "scammers") are using computerized searches to harvest email addresses from off the web without asking permission of the owner. We use this "plain English" addressing syntax to avert automated harvesting for our contributors.
PRIVACY INFORMATION -- We will never give your information to anybody. We won't market you, won't hassle you, and won't ever bother you. You won't be signed up for mailings you didn't request. Your address is safe and your future is secure. Life is good. :-)
COPYRIGHT -- This issue of _Brigada Today_ is Copyrighted 2006. 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@googlegroups.com and/or visit Brigada on the web at www.brigada.org."
Brigada Website: WebServant@brigada.org
For sponsors only: Brigada Customer Service Manager: Penny Lucas, help@brigada.org
