For this issue’s interview, we bring you a video from PreparingToGo.com. We’ve posted quite a few videos interviews to PreparingToGo.com this year. In the video below the young aspiring missionaries talk about their journey toward cross-cultural service. Links to three other brief videos with the couple are below.

Watch more videos from our conversation with the Olanders:
How did you raise support?
How to choose a mission agency
Dating and missions

Urbana 09, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s 22nd Student Missions Conference, will address some of the most pressing global issues presently faced by missions practitioners around the world. More than 20,000 people, from every state and many nations, are expected to attend Urbana 09, December 27–31, 2009, in St. Louis. Each day at Urbana 09 the program will focus on a different issue and the challenges it presents.

The four issues in focus are:

Movement of Peoples
Millions of people are being dramatically affected by immigration, migration, and human trafficking. In the midst of great human suffering, there are opportunities for people to come to know Christ, who was Himself a refugee and understands their sufferings. Urbana will provide an introduction to the different types of people movement around the world, both voluntary and involuntary, and will create the case for why it’s important for both missions practitioners and those who support them to understand this issue.

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On Saturday November 21^st, players will tee off from all over the United States to play nine holes of golf on a Nintendo Wii™ and help the next generation get involved in missions. In addition to three main event locations (Siloam Springs, AR; Orlando, FL; Grand Island, NE), people will play along from their living rooms. We invite Propel readers to be a part of this unique event.

Will you help M-DAT’s ministry by forming a “home team?” Organize a team of friends, co-workers, or members of your church group to play at your home (or someone else’s home if you don’t have a Wii™). Another option is to make it a mother/daughter or father/son activity.

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Prayer: M-DAT Participating in Urbana 09 — Our team is getting ready to head to St. Louis at the end of December for Urbana 09—the largest student missions conference in the United States. If you are attending, look for us in the exhibit hall. Paul Nielsen has designed a new display (very exciting!) and is now working on designing the resource cards we will be handing out. Please remember him in prayer and also begin to pray that God would put us in contact with students we can encourage in their missions involvement, as well as some who will have a vision for using the internet as a tool for helping mobilize their generation and join our staff.

Prayer: Wii™ Golf Tournament Nov. 21st — M-DAT’s Wii™ Golf Tournament is just around the corner. Please pray for good participation and smooth working of the technology during the event.

Praise: Web Design Progress — We are happy to have visible progress on the AskaMissionary.com redesign and the design work for PreparingToGo.com. The logo design for both websites is complete! Take a look. They are posted on the media board here: http://www.causes.com/mdat.

News: M-DAT Leads Social Media Workshop at FSTML — Peter Armstrong, M-DAT’s executive director, twice led a workshop titled “Using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube Effectively in Short-Term Missions” at the Fellowship of Short-term Mission Leaders conference. The workshop was done via video conference. The workshop was well attended and we received positive feedback on the content presented.

It is hard to miss Joshua Project’s “Unreached of the Day” widgets on websites and Facebook profiles. But you are likely unaware there is a an email version of these. Fuel your prayer for the unreached by getting these daily or weekly prayer (your choice) reminders in your inbox. The email consists of a profile of a different unreached people group each day—complete with picture, map, and prayer ideas.

A “Double the Prayer Challenge” is underway to increase how many people receive these daily reminders to pray for the unreached to over a thousand. For more information about the challenge and how to subscribe to the “Unreached of the Day” emails go to http://prayfortheunreached.com.