by David Armstrong

At the annual M-DAT Board Retreat this Spring, the staff and Board made some significant changes in M-DAT’s leadership roles to better facilitate continuing growth in our services and better match our team member’s skills and gifts with needs in the office.

Some key responsibilities were shuffled and the organization is moving to a three person leadership team composed of an Executive Director, a Director of Program Services and a Director of Operations.

Peter Armstrong, who has ably led M-DAT for its first 10 years, has assumed the role of Program Services Director to focus his energies and skills on the ongoing development of our web based missions training and preparation services.

The legal, financial and overall administrative tasks for the organization will now be covered by the Director of Operations. David Armstrong has moved into that role. Amanda Snodgrass has assumed the position of ShortTermMissions.com Service Manager and will be helping the many organizations who use ShortTermMissions.com to make known the opportunities they offer.

And lastly, we are now looking for a new Executive Director. Pray for our Board as they define the unique job description for this position and then find and interview candidates. We would appreciate your prayers as we wait on God to provide the right person for the new role. Also pray for the team as a whole as we adjust to these transitions.

As always we remain committed to helping people take their next step in missions involvement.

Do you think you have what it takes to mentor aspiring missionaries? Jeff Goins is putting some of his time and energy into matching people who want to mentor with people who want to help missionaries tell their stories in compelling ways. If you believe you can help writers, photographers, graphic designers and so forth excel at their craft in order to bring the stories of God’s faithfulness on the mission field back home, learn more by going to Goins’ Pilgrimage of the Heart blog.

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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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.

by Paul Nielsen

Wendy Andrews is the national co-leader of 24-7 Prayer USA. She hails from Madison, Wisconsin, where for three years she served as the ministry assistant to a pastor at Mad City Church. Her role there was to coordinate a discipleship training community. Then, early in 2005, God supernaturally pulled Wendy into this wildfire movement, to resource and catalyze prayer all across the USA. In the summer of 2005, Wendy uprooted and relocated to Kansas City. She lives the values of 24-7 and carries a deep burden for Asia.

Propel: Is prayer for missions — the completion of the Great Commission, for all nations to worship God — a regular part of the menu at 24-7 Prayer?

Wendy: Yes, prayer for mission is absolutely core to the DNA of who we are at 24-7 Prayer! We like to say prayer and mission — or intimacy and involvement — are like two legs on a body: you can’t walk anywhere without both. We want to live lives that are open and desiring to be the answer to our very own prayers, and I believe that something God is doing in the Church right now, that I see particularly within the younger generation, is bringing about a marriage of prayer and mission.

Propel: Do you have any stories of how your intercession bore fruit?

Wendy: For years, I have had a deep, personal burden for and love of the Chinese people. In the last four years, I have begun to learn to pray for the Chinese, and I’ve seen God open up insight and understanding to me along the way as to how I can effectively pray. Also, in the past four years, God has given me a particular heart for women. I feel an intercessory, stand-in-the-gap kind of calling to oppressed and abused women, and I’ve been particularly captured by the horrible reality of women and children caught in human trafficking. I’ve spent a good bit of time in prayer over this, asking God for His purposes to be accomplished with women, and asking that we would see His Genesis 1 design of “male and female, made [equally] in the image of God” take root in our families, churches, cities, and nations. In May of 2007, God brought an opportunity my way that was a direct answer to prayers I’ve prayed for both China and for women:  Read the rest of the story in this 24-7 Prayer article (In the photo below, Wendy and her friend Juliana Au cook Chinese food for Chinese victims of human trafficking.).

I’ve been involved with the Coalition Against Human Trafficking here in Kansas City and Western Missouri for the past 18 months, along with the girl I called Mandy in the story above and now with another dear friend as well. Many in our church community (the Kansas City Boiler Room) and in the Church of Kansas City have prayed concertedly over these past few years about human trafficking in particular. Last month, we saw another amazing answer to prayer take place in our city! Law enforcement and FBI officials have started an effort called Operation Guardian Angel, a unique undercover law enforcement investigation targeting the demand for child prostitutes in the Kansas City area. As a result of this investigation, a total of seven defendants have been charged within the past month in the nation’s first-ever federal prosecution of the alleged customers of child prostitution under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Read the press release if you’re interested in more details. This is incredible, and it’s happening in our city, we believe, because of all the prayer being prayed that is targeting this issue of trafficking!

Propel: Do you have any tips on how to pray for missions or missionaries? Do you have guidelines you could share for missions directed intercession?

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