Praise: Response Exceeds Expectations — Over 350 aspiring missionaries completed the survey we conducted in November and December. The responses and feedback have been extremely helpful to gauge the need and interest for a long-term mission website. We were also pleasantly surprised to have over 200 respondents sign up to receive Propel!

Praise: Volunteers Man Display at Mission Connexion Northwest — We broke into new territory this past weekend (Jan. 18 -19th) when for the first time ever, the M-DAT display was entirely setup, manned, and disassembled by volunteers. Thanks Nick and Kari! Nick reported: “I found that people really appreciate the work that you guys do. I expected that, but it was really encouraging to actually hear it from people. God is really using M-DAT, and I think that is really cool.”

Prayer: Volunteer Coordinator and Website Project Manager — Please pray for God to provide a volunteer volunteer coordinator. This person would help us tap into people who desire to invest a portion of their time to help accomplish our ministry vision. We are also still praying for a website project manager to join our team — an addition that would greatly expand our capacity to serve.

News: Mission Book Giveaway — In February, March and April we will be giving away ten short term mission books each month. Rules and details will be published in the next few weeks on ShortTermMissions.com.

Prayer: Video Gear — As we move forward with plans for the website for future missionaries, we have identified the need for basic video equipment and editing software. Later this Spring we’ll be letting folks know about the need and asking them to give to help meet the need.

Prayer: Spring Board Retreat — Coming up March 13th-16th our board meets for their annual retreat.

• Praise: ShortTermMissions.com buzzed with activity over the last few months as people looked for summer opportunities. One website visitor wrote:

“Yes, I found a short term mission trip through your site (praise the Lord!).  I’ll be going with Eastern European Outreach to Kiev in June 2007.”
— Steve

We are encouraged to see God working through the website! Watch for more user testimonies in the near future.

• Praise: As our staff prepared some reports for our annual board retreat we rejoiced at seeing a solid, steady annual growth rate of 15-20% since M-DAT’s birth seven years ago across all areas of the ministry (service reach, man hours, funding). Praise the Lord for His provision!

• Pray: This year we hope to expand further into helping believers who are considering becoming a full time missionary. To that end we have a number of additions slated for a website we have in development (currently called PreparingToGo.com). Pray that we would be able to pull off these additions in our already tight work schedule! (Keep on praying for a few more people to join our team!)

Urbana proved more successful than we imagined! We met our goal in publicizing ShortTermMissions.com, and sending organizations are already signing up for the service as a result of networking at the conference. Recruiting potential exceeded our vague expectations as well. Mingling with the attendees at Urbana left us more convinced than ever of the need for missions information to be readily available on the internet. Continue to pray for staffing needs here at M-DAT. With a few more full-time people, some of these online information needs could be taken care of, and more people would be more quickly off to the field, to the unreached.