I’m always excited when I meet others who have a passion for short-term missions.  No doubt, it’s a life-changing experience, and most often, that change begins in the heart.  That’s why I’m so excited about this post!

(more…)

Leaving for the mission field with little preparation is like showing up to a 5 year old’s birthday party with just a card.  The thought was nice but don’t plan on being chosen to play  Pin-The-Tail- On-The- Donkey.

For short term mission trips, GearUP (the second phase of MissionMakr) is an indispensable tool to help you prepare the heads, hands and hearts of those being sent.  Come on, you’re going to have some sort of training, right?  Why not take YOUR training and put it (and a bunch of other cool  stuff) where the people going on the trip can get to it quickly and easily?

(more…)

Drum roll, please…

We’ve just added three new awesome colors for your phases! The new members are Earth, Sky and Desert. Now you can give some of your phases a cool earthy look.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, inside every phase you can click on the Do Stuff button and change the color of your phase. You can select from our current colorful library of 15 colors. So in case you don’t really care for the default colors of Launch, GearUP, GO! and Tell, you can easily change them to fit your trip better and make it that much more awesome!

Give some of these colors a try and if you have suggestions for any cool color, let us know. Have fun!

If you’ve had the chance to try out MissionMakr and use our cool Invite Widget you might have been wondering … who have I sent invitations to? After sending many invitations it’s hard to remember who got one and on top of all that, the Invite Widget didn’t keep track for you.

Well, now it does! You can view a list of all your awesome invitations by clicking on the “View My Invites” link inside the widget. Once you click the link, you’ll be taken to a page where you’ll see all the invitations you’ve sent and even if they’ve accepted, declined or are just ignoring you. You can even print the page and it won’t come out of your printer looking like some abstract piece of art! Pretty cool.

GearUP is MissionMakr's second phase for people going to the mission field.

Like Launch, GearUP allows you to create custom pages and add content.  But while Launch focuses on promoting missions, communicating your short-term trip and signing people up, GearUP focuses on preparing the heads, hands and hearts of those who are going to the mission field.

GearUP is secure and password protected for those who have moved from being a Pending MissionMembr to an Active MissionMembr.

In addition to the standard widgets, GearUP has widgets specifically designed to help you build a cohesive team:

• Language Widget – displays common words and phrases for the country of origin (we’re beginning with Spanish)
• Devotion Widget – allows a member of the Mission Team to create one or multiple devotions and send to all MissionMembrs immediately or based on a calendar.
• Verse of the Day Widget – Displays a new Bible verse focused on missions (going, sending, serving) from different translations each day.

Other features of GearUP

Add Mission Supporters (we call them MissionSupportrs) – Each Active MissionMembr has the ability to invite an unlimited number of people to follow the trip.  The MissionMembr types in an email address.  The MissionSupportr receives an email inviting him/her to follow the trip once it leaves.

As the Mission Team logs blog posts in the GO! phase of MissionMakr.com, MissionSupportrs will receive a notification that new information is available.  They log in to MissionMakr.com and are taken to the GO! page where they can *read the blog, view the pictures or watch the video. (*assumes users from the field can access the internet).

SMS Messaging – GearUP allows members of the Mission Team (based on roles assigned) to send one-way SMS Messages at no cost to your church or organization.  Standard text message rates apply for the receiver.  SMS is a highly requested feature that is new to this version.

MissionTrackr – this is an incredible feature!  It allows the Mission Team to add items — passport, trainings, forms, etc. — that need to be tracked and accounted for (turned in etc. by a certain date).  You set up the items and dates and each time the time is turned in and accounted for my MissionMembr, it provides notification.

Below is the input screen that the Mission Team sees when setting up the items, dates and information in MissionTrackr.

MissionTrackr

Wall and Private Messaging (social networking that builds a cohesive team) – Until now, you’ve had to rely on FaceBook® or other social networking sites to build a cohesive team.  You can now do the very same thing inside MissionMakr.com.  For Active MissionMembrs and Mission Team Membrs, they can send “Wall” messages as well as Private Messages.

GearUP … it’s the powerful second phase of MissionMakr.com