Origin of Keep UP
The idea for Keep UP came from a real-world situation where I thought of it as a solution for my father. He is a missionary to Central Asia and was in Turkey for surgery when COVID hit which prevented him from returning to Kyrgyzstan. He stayed in Turkey as long as possible hoping that the borders would reopen, but eventually had to return to the States.
Wanting to make the best of the situation, my dad decided to visit his supporting churches and give them an in-person update. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any prayer cards with him and had to buy more. Other than the time and money that this took, he also didn’t know how many prayer cards he should print. With Covid-19 complications, his limited ability to travel (because of his injury and subsequent surgery), and not knowing when the borders would open for them to return to Central Asia; it was just impossible to say how many churches he would be able to visit.
As my father and I were talking about these prayer card issues, he mentioned that he would like to actually send prayer cards to people and wished there were a better way to update those that were praying for him and supporting him. He stressed that the better we keep folks updated the better they can pray; this would mean photos and real-time updates with praises and prayer requests. Then I told him: “Do you know what you need? A digital prayer card. An app that has all of your information, that anyone who wants to pray for you can just download, and that will always be up-to-date”.
That, and many subsequent conversations, eventually led to the creation of the app "Keep UP". Keep UP is free to download on both the Google Play store and the Apple app store, and allows Christians to save their personally chosen missionaries to their collection. This enables them to automatically get notifications whenever the missionary posts an update, new prayer request, or prayer letter. Obviously, this benefits the Christian by allowing them to stay more informed and pray for specifics as opposed to a general "Bless our missionaries" prayer. On the flip side, it also benefits the missionaries who upload their information to the app as they enjoy greater prayer coverage and an easy to update "digital prayer card".
