Is everything wasted?

By admin in Uncategorized on April 15, 2021

I remember when I was exploring and discovering possibilities in 2018 to put a website together, my initial intention was to find a way to help people interact over the difficulty of distance. We had experienced volunteers working over a wide range of locations from just down the street, to the other side of town to the other end of the state and even a state or two over.

Having volunteers in small numbers spread out like that creates a challenge to help maintain a sense of connection and to keep in touch with others. So to do it I knew we needed funds that we didn’t have so I was able to do a fundraiser and raise $1000,00 dollars which gave the ability to start up and acquire all the material necessary to launch a platform.

After over a year of trying to get people to sign up and learn to use it, it was difficult. It just became another activity among all the other social networks people used that if it didn’t become a daily part of their lives they don’t remember to log in and check it.

It is like Facebook, creating a profile, sending friend requests, posting in your profile, allowing for interaction. Not only that but it allows for collaborative community work, so people can delegate tasks and projects to see what has been done and how much percentage is lacking. Unfortunately people just aren’t used to that kind of stuff quite yet and never got to put to use. Was all my effort and time and financial resources wasted that was put into this site?

When the pandemic hit we had to put a stop to everything we were doing actively so it led time to pray and wait on the Lord. It led to time to talk and think together. We talked about how we felt the need for a school and just didn’t see how we could do it. Then the ideas started to flow…

The platform also allows creating on-line courses. We just had to organize everything to flow in a harmonious and simple way.

Then gave birth to our first 6 week online course, Escola ATOS – School of ACTS (name of our nonprofit here in Brazil). Now for the first time our platform was going to actually be used for some greater purpose, we went from 20 people signed up on our platform to over 100 people subscribed users that first year (2020).

When we started I didn’t think we would have anyone beyond our regions that already knew about Curumim Action. But we launched it on several social networks and we had over 70 people signed up as I had previously mentioned in my last update, you can read more about it by going here!

https://thirdwaveoutreach.org/2021/02/04/2020-in-review/

But I wanted to share something that happened to help us see the work God is doing and how we can partner better in prayer and know that your support to this ministry is reaping many great benefits!

The whole e-school was a highlight for us as we saw so many people from different places and over 800 kids reached, but the team from São Paulo brought about unexpected results. What I thought would only happen in the future actually happened last year. People getting connected and finding others that have the same heart for missions and tribal people.

3 or 4 girls got connected and got to know each other better from different churches, together they got to know a Indigenous young woman doing seminary and in her last year, they went to visit her. As things developed for the team and they visited a tribe 3 hours away from the city of São Paulo (this is over 1500 km from where we live!) and the chief permitted them to go and distribute items for childrens day, this Indigenous woman also wanted to go and visit this tribe and was able to. She was also invited to share in a Baptist church her testimony of how she didn’t know portugues when she started seminary but learned it and was finally graduating that year. She shared during her time doing the school how she and her family were greatly persecuted for the gospels sake and had to run and hide to not be killed.

She was studying in a seminary called Missão Tikuna, this seminary is teaching many indigenous people from different tribes. Some of the staff and faculty members also participated and greatly enjoyed the fellowship and from our e-school.

We pray that we can continue to be a blessing and support for the reaching of tribes and unreached tribes in Brazil and across the world as we continue to work tirelessly and with great effort to build an online community and presence that connects the right people. Thank you for praying and supporting us, and Third Wave Outreach (Associação Apoio às Três Ondas) to assist reaching all the tribes for Him!

So no, everything we have done and are doing is not wasted, just learning blocks for something better.

Denis for the TWO Team (ATOS equipe)