June 2024 Update

By admin in Uncategorized on July 1, 2024

Third Wave Outreach, INC

In 2018, I remembered waking up one morning thinking, “What am I doing?!” I had no job, and we had nothing. A few days later, I woke up with this phrase: “For such a time as this.”

Third Wave Outreach INC. was born that year. We have reached places we never dreamed of or set foot through.

Let me share what Third Wave Outreach did last year and what it is doing this year.

Last year, we helped host a campaign for an Indigenous Pastor, our dear friend, Pr. Ricardo Poquivique, to raise money for a car for the ministry to the tribes in the northeast of Brazil. We were able to channel $1600.00 from his contacts through our organization, giving him 100% of the funds to help acquire a vehicle for the ministry. Please pray for him as he and his family have a beautiful ministry in the Northeast. He is one of our Online Teachers and speakers. We are grateful for his life and ministry and to be able to partner with him. You can check out more about his ministry here: Ricardo Poquiviqui Campaign. 

This year, we saw tremendous growth with the Online Ministry. A new team started in Mato Grosso (a 36-hour bus ride from Imperatriz, our home base) for the first time. I met with the coordinator; she took our online course last year. We now encourage our volunteers to take Module 2, which helps prepare them for leading and organizing a team. I wish to be with them on this incredible journey in person.

The team in the state of Pará did a mini–online course in April, and as I watched from the group online, I saw them as they shared different things they were learning. They started getting the online certificates individually and would share them in the WhatsApp Group. The certificates are automatically generated upon conclusion, with their name, the date they started, and the date they finished on the website. I built it so they have to pass the questions through their answers to the quizzes to receive their certificate. I am excited to visit them on our 10-day trip to Brazil to work with them.

After concluding their online course, they organized a fundraiser to take the team to visit a tribe. They acquired 40 children’s Bibles and distributed them to the children! (A kid with a Children’s Bible, picture on the right)

I meet weekly with the team online to help them as I mentor and coach them. In one of our meetings, they had one volunteer share some unique opportunities God opened up.

In another meeting online, we met with a volunteer experiencing difficulty with the platform on the website and offered to help make it work easier and better.

Third Wave Outreach exists to teach and train believers from different denominations to take the Gospel to the Indigenous communities in their proximities as an interdenominational and collaborative ministry.

If you would like to be updated about what Third Wave Outreach is doing, then sign up for our updates!

 

Leadership Training

By admin in Uncategorized on April 15, 2021

For a long time working with the volunteer ministry, mobilizing teams to do children ministry Curumim Action has been a lot of work and fun. With over 10 years of experience we have learned a lot and during this time we have developed our 22 values that define who we are.

But there has been a challenge in recruiting and deploying new leaders. Usually after 3 years we have new leaders due to many move on in life with busy work, school or family schedules. The thing that keeps recurring is the need to train new coordinators. Here is an overview of how we are hoping to proceed.

In March of 2021 my dad and I held a meeting with the chief and the leadership…

Overview of the meeting with the chief and leadership for the proposal of a Transcultural Leadership Training Course:

Tuesday at 7:30 pm we, Dad and I along with the chief, vice chief and 12 to 15 others present, gathered at house of the city councillor of the county. At the chief’s request from my previous private meeting on Sunday at 2 pm.

The proposal is for us to do a weekend training to prepare future leaders of the ministry of Curumim Action, volunteers to become coordinators of teams.

We operate our Curumim ministry applying indigenous and non indigenous leadership principals, mostly indigenous. Its a challenge to teach people how the organizational structure works for tribal people as many of them don’t comprehend it just by talking or teaching verbally. Most coordinators last at the most 3 years and we constantly see changes of coordinators as many, move, get married, study or have children. The constant changes is a set back as we have to continually gather new leaders to assist.

The following program is what was proposed to them.

Friday have an opening ceremony, following the making of staffs and choosing names for the teams. Saturday morning will be Darel’s (my brother) responsibility to develop activities to teach leadership skills and the importance collaborative teamwork activities. Saturday at 4 pm we will gather in the center of the village where powwow meetings take place for major and community discussions and decisions. We will invite the community to share with the team 1) what makes a good chief, 2) the challenges and difficulties they face and how they view leadership from their culture and way of life. There is a vast difference between a chief and president where good chiefs are voice for what the people need and desire. Presidents are hierarchical structures where they decide and no ifs or buts, all must comply. Both are good in different settings.

Saturday night we will have a bondfire and have small discussion groups about what we learned, following a word from Dad in regards to missions.

Sunday morning will be other activities under Darel’s supervision. We will be doing a partnership with a military type training to apply and teach how other styles of leadership work. All with the desire to experience and show transcultural leadership settings so we can learn from each other and prepare future leaders to know how to deal with issues that may arise and how to lead in each situation.

They all expressed great interest of the prospect of having something to help their younger people participating to learn about leadership skills. Also there was raised the concern of the pandemic at hand and the loss of so many lives in recent months and how some have not taken it seriously.

It was expressed that we should go through the National Federal Indian Organization, if the coordinator approves we then will plan. The chief finalized that it would be best if we went together. We launched doing this event the 16-18th of April, but it has been decided we will see how the pandemic unfolds for better decision making so we don’t risk being contaminated and contaminating others by reducing the spread.

At this moment of this writing we still have no idea when we can do it.

Many other stuff was talked about but in the end it was a very good talk and we look forward to seeing when things get better for us to do the Transcultural Leadership Training Course.

Share with others about what we are doing as Third Wave Outreach. Pray for us as we plan and move forward on a Online Platform ministry.

You can make a donation to Third Wave Outreach:

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)

2020 in Review

By admin in Uncategorized on February 4, 2021

The year 2020 was a challenging year. Covid-19 changed the world around us and the way life is done in many unexpected ways, some bad and some good. We pray that each one of you are doing well in spite of all of it.
We praise the Lord for all that He has done and continues to do. We are excited to see what God has for this year even in the midst of the Pandemic and we are thankful for your prayers and support.

The highlight of 2020 was doing our first online school, it was a 6 week course to prepare people so they can be better equipped when working with the Indigenous children. We were unable to send teams into many of the Reservations but certain circumstances had unique situations and I hope to summarize it as condensed as possible.

It’s a 6 week e-course.

We had 10 teachers, 8 facilitators, 75 students, all of these from 14 denominations, 12 states. We even had 5 different individuals from 5 different indigenous nations participating.

We had numerous meetings with an amazing team that the Lord bought together as we discussed and prayed about different elements of how to make it work.

The facilitators had the job of taking on a group of 15 people and getting together with them weekly, they would set a time of the week that worked best for everyone in their group. Then we would have a teacher lined up to have one personal teaching time with them. All the students could participate in all of the live classes if they felt compelled to do so.

There was a total of 504 minutes of video classes, totaling 9 hours, 42 classes. Each class consisted of a text from the book of Acts, a video of approximately 12 minutes, a text to read afterwards and a small quiz. Each week they would watch 4 classes, all this is done at their own and pace. A format similar to MOOC – Massive Online Open Courses. Once a week there was a testimony for them to watch which was optional, done by missionaries that had many years of experience on the field, American, Brazilian and Indian missionaries all bringing a word of encouragement.

6 locations were reached and over 850 kids were touched. Many places we were unable to send in teams due to COVID restrictions.

Next post I will share in detail about the different things that happened with the different teams!

We had a “graduation” or a final meeting together to report all that was done, all the teachers spoke, some students shared with us how they learned and appreciated what they learned. We finished with communion, each one came prepared to participate. Roughly 30 concluded the requirements and went all the way to the end!