Community Highlights Report Spring 2009
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Tres Dias Communities Reporting
Birmingham
Tres Dias Community Announcement
God
has blessed us with a donation of land having a beautiful waterfall on
it. On December 30, 2008, we (BTD) became the owners of this land located
near Argo. God has a plan for this land that will be revealed in time,
but clearly God has his hand on our community as He pours out his blessings on
us.
Coastal
Georgia
The
Coastal Georgia Tres Dias Community is in the foundational stages of beginning
the Coastal Georgia Vida Nueva Community. The tentative dates for the first
young men’s and ladies’ weekends will be in February 2010. There will be
two training sessions for these weekends to be held in July 2009.
Long
Island TD
Our Community holds a Regular “Night of Prayer”. We
also have Palanca/Agape Bread making parties to encourage the community to get
involved in palanca and to build community.
Duck Game (baseball outing) open to surrounding communities, to promote exchange with other communities. In addition we hold an Annual Tres Dias picnic in August to promote a time of family. This event is especially used to invite people we are considering to go on weekends.
We send out post cards quarterly to better communicate with our community and reminders of our meetings. We also have an e-mail prayer chain. We are blessed to have a Communication Director, Debbie DeCillis who designed our newsletter and runs our prayer chain.
Our attendance was up at secuelas until November, and then because of bad weather and the Holiday’s, attendance went down drastically. We use the prayer chain before weekends to remind the community of times and ways they can serve as palanca. We have been getting much better turn outs for palanca help on the weekends manitias and closings have been better attended than in the recent past. Unfortunately this only reaches those within our community that receive e-mails. We are trying to set up liaisons in each church that is represented in our community and have a phone prayer chain set up also. This has been more difficult to foster participation.
We are in the process of revamping our Tres Dias School aka Tres Dias boot camp. To be held: April 18, 2009 at First Baptist Church of Babylon, 300 West Main Street, Babylon, NY 11702; 3:00pm cover dish dinner provided with Secuela to follow at 7:30 pm. Our Elections are scheduled for February 21, 2009 at the Secuela.
A member of Secretariat is voted in for a 2 year term not serving more than 6 years in a row.
We are blessed to have a Communication Director, Debbie DeCillis who designed our newsletter and runs our prayer chain.
Our attendance was up at Secuela’s until November, and then because of bad weather and the Holiday’s, attendance went down drastically. We use the prayer chain before weekends to remind the community of times and ways they can serve as palanca. We have been getting much better turn outs for palanca help on the weekends manitias and closings have been better attended than in the recent past. Unfortunately this only reaches those within our community that receive e-mails. We are trying to set up liaisons in each church that is represented in our community and have a phone prayer chain set up also. This has been more difficult to foster participation.
Communication in our community had broken down. We implemented these changes in the last year and have seen some positive results but it’s too soon to know if the changes are lasting. We are hoping to stir up our community, reach out to those that we lost contact with and encourage the new Pescadores to get involved. Our Boot camp is scheduled for right after the last weekend. Please keep us in your prayers.
Montana TD
Tres
Dias Montana is alive as well. We have two sets of weekends yearly, one
in the fall, and one in the late winter. We are in the middle of the team
meeting process for the coming weekends planned for March. We would
expect to have about thirty men and thirty women candidates at each weekend
with plenty of snow piled up all around the activities. In cooperation
with Big Sky Tres Dias east of the mountains, we are helping to launch a new
community in southern Idaho. This new community is now meeting together
to form a community with their bylaws and secretariat. They hope to have
an early summer set of weekends in ’09. Please pray for this new
community and God’s work to be done there. The two communities here in
Montana is to fill in some of the team spots to help out as needed, and any
other Tres Dias folks are certainly welcome and encouraged to work on these
teams. Our monthly Sequelas are attended by 20-40 people and are a
blessing. Our secretariat meets monthly and we have a tight group of
dedicated servants. Praise God for all He does – Amen!
Northern Illinois
Northern
Illinois Tres Dias is the sponsor for an Emerging Community in
Guayaquil, Ecuador. We are planning, supporting,
and sending servants for their upcoming weekends. To God be the glory. We
are celebrating the upcoming Men's weekend scheduled for January 29-February 1,
and the Women's weekends scheduled for February 5-8.
We Offer a Meditation for Reunion which is a small
book of 52 meditations written to
revisit the dynamics from the Weekend. It is designed to ignite
discussion and remind us of the amazing grace that makes each Weekend
so special! Each meditation is designed to help reexamine specifics
from the "Know Thyself Meditation" to the "Environment
Rollo" to the
"Closing."
Currently there are 201 reunion groups using Meditations for Reunion
in many of the Fourth Day Communities, and the number is growing each
day. Some give the book as Palanca, some communities hand it out right
after the Reunion Rollo, others put it in the Fourth Day packet with
the photograph, and some give it to the candidates at the closing when
the crosses are presented.
You can read Meditations for Reunion on line.
Click http://emergingfaithcommunities.blogspot.com.
Hard copies are given free as palanca to anyone who requests one from
EMCaputo@aol.com.
Northern New Jersey
Tres Dias of Northern New Jersey had a facility that the
community used for 16 years. The Emmaus House in Perth Amboy closed
December 31, 2008. The secretariat developed a "search"
committee to locate facilities to host Tres Dias Of Northern NJ weekends. The
committee members reached out to about 25 retreat centers.
Two locations have been located and TDNJ recently had a winter weekend for Men with 21 new Pescadores .A women's weekend with 13 new female Pescadoress. Praise God.
An essential training was held before a Secuela in November 2008. 35 Pescadores attended the training.
TDNJ has Secuelas every month except July and Aug.
South New Jersey Tres Dias is aligning a steering committee to possibly create a New Tres Dias Community. We hope to have future discussion on this at our Secretariat Meetings.
Orange County (emerging community)
We have successfully put on six weekends. We are still a small community
but we have been able to bless a number of people in our area and look forward
to continuing. We were blessed in November by having three ladies from
our sponsoring community (Central Arizona Tres Dias) come and participate in
our ladies' weekend. We have also had contacts from the Korean Tres Dias
community in Los Angeles, with one woman working two of our weekends. It
was a great time sharing ideas, talking about similarities and differences
between the communities, and just sharing the blessing that is the Tres Dias
experience. Our Secretariat is looking forward to our first elections in
the Spring of 2009. We look forward to upcoming weekends in March and
October of 2009 and pray that God will continue to use us to bless the Orange
County area.
Rocky Mt TD
West
Rocky Mountain Tres Dias West is growing and God is Blessing the efforts of our
humble beginnings. As we approach our # 8 weekends we have over 200
men and women in our community. The Holy Spirit has been faithful to
anoint every weekend in a very special way.
We will be holding our team meetings for # 8, starting 02/07/09. Our first meeting always includes Essentials Training. The Essentials Training will be done by John and Joan Green. John is a member of the Tres Dias International Secretariat and he and his wife Joan are both certified for teaching Essentials and "Train the Trainer".
As a community we are very humbled and thankful to the many men and women from out of state that gave of their time, resources and talents, to help us get our community off to a good start. We are excited to see what the Lord has planned for us in the future. Our upcoming men’s weekend # 8 will be 3/26/09 thru 3/29/09 and our women’s weekend will be 4/2/09 thru 4/5/09. We hold elections every year in December and offset key positions on our secretariat, so that we don't end up with an entirely new secretariat after each election. All key secretariat positions are 2 year terms with the exception of the Spiritual Advisor to the Secretariat, which is a one year term. We have no term limits.
TRINITY VALLEY
Trinity Valley TD is excited about the upcoming set of weekends and looking
forward to serving the candidates. TVTD #11 will be the last weekend in March
and first weekend in April.
Trinity Valley continues to support the new Community in Lima, Peru and
encourage all interested to come and serve on a weekend in either April or
October. You will be tremendously blessed and an encouragement to this new
Community. Please contact Richard Thornhill for more information: email:
richone07@gmail.com or cellular: 1-214-316-3660.
UK- London and Southeast England
Paul Weis came to our community 5 April 2008 to conduct Essentials Training. We
have subsequently given a further Essentials Training Session in October 2008.
For the two forthcoming men’s and women’s weekends in 2009, we are building in
an Essentials overview as part of the training days so that all team members
are fully conversant with the Essentials.
Please pray that the men’s No. 8 will get off the ground. We have had two failed attempts over the last two years. Hence the women’s weekend will be No. 12, so there’s some catching up to do. The LR is Peter Banks, who has also taken on the role of International Palanca person on the Secretariat. His scripture: Be Still and Know That I Am God. The team have been carried forward from the cancelled weekend last year. The first training day will be 17 January followed by the second on 14 February in readiness for the weekend to be held 19 – 22 March 2009.
We welcome Corinne Herrick as our new President and express our gratitude to our former President Libby Epps.
Vermont TD
We held an Essentials training last fall. It was very beneficial
and we wish that we had a greater attendance. We plan to hold
training again in August 2009. In an effort to better our community we
will make attendance mandatory for all team members.
We are happy to report New Pescadores from November 2008; 13 men
and16 women.
Our sequelas are held at various churches throughout the State on
the third Saturday of every month. Attendance is approximately 20 to 25. We
have noticed larger attendance just after a weekend. We are asking that the
sponsors bring their new Pescadore to three secuelas following the weekends.
Our secuelas are always good and we are hoping for continued growth and better
participation in the future.
We are currently helping Ottawa, Canada and (Lake George, Glen Falls), New York
to start their new communities. We are not yet large enough to set up another
community in Vermont.