SCHOOLS RUN AT THIS LOCATION

Children at Risk ( CNH/EDN 251 )

A course designed for those who want to become advocates for children and work to see lasting change in their lives. The focus is on children who have been placed at risk because of factors such as war, disease, poverty, exploitation, abandonment, disability, and other forms of injustice. Students are given an overview of the needs of at risk children as well insight concerning child development. An emphasis is made on intervention and working towards advocacy for children. More specific instruction is provided on issues relating to street children, HIV/AIDS, sexual abuse, and attachment disorder, depending on the location of the school and the needs of children in that setting.

Discipleship Training School (DTS) ( DSP 211 )

This school is an intensive Christian discipleship course beginning with an 11 or 12-week lecture/teaching phase followed by an 8-12 week practical field assignment. It is a prerequisite for all other courses in the University of the Nations, and also serves to orient and prepare all new Youth With A Mission (YWAM) staff. The DTS is designed to encourage students in personal character development, cultivating their relationship with God and identifying their unique gifts and callings. Cross-cultural exposure and global awareness are special emphases throughout the course, preparing the students to evangelize and disciple current and future generations, answering the call to ""Go into all the world and teach (make disciples of) all nations."" (Matthew 28:19). The curriculum is in the following six major categories: God's nature and character; God's intention for individuals, peoples and nations; seeing all of life from God's perspective; redemption, sin, and the Cross; God's family - the Church; God's world - His call and commission; the ministries of YWAM.Focused DTS's: In some locations the DTS is offered with a particular focus, such as the Crossroads DTS, Operation Year DTS, University DTS, Sports DTS, Arts DTS, etc.Credit will be given for this course with satisfactory completion of DSP 212.

Documentary Filmmaking Seminar ( CMC 173 )

This seminar introduces participants to the heart behind godly documentary films and their potential uses in community outreach and missions. Students will learn a few concepts and skills needed in research, camerawork, interviewing and editing in order to put together meaningful, and potentially transformational documentaries. The seminar will also look at principles of intercession, and listening prayer to find and tell stories appropriate in each situation.

Introduction to Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Studies ( APL 231 )

THE SCHOOL EQUIPS MISSIONARIES WITH LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL LEARNING TOOLS FOR LEARNING NON-WESTERN LANGUAGES. IT HAS DIRECT IMPACT EQUIPPING THOSE WHO FOCUS THE NEEDS OF UNREACHED PEOPLE-GROUPS. IT’S THE FIRST STEP ON THE PREPARATION FOR THE ONES STARTING WITH BIBLE TRANSLATION, OR TRANSLATION OF BIBLE STORIES, OR JUST WORKING WITH GENERAL EVANGELIZATION, OR MERCY MINISTRIES AMONG UNREACHED GROUPS. TO HELP THE MISSIONARY IN THE STUDY OF THE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, WHEN HE FIRST GO TO AN UNREACHED GROUP, OR A DIFFERENT COUNTRY. THE SCHOOL PREPARES THE MISSIONARY TO APROACH THE CULTURE WITH COMPASSION AND UNDERSTANDING, TO BUILD LONG LASTING RELATIONSHIPS AND START THE RESEARCH FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROJECTS IN ANY AREA. We try to apply interdisciplinarity every week of the school, so several of the subjects will be given paralelly through out the school, but to reflect how many hours every subject is given, be have listed one or two subjects per week. After the 12 weeks of lectures, the whole school will go on outreach togehter for 1 month to apply the principles learned during the school together with the school staff (close follow up). After that the stundets will choose one of the options of where to go for the rest of the outreach time with specific tasks. The student might stay there for 3 - 24 months, depending on the field and the area. There he/she will have follow - up with our long term missionaries. The students might go in groups or by them selves for an outreach/intership time.

Intro to Ethno-linguistics & Cultural Studies Seminar ( APL 131 )

The seminar give the missionaries some tools with language and cultural learning for learning non- western languages. It has direct impact equipping those who focus the needs of unreached people groups. It helps prepare those who want to work with bible translation, or translation of bible stories, or just working with general evangelization, or mercy ministries among unreached groups.

Missionary Anthropology Seminar ( HMT 133 )

The purpose of the Missionary Anthropology Seminar is to foster in new missionaries, YWAM and other missions, the vision of cross-cultural ministry gestating a new generation with the heart focused on reaching out to unreached people, bringing an understanding of the importance of respecting cultural diversity.

Oral Bible School ( CHR 219 )

Before describing the course, I would like to make an introduction so that when you read the description of the course, you could understand a little bit of our heart behind this school that we are creating. Statistics describes that more than 70% of the unreached people groups are people of oral tradition or oral learners. Our base in Porto Velho is surrounded by hundreds of riverbanks communities, as well as indigenous people from different tribes, who come to the base to look for tools to develop their relationship with God and ministries. Furthermore, the majority of workers, who work with the least reached segments of Brazil or PNAs (unreached people groups), need to learn and teach the Word of God respecting the listener’s cognition process. The Word of God is clear saying that, “Blessed are those who hear,” and since the Old Testament to the New Testament, the Word of God has been transmitted from generation to generation through orality. As the Christian Magna Carta says, we want to give people the opportunity to receive the Word of God in a way they can understand. With this we believe that we can be much more relevant and effective in the Study of the Word of God through the use of orality resources for the transformation of individuals and communities. These communities, both riverbanks and indigenous, have a very rich oral traditions. All-important knowledge for these communities is transmitted orally to the following generations. This is no different in other oral communities of Brazil (for example, the gypsy communities, Afro-descendant communities known as quilombolas, communities of the sertanejos who live in a very dry area in the Northeast region of Brazil). This is also true of other oral communities around the world. Faced with this reality, we make ourselves available before God to be an answer to this need. All of humanity is born natural listeners and speakers. Orality is something inherent to every human being created in the image and likeness of God. It flows naturally and we use it to express our deepest feelings in a rich way as well as to touch, in a singular and profound way, the souls of the people around us. However, over the years, as many of us in the Western or Westernized world entered the schooling system the richness and diversity of oral speech was more and more neglected, even being despised and devalued. As a result, in our societies, if a person does not know how to read or write, he is considered a second-rate citizen, or worse. He suffers from prejudices and is seen as a person who has nothing to offer. ¬¬¬ Through our school, we want to recover the value of orality in the process of studying and sharing the Word of God. About 75% of the biblical text consists of narratives (stories). And the Bible was preserved and came to us through the orality of the Jewish people. Faced with this reality, the desire began to burn in our hearts to make the teaching of the Word of God accessible to people who do not have access to writing or whose preferred cognitive system is oral learning. So, just emphasizing. Our school aims to make the Word of God accessible to people of oral tradition, celebrating the treasure they already have naturally in their culture - orality. We hope that through this tool we can cooperate with the eradication of Bible poverty in the world and see the Word of God penetrating deeply into these oral communities, bringing freedom, restoring their value and dignity as a people of oral tradition, and generating transformation in all areas of society. We want to enable our students to learn the Word of God and to share this precious Word in a way that is attractive and relevant to the respective cognitive system of these people of oral tradition. Therefore, below is the Description of the Course: Studies begin by immersing the students in LISTENING in an intense and intentional way to books without making any written notes, followed by many moments of group discussion to process the heard content. This activity aims to break the unconscious prejudice that says that oral learning is not as efficient as written learning. In addition, this activity aims to bring an understanding of what the text is really saying and confidence in the students’ perception, with the help of the Holy Spirit, of how much of the text he was able to absorb through what was heard. Another objective of this activity is to prepare the way for the student to appropriate the text and be able to share it in a natural way. In other words, this activity prepares the way for the internalization and appropriation of the text to take place. Our intention is that the student, also with the help of the Holy Spirit, realizes that the Word of God is powerful; not just because it is written, but because it came out of the mouth of God. God SPOKE and inspired His servants to write it. We want the student to experience the transforming power of the Word of God by listening to it. Only then he will be able to understand the importance and power of orality when sharing the Word of God with people of oral tradition that God is calling him to serve. It is our desire that this process will break the existing prejudice against profoundly learning the Word of God through orality. The School continues in this dynamic with a demonstration of the importance of the Bible for the transformation of our lives and society and gives a foundation of how this book has been preserved and passed down to our generation. We approach the importance of writing and orality as two distinct systems of cognition. We will also cover how to teach the Bible to oral learners. ¬ We continue to present the chronological panorama of the Old Testament pointing to Christ to supply people’s need to know their origin in God. We also transmit to students, in oral form, the main pillars of the Inductive Bible Study method (Prayer, Observation, Interpretation and Application). Throughout the school, we also use and teach several other study methods such as mind maps, text analysis, anthropological and missiological research, storytelling, and others. ¬¬¬ The student will hear, watch, or read (if necessary) the entire Bible once. They will do an in-depth study of at least three books of the Pentateuch. The students will study the books of 1 and 2 Kings which give historical background to a large part of the Old Testament. They will also study how the prophetic voice worked in the Old Testament. They will do an in-depth study of at least one of the prophetic books. We close the Old Testament by gaining an understanding of the 400 years of silence. ¬¬ In the New Testament, we will study the Synoptic Gospels within the broader panorama of the Gospels, focusing on an in-depth of at least one of the Gospels, thus learning about the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ. We will also study the book of Acts, because it shows the advance of the Church under the power of the Holy Spirit and also because it provides the historical background to the Pauline letters that make up a significant part of the New Testament. Finally, we closed the school by studying some of the Epistles (which may be those from Paul, John, Peter, and James) — these Epistles will be distributed to each student who will be responsible for studying the book in depth and teaching it to his classmates. In addition to these Epistles, we will study the book of Revelation, pointing to the victory of the Messiah.

Oral Bible Translation School ( APL 249 )

This school is to train YWAMers to be Oral Bible Translation advisors who work with the mother-tongue translators.

Oral Bible Translation Seminar ( APL 135 )

This seminar is aimed at people who want to work on YWAM OBT projects. In general, they are indigenous people who are not yet together with the DTS (Training and Discipleship School), but who are already articulated in some team/project of oral translation of the Bible in YWAM. Topics include: introduction to Bible translation; introduction to orality; introduction to applied linguistics; Missiology and Anthropology; principles of biblical interpretation; theory of oral Bible translation; recording; Introduction to Hebrew; biblical engagement and oral histories of the Bible.

Primary Health Care ( HLC 261 )

A broad introduction to the biological and health sciences, equipping students to be primary health workers through both didactic and laboratory training. Students benefit from the expert instruction of practicing professionals, including physicians, nurses, physician assistants, dental hygienists, social workers and health educators. Topics include: fundamentals of anatomy and physiology; strategies in primary health care pertaining to issues such as immunization and six target diseases, malnutrition, breast feeding, management of dehydration in children, assessment and care of the sick child, and use of growth charts; practical clinical skills and basic field laboratory procedures.