Stride: Partners in Training

Adrian and Judith Stewart found the Partners in Training Programme (PTP) prepared them well for a return to Brazil.

PTP is an excellent opportunity to train for missionary life in Latin America. It offers you a chance to experience a wide range of aspects of culture and church life, and alongside this it requires you to develop your theological reflection. This is assessed by people already established, working in mission, and it is this aspect which strongly differentiates this particular programme from the others Latin Link offers.

Up to 18 months are spent in the host country of your choice, and the time is split into sections of language learning, study with nationals also training for ministries of all types and, finally, hands-on work in ministry settings of your choice. This variety has the advantage of giving an excellent snapshot of the national church as a whole and develops a good understanding within the candidate of how and where he/she might be most needed in future.

We spent our language training in a small Bible college in the outskirts of São Paulo, and then studied alongside nationals training in a missions college in Minas Gerais. The continual assessment with the London School of Theology helped us develop a theological understanding of our experience in a way which, we believe, has been invaluable in our further work.

Our placements included working with an ex-slave community doing simple evangelistic Bible studies, working at a street boys project in a city setting, and working evangelistically with university students.

Now long term in Brazil we feel our time on PTP was a great investment that had the effect of accelerating our understanding of culture and church life. It has been essential to our ongoing work here.