Questions & Answers

What is LATTE? 
 


What do you think of when you hear the word "latte"?  In this case it is not a special coffee.  It is short for the Latin American Traveling Theological Educators.  It is a team of missionaries (professors) who travel to the WELS missions in South America, the Caribbean and Mexico to teach and prepare men to be pastors.  Instead of everyone coming to a school in one place like is done in the US to prepare our pastors, the professors go to the students.

Where do the professors travel and teach? 

León, Puebla, and Torreón, Mexico; Bogota and Medellín, Colombia; Santiago, Dominican Republic; Humacao, Puerto Rico; Dourados, Gravatai, and Presidente Prudente, Brazil; La Paz, Bolivia;  and online courses in Temuco, Chile; Quibdó and Santa Marta, Colombia, and Guatemala.

Who are the missionary professors?



Lorenzo, Larry, Phil, and Natán.

Do the professors teach in English? 

No, all their work is in Spanish, but Professor Natán also teaches in Portuguese when he works in Brazil.

Do the missionaries who travel take their families with them?

On short trips (2 or 3 weeks) they travel alone.  However on longer trips they bring along their wives.  All the children of LATTE professors are away at school or grown and no longer live at home.

Where do members of the LATTE team live?   

One lives in US, two in Mexico and one in Bolivia.

How many seminary students study with the LATTE professors?

Currently there are 22 seminary students and 35 Bible institute students.

What are some of the blessings and challenges of serving as a LATTE professor?

Blessings:

Getting to serve God in many different places, seeing God work in different cultures with different peoples, making friends in different countries.

Challenges:

Remembering differences in Spanish dialects in the different countries, finding good medical care outside of the United States, being far away from parents, children and grandchildren due to living in a foreign country, coordinating the work of four seminary professors who live in three different countries.

What are some of the blessings and challenges for being a student in the program? 



Blessings: 

Preparing for serving the Lord and his church.  Friendships with various traveling professors as well as the opportunity to have courses with missionaries with different talents and expertise. 



Challenges: 

Studying while handling their many other responsibilities such as working to support their families (often children, wives and even the single students have special responsibility for their parents and siblings in Latin America).  There are tremendous financial pressures on most of the families studying in the LATTE program.