Gavin and Marlien

About Us

Gavin and Marlien Porter

Gavin and Marlien met in 1993 while on outreach to Mozambique and were married in the middle of the following year. They have been involved in full time ministry ever since.

 

With Gavin coming from a construction background and Marlien being a registered

nursing sister, they very quickly became involved in the practical side of ministry.  From 1994 until 1999 they coordinated a community development project north of Pretoria in South Africa. The project included skills training, job creation, vegetable gardening, outreach to children, cell groups, Community Health Worker training and a bi-weekly Primary Health Care clinic.  Through the many challenges they faced in this poor community, they began searching the scriptures for answers and later found themselves presenting Community Development workshops and mobilising churches towards ministry to the poor and needy.

 

Partners in Grace was originally founded in 2000 to assist in the formation of cross-cultural partnerships between wealthy Christian congregations and poor Christian congregations with the further goal of community development through church partnership. 

 

Since 2000 they began working closely with the World Outreach office in South Africa, as Gavin started to facilitate World Perspectives (World Mission) Courses.  This involvement increased until they moved to Zambia as Mission Partners with World Outreach in 2003 where they helped to train and equip Zambian missionaries as well as teach local church leaders.  Much of their time was spent on facilitating World Perspectives Courses, training missionaries as Community Health Workers and equipping them to learn language and culture with the Brewsters Language Acquisition Made Practical (LAMP) course.

 

Today Gavin and Marlien are currently based in Pretoria, South Africa and travel to various neighbouring countries to teach church leaders and to equip missionaries.  Marlien trains missionaries to acquire new languages by making use of the Brewsters LAMP course, she has also developed a Community Health Worker Training Course which is used to equip the missionaries or community leaders to address the third world health needs while creating a platform to share the gospel. Gavin has been facilitating the World Perspectives course until recently. He has also developed an exciting and fresh  training course called God’s Vision  God’s Mission.  This unique material is built around simple and easily reproducible diagrams with a strong biblical structure. Already the course has proven to be a useful tool for teaching the Kingdom of God and is being used effectively in missions training and discipleship.

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