Literature And Teaching Ministries (LATM) is an outgrowth of the ministry of College Press Publishing Company of Joplin, Missouri. Don DeWelt, a beloved teacher and evangelist, founded College Press in 1959 to supply a need for true-to-the-Scriptures Bible study textbooks.
But God's world is bigger than this country. Don DeWelt traveled to many mission fields during his lifetime, and felt a burden to help the missionaries and national church leaders in those place to have books in their languages, too. From time to time, missionaries would request permission of College Press to translate and print a book. This would always be granted with no charge or royalty fee. But for every missionary who had taken it upon himself to translate and print books, there were ten more who wanted to, but because of financial and time constraints, simply could not.
As time passed, Don's son Chris, who had served eight years as a missionary in Chile came to share this burden to see quality materials printed in other languages. Together they envisioned a non-profit organization that would help fund and print quality Christian books, like College Press, but in the various languages spoken in the countries where we have missionaries and national churches. In August, 1992, just a year after Don passed away, Literature And Teaching Ministries was established for this purpose. From then, through January 2010, LATM has helped publish 510 projects in 54 different languages for a total of over 1,200,000 books printed.