Official Pathfinder Manuals

Every game has a rulebook — and the Pathfinder Club is no different. The difference is that many people spend years in the club without knowing those rules live in five official documents, almost all of them free, published by the Adventist Church itself. If you've ever argued with someone about where a patch goes or what a class requirement actually says, the official answer is probably in one of them. This guide shows which manual answers each question — and where to download it without landing on a pirated PDF.

📖What are the official Pathfinder manuals?

Think of the rulebook for a board game, or the tutorial for a video game: without it, everyone plays by their own rules and the match turns into chaos. The Pathfinder Club — the Seventh-day Adventist Church program for young people ages 10 to 15 — works the same way. For a club in Manaus to follow the same rules as a club in Buenos Aires, there's a set of official documents that spells out how everything should be done.

The body that publishes these documents for our region is the Pathfinder Ministry of the South American Division (SAD). In plain terms: SAD is the Adventist Church office that coordinates the work across eight South American countries, including Brazil. It's SAD that sets, for example, the class requirements and the uniform design for the region.

The good news: the main documents are free and available on the official site adventistas.org. You don't need to pay or download a file from some random site to learn the rules of your own club.

🗂️What are the five official documents?

There are five types of material, and each one covers a different 'stage' of the game: the Administrative Manual (the club's general rules), the Uniform Regulations (what to wear and where each insignia goes), the Honors Manual (the requirements for the knowledge 'medals'), the class books and cards (the workbook for each yearly stage), and the OMDs (the official updates published between editions).

The table below works like a map: find your question in the middle column and discover which document holds the official answer.

The five types of official documents from the Pathfinder Ministry of the South American Division (2026).

🏛️What's inside the Administrative Manual?

The Administrative Manual — known in the club by its Portuguese abbreviation, MAD (Manual Administrativo) — is the most important document of all, the complete 'rulebook.' It explains how a club is founded, what roles exist (director board, secretary, treasurer, unit counselors), how ceremonies, discipline, and meetings work, and even the paperwork. It's published by SAD and has a free PDF download on the official page, live since January 2021.

It's also where you'll find the section on drill — the art of marching and positioning as a group, that impressive scene that opens a camporee (the massive campout that brings together dozens of clubs). The 'at ease' command, in fact, was officially corrected by OMD 010, from 2015, which shows how the manual and its updates move together.

It's required reading for anyone who runs the club, but it's worth a look even if you're just a regular Pathfinder: you can find, for instance, the official path to starting a new club and what each leader can (and can't) decide.

👕What is the Uniform Regulations for?

The Uniform Regulations — which many people call RUD (from the Portuguese Regulamento de Uniformes) — is a single document that covers Adventurers (the club for younger kids, ages 6 to 9), Pathfinders, and leaders across all of South America. It defines colors, styles, insignias, and the exact position of every item on the uniform, and it's available to download on the official page.

Check it before you sew anything: a patch just two centimeters out of place can cost you points in a camporee evaluation. For a piece-by-piece visual summary, see our guide to patch placement on the uniform — but the final word always belongs to the official regulations and the latest OMDs.

🎯What about the Honors Manual and class cards?

Honors are the 'achievements' of the Pathfinder world: you study a subject — anything from astronomy to bread-baking — meet the requirements, and earn a patch. The Honors Manual gathers those requirements. The South American edition went through a major revision by GEED (the Pathfinder Honors Study Group), completed in April 2012, which is when a whole new area was born — ADRA, with 9 honors and 1 master honor. Today the club offers more than 400 honors — to understand how it all works, start with our guide on what honors are.

One honest detail: unlike the Administrative Manual, the printed Honors Manual is sold through the publisher designated by the church — it's not a free download. The good news is that the honor requirements themselves are published free on the official site.

As for the class books and cards, they follow the club's yearly stages (from Friend, at age 10, to Guide, at 15). They log every requirement completed, like a quest log in a video game. They were officially updated by OMD 021, from 2024. To see how that record works in practice, read our article on the class card.

📢What are the OMDs, and why do they change the rules?

OMD stands for Pathfinder Ministry Guideline (Orientação do Ministério de Desbravadores, in the original Portuguese). Think of the printed manuals as version 1.0 of a game: the OMDs are the patches — updates that correct and change rules without waiting for a new edition. Between 2013 and 2024, SAD published 21 OMDs, all available free on the official site.

They deal with very concrete matters: OMD 010, from 2015, corrected the 'at ease' command in drill; OMD 020, from 2024, gave guidance on club names; and OMD 021, also from 2024, updated the class books. In other words: if the printed manual says one thing and a newer OMD says another, the OMD wins.

The golden rule for settling any argument in the club: official manual + OMDs published after it = the current rule. An answer that ignores the OMDs may be outdated.

⬇️Where to download the official manuals for free

The right address is the downloads.adventistas.org portal, the church's official repository. The Pathfinders section organizes files into four categories — Manuals and Guides, Logos, Promotional Materials, and Official Documents — and brings together everything from the Administrative Manual and the OMDs to the guidelines manual for SAD's 6th Camporee, set for 2027.

So why push the official site so hard? Because the internet is full of manual PDFs on blogs and study-notes sites — many of them old editions, with requirements that have already changed. Studying from an outdated copy is like studying from last year's exam: it feels like help, but you show up with the wrong answers when it counts. Downloading the official version is free, it's legal, and it guarantees you're reading the rule that applies today.