One of the first publications we produced through Clear and Simple Media was Simple Truths for the New Believer. We initially developed this small evangelical catechism to aid church planters in Vietnam in training new believers. Since its publication, the book has been translated into more than fifty languages and is used in multiple countries worldwide. The book has been in distribution for nearly 20 years.

Field testing has demonstrated the book to be a valuable resource in multiple cultures. Church planters have reported that it has been helpful in discipling believers from Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu backgrounds. But, in some regions, we have been asked if we could produce an even shorter version of the book. So we created a “short” version of the book to focus on the “basic truths that explain the gospel.” The book, titled God’s Story, Our Story , contains 64 questions and answers (instead of 144) that are most basic to the understanding of the Gospel. The pastors and church-planters who requested the book intend to use it with people that they identify as “seekers and the newest of the new believers.”

A few weeks ago, we completed the Swahili translation of the original book, Simple Truths for New Believers [HERE]. When our translator (Marwa) discovered that we had a new book and a shorter version available, he asked if he could go to work on putting God’s Story, Our Story into Swahili. We said, Yes, of course. 

We believe that Marwa will be able to complete the translation and book design by late September. Soon after, God’s Story, Our Story in Swahili will go to press.

Our prayer is that this version of the book will have an even wider distribution than Simple Truths. To facilitate this goal, Marwa is communicating with multiple pastors and church-planting networks where Swahili is spoken to offer this new resource to anyone who may find it useful.

Swahili is spoken by significant numbers of people in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, and Cameroon.

We have lost track of the number of books in print and in distribution around the world a long time ago. Fifty-eight languages in as many countries ~ we stopped counting at 750,000. An even greater mystery is the number of ebooks that have been distributed – especially since one click of a button can put (and has) 20,000 copies into the INBOX of individuals on the email lists of ministries we are helping. But God knows where every printed book, every ebook, and every photocopy is – and who needs to see it. Someday (if we still care about such things as statistics), we may know where every piece went and what result it may have produced. Until then, we wait, pray, and hope.

Thank you to all of you who have helped us each step of the way. We will not forget. But, even if we do, (according to Hebrews 6:10), God will not.