In September, we asked prayer for the French translation of our A Simple Word website. We have been talking about it for several years, but had not been able to assemble the team required to tackle the task. In October of 2022, after I travelled to Burkina Faso, God seemed to put all of the puzzle pieces together. Competent translators, able administrators, a technical team to manage the “back end” – we were finally able to hit GO. Over the next months, funding began to come in to pay for the project and we “thought” we would be live in June. And then, life happened.

Over the next months, we were hit with a few “detours”. Technical glitches, illness on the translation team, misunderstandings we would need to work through, managing and mending cross-cultural relationships, and the required calendar adjustments that inevitably lead to timing compromises and the need for patience and understanding – we have had them all. And yet, in spite of all of the angles and tangles along the way, we are pleased to announce that the new French A Simple Word site (www.vertiésimple.org / www.unsimplemot.org) will launch on November 15, 2023.

Thank you so much to those who have prayed for this. Thank you to Mathias APOVO, whose translation team is to be credited with the crisp, simple French translation. Thank you to Nebié Badiou, leader and pastor who has been the driving force for the spread of the Clear and Simple Media books into a dozen languages in West Africa – and the catalyst for putting the site into Simple French. Thank you to Dieudonné SOME, a friend, pastor, evangelist in Burkina Faso who is always finding new places in West Africa and new languages that would benefit from the “little book”, Simple Truths. Thank you to our local partners at Lemmtec and our principal partner Billy Levengood, a bi-vocational pastor whose technical expertise has helped us manage the snags and untie the knots that this project has been full of.

The Puritans were known to conclude their written correspondence with two letters: “D.V.” Those letters stand for “Deo Volente,”  a Latin phrase meaning “as God wills.”  And so I sign this post with those words. God’s kindness has brought us to this point, and we lean hard into God’s sovereign providence to bring this project to completion.

And so I repeat:

In spite of all of the angles and tangles along the way, we are pleased to announce that the new French A Simple Word site (www.vertiésimple.org / www.unsimplemot.org) will launch on November 15, 2023.

D.V.