Three weeks ago, we shared a report on a trip to Orlando, Florida. There, we met with Nebié Badiou, a church leader from Burkina Faso, who was in Florida doing an intensive English course.

We also reported that, as a result of that trip, we began to discuss a new project. The project is not “new” in the sense that we have not discussed it previously. But it is new in the sense that we now may have the capacity to complete such a project.

This initiative involves creating an online Bible Course to cover all of the content in the Travel Guide to the Bible. The course would provide the person who reads the material in the book (online) with a series of questions to test how well they comprehend what they have learned. As Nebié envisions it:

“A student could answer questions about the Travel Guide online, and when they finish, they will receive a certificate. I know that many, many people would use a course like that all over francophone West Africa.”

While we do understand how valuable such a resource would be, the amount of work that it would require would be considerable. We would need to write a set of questions for each chapter in the book. Considering the number of chapters in the book (70) and the number of questions required to cover the content of each chapter (a minimum of 25 questions per chapter), we would need to write more than 1,500 questions.

That would also require that we develop a new website (or expand the capacity of our current site) to accommodate a Learning Management System to deliver the content. That would require us to raise a considerable amount of project capital to complete the work.

There are times when you are faced with a decision where “no” does not seem to be a reasonable option. So, after considering the opportunity costs (and much prayer), we have decided to add this project to our 2020 calendar. As with all of our publications, we will write the course in simple English. Once we have field-tested the course, the next step is to translate the course into French for use in West Africa.

As of this writing, we have already begun work on the content questions. So far, we have completed drafts through the book of Joshua.

Pray for the discipline and the stamina that we will need to complete this project. Pray also that we will meet the financial challenges that this project will present. And ~ pray for the next project that logically follows this one.*

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POSTSCRIPT* After we have completed the field-testing on that initial course, we would create a similar set of lessons that would cover the content of our evangelical catechism, Simple Truths for the New Believer.