With the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in August of 2021, the Afghan diaspora increased exponentially. That increase led to a cooresponding increase of another sort – the increased burden and commitment of Afghani believers in the West to reach their people for Jesus.

As a part of that response, in 2023, Shoaib Ebadi and his team at Afghan Next Gen pursued a partnership with Clear and Simple Media. First, they translated the book, the Travel Guide to the Bible into Dari and Pashto and began the edistribution of the text. They followed that project by translating the entire A Simple Word website into Dari (www.asimpleworddari.org). The site went live in early 2024. In May, Shaoib was able to hire an Afghan Christian living in India to create Facebook and Instagram posts for the website. As a result, the people managing the site and connected social media soon began to respond to questions they have received from website users in various parts of the world. In June, Shaoib began to identify readers to record the audio for the thirty-two stories in the Simple Stories story set in Dari.

As Shoaib continued to study new ways to reach the Afghan people, he asked that we consider partnering with Aghan Next Gen on a new project – to translate the A Simple Word website into Pashto (the language of the Taliban). This, as we discovered with the Dari project, is no small task. Initial research suggests that the project to translate the entire site content, build a new site and complementary social media platforms to target a Pashto audience will cost approximately $15,000 USD. All things considered, that is quite reasonable.

After working through the logistics and praying about the need, we have decided to do all we can do to help raise the needed funds for what we are calling the A Simple Word Pashto Translation Project. As of July 15, 2024, we have been able to set aside $5,000 for the project. That gives us enough to start the project. But we will need all of the funds on hand to finish it.

We are blessed to have the priviledge of working with such men of vision. And this Pashto website project is only the beginning. Because Afghan refugees enjoy listening to podcasts, Shaoib has already begun to make plans to create a Dari podcast based on the Dari translation of the Travel Guide to the Bible. He then hopes to follow those podcasts with a project to record an audio version of the entire content of the Dari website.

We are so thankful for a partner like Shoaib who has a heart to see his people come to Jesus. If you would like to be part of the Pashto translation project, follow the Support link on this site.