On Monday morning, August 26, Nebié and I would make a trip 20km north of Ouagadougou to a camp where 464 Christian young people had gathered. The camp was serving as host for the annual retreat for the Jeunesse Evangelique Africaine. JEA is a campus group made up of upper secondary school and university students, which came to Burkina Faso over 50 years ago. Nebié had been invited to be their primary speaker. Also, he was to present this “new tool to help believers grow in their knowledge of the Bible.” He announced to the gathering on Monday that he would make his presentation on Tuesday. 

Vérité Simple

Over the next two days, Nebié talked about the new website. He told how people would benefit from reading the material there. He emphasized that the site had only gone “live” a few days ago and they would be the first to see it. He also asked the students to help us. “You,” he said, “are the key to help us make the site even better.” By the time Wednesday rolled around, Nebié had built quite a momentum of anticipation. On Wednesday, he distributed nearly 600 cards to the students and leaders with only two lines in print – www.asimpleword.org and www.véritésimple.org. Their assignment was simple. Visit the site. Read as much of it as possible over the next month. Ask any questions they might have through the CONNECT page. Make any suggestions about how we could make the site better. 

We have always tried to be aggressive at the matter of field-testing our materials. This project is our most aggressive approach to date. 

At this point, Nebié and his team will be responding to inquiries that come in from all over West Africa. Our eventual goal is to identify a team in every country in francophone West Africa that will answer questions and inquiries that come from that country. Yes, that is an ambitious goal, but we believe that, with the networks that we are building, it is entirely plausible.  

We are just beginning to receive the first responses and feedback. Pray for Nebié and his team as they sort through them all. And pray that the site will do what we wrote it to do.