After helping to distribute over 1 million Swahili tracts in July and more afterwards, a rather steady stream of requests for more information, and especially ONLINE Swahili Bible studies, have been coming in. If God brought us this far, He will surely take us all the way.
As to be expected, we've had several challenges along the way. The phone which has the number which is on the tracts and books was stolen. It was several weeks before we got the number up and working again. After that, there was yet another challenge and again calls and messages were not getting answered. We hope that we are very close to resolving this challenge. The phone will be going to another staff member next week. He is excited about the work. Please pray for him to have the energy and wisdom to deal with all the calls, emails and messages.
God sent me the right help (thanks Alan and Craig) to help me get a Swahili Bible Study website up and running. Just last weekend I did the finishing touches to this first phase of the website. The first series of 15 studies is online and ready for people to read through including links to an online Bible for each scripture reference.
In designing the website we started out with a rather fancy theme with a learning management system plugin for the lessons. The challenge of getting everything translated to Swahili was a huge. We made a lot of headway (days and days), but the more I worked on the site and tested it, the more I realized that it was going to be too complicated for many end users.
Some people will want to be able to read the studies, but not to be identified. With the system that we had, they would have to give us an email address and sign in. So we scrapped that system and started all over again with the goal of making it SUPER user friendly, and mobile-phone super friendly. (We expect that the majority of users will be looking at the studies on their mobile phones. Smart phones and phones with internet access are becoming the common thing here in Tanzania.)
So the revised site is easy to use, but not fancy. It is ALL in Swahili! YEAH! PRAISE TO BE GOD - we have a Swahili online Bible study website up and functional! Some of the staff have already looked it over. They are pleased, and they are sharing the site with others.
Tuesday I sent the new website link to the people who have contacted us asking for more information. We have received more than 30 emails on our new email address, and (since September 10th) 130 phone calls and text messages. I still have about 240 more numbers to contact from calls and message prior to September 10th.
Immediately after sending out the website to those who had contacted us previously we started getting responses such as the following:
Ahsante nashukuru Mungu akubariki (Thank you, I appreciate you. May God bless you!)
Kuna ujumbe mlinitumia ndipo nikajibu kwa kushukuru. Bwana awabariki kwa kuanzisha tovuti ya kujifunza Biblia. Nitawajulisha watu wengine wajifunze habari njema za Mbinguni. (There was a message that you sent to me. Indeed I answer with gratitude. May God bless you for starting a website for learning the Bible. I will let others know so that they may learn the good news of Heaven.)
I'm excited and hope you are excited also! People want to know the truth!
We are putting the website address on future books and tracts to make it easier for people to find it.If you would like to look at it (Yes it is in Swahili) it is at www.kujifunzabiblia.com. Kujifunza means "to learn" and Biblia is "Bible". So our site is called "To learn the Bible". If you go to look at it, please don't just go to the first page, click and go inside a little ways. Joshua said that helps with search engine results later. I think you can figure out where to click. (On the second page you should choose the top option as the two bottom ones are "course to come in the future".
We hope that many people will come to see the loveliness of Jesus through this new tool. We hope that this website will help in spreading THIS GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM INTO ALL THE WORLD that Jesus may come! Please pray that God will use it for His glory. Thank you to all of our mission partners. Your love, prayers, encouragement and support make this and many other things possible!
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