Millions of Christians Can’t Get a Bible. What Happens When You Change That? - Joe Fleming

Right now we're working in a he- area that's heavily, um, animistic. And, uh, they've chased the idol for centuries, and they're tired. The idol leaves them empty; it takes from them, never gives anything back. They don't know Christ. Um, they may have heard of Him, or there've been some influence with Catholicism, where Catholicism mixes the two, syncretism. But you go in, you—and you clearly explain the Gospel and the hope in Christ, and, uh, man, they just grab Him. They want that. And so to follow that up immediately with, "Oh, here's an audio Bible," begin to listen to it. Or if they can read, here, begin to read, and we'll, you know, we'll help them, guide them where to initially start, and then we continue to come back and train them.

Our guest today is Joe Fleming. Joe is director of an evangelical organization and has been a missionary in West Africa for more than 10 years. I got to know Joe through interaction with other Mennonite missions, such as Heralds of Hope and others, who are focusing on getting God's Word to people who don't have a copy. It was a privilege to go to Senegal, West Africa, to sit down with Joe and have this conversation about how God's Word is needed in so many places around the world. If you appreciate what we're doing here at Anabaptist Perspectives, make sure you subscribe and share this with others.

Now, here's the conversation with Joe. So, Joe, tell me where we are right now. So it's May 26th, uh, 2026, and you're in the Casamance, and near Ziginshore in southern Senegal. And where is Senegal? Well, if you look at the map here of Senegal, it's, uh, you see here is the city of Ziginshore, and here is the border to the Gambia, and then here's northern Senegal. And you're—we're on the, uh, western end and the southern end of Senegal. Called the Casamance region. And basically the larger region being West Africa, I guess it'd be a big box to put it in. That's right, yeah. That's it. Senegal is part of that West African, uh, what we call the West African cluster.

So you've—you've lived here for a while. You're a missionary. Yes. Um, tell me what you see as one of the great needs for the church here in—in western Africa. I mean, you could say specifically to Senegal, because that's where you live. You're right down the road, I think, is where you live. Um, tell me about what God's doing here and what you see the needs for the church are in this area. Well, we first got here in 2016 from India, um, and one of the things that we found immediately was that there was just a barrenness of the Word of God. So there was a lack of Bibles, specifically in French. And later, as we began to, um, train disciples in the local churches, we found that, um, there was—uh, there hadn't been French Bibles here for about seven years.

That was in 2016. Like for this area or for like the entire country? Yeah, all of Senegal. The entire country? All of Senegal, yeah. And, uh, as the work spread into Guinea-Bissau, um, we realized that there was such a need for the Portuguese Creole that they speak there. It's kind of a unique Creole, and they hadn't had Bibles for nine years.

Again, the entire country or just like one church or? No, just the entire Guinea-Bissau. And so there had been a—there was just such a huge need for the Word of God in written texts. But then, as we began to train disciples and our role was to train local disciples to make disciples, and so there are—the illiteracy rate is pretty high, and we realized, oh, there's just a huge need for the audio Bible as well. And so I would say that that was one of the—probably the biggest need as we began to, you know, engage lostness with the Gospel, that as you had new believers, you didn't have the Word to equip them and begin that sanctification process once they came to faith.

And so that was a huge need. So we began to work on trying to get the Word of God here. Did you see negative effects or whatever terminology you'd use, you know, for, say, a new believer? They believe in Jesus, say they used to be a Muslim or something, and now they believe in Jesus, but they don't have a Bible. Have you seen cases where that happened? And then what happens to those people? Because it seems that would be very difficult to be a Christian if you don't even have a Bible. Like, how would you even know what to believe? I don't know if my question's quite making sense there. I think my brain's just trying to grasp what that would be like.

Yeah, well, yeah, that was a—so you have, you know, you go out with the Gospel. I always tell the trainers, the master trainers that we train, or the local missionaries, is that going with the Gospel in a pioneering way is really the easy part, because once they come to faith and there is a hunger for the Word, a hunger for truth, and once they come, once they come to faith, the real work starts is that sanctification process, because that takes commitment from those who had led them to Christ now to become a trainer of them, a discipler. And so you can't do that without the Word. It's impossible for a new believer to mature in Christ without the Word of God.

And so that's where we've, you know, we felt, you know, God has given that responsibility. He's given us the privilege to take the Gospel to those who are without it, who are in darkness. And then He brings that fruit, and now we have it, and it's our responsibility now to help mature it. And so we began to work on trying to, okay, how can we get the Word of God here? If they can't read, how do we get them on an audio version of the Bible in their local language, and specifically their heart language? And if they can read, how can we get them the written text? And so that became a challenge for us.

And so we began to see growth, but we didn't have the resources to keep up with the need for the Word to get in their hands and their ears. So I'm just thinking, like, okay, let's say we have a Bible sitting here on the table, right? So I'm looking at this, and I imagine this costs several dollars, say, to get one of these. But if they don't have access to this and someone comes to Christ and they don't ever get a Bible, a realistic scenario would be that person would just walk away from the faith. I mean, would—does that happen? Like, where they can't maintain, like, they don't have any teaching, and so what happens to that person?

Does that make sense how I'm saying this? It stays, you know, Paul writes about that, you know, you want to—the maturity of the church, the maturity of believers, you know, to be a babe in Christ, uh, in order—and is where we start. But just like a child that is born, you want that child to go from milk to solid meat and mature so it can reproduce. The same way with the disciple, we want them to move from being a newborn, a new creation in Christ, to be a new creation who's mature and able to multiply. Well, without the Word, that's—I would just say from being on the mission field, that's impossible. You're never going to—you know, our strategy is to train disciples who make disciples, and so that's never going to happen unless they're taught within the Word and they have a copy of the Scripture themselves and they're trained and discipled properly so they can mature and reproduce.

And so without the Word, it's a process. It stalls. It's like—it's such an obstacle. It just stalls. And so now you have a baby believer who just doesn't grow up. And that's—and now you can go back and train them, but they still need the Word. You can't be with them all the time, and you can't train them everything. They need the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures to, you know, the Holy Spirit enlightens the Scriptures to us as we have the Holy Spirit in us as a new believer, as a believer period, in that without the Word, how does that disciple mature? And so it becomes a huge challenge for those of us that are here and we're seeing growth, but yet how do you mature that growth so where it can reproduce and multiply?

There's a story I've been wanting to tell for years, and we've finally filmed it. For the first hundred years of the Anabaptist movement, following Jesus was a death sentence. These were people who refused the sword, even when it cost them everything, who were imprisoned, drowned, and burned alive for refusing to compromise. I spent weeks traveling across Europe with historian Dean Taylor and church history teacher Stephen Russell to the actual places where the story unfolded, to Zurich, where the first adult baptisms happened in 1525, up to the Netherlands, where Menno Simons lived and wrote. The result is Anabaptist Origins, a 10-part documentary series on the first hundred years of the Anabaptist movement. It releases July 11.

Subscribe at the link down below. So this is—I've known you for a number of years, and this is not the first time I've been over here to see what you all do here, and it's been amazing. And we'll get into some of that maybe later. But I want to rewind it quite a bit and ask the question, how has the Word of God affected your own life and your own walk with Christ personally, you know, maybe when you first come to Christ? Tell me about that. Well, it's part of the reason why I think I'm passionate about that. When I came to faith at 19, I had no discipling after that. And so it was about seven years that I was—it was as though I was a new believer without anyone that came around me that helped train me or helped disciple me.

And I remember having a Bible, but much like the Ethiopian eunuch, how do I understand if someone doesn't explain it to me? And so I remember that was a—it was a very dry period, and I struggled. Not that I left the faith. I love the Lord, but I struggled to follow Him because, you know, it takes revelation before wisdom. I've got—it's got to—I've got to know before I can follow. And so I have to—it has to, you know, the Scripture, I study it, it's revealed to me, then I can walk in wisdom, walk in obedience to Christ. If I don't know it, then I can't do it effectively. And so I—then a young man took me aside and trained me for three years.

He was a coworker, and that discipling period matured me and helped me understand a call in my life, understand the maturity of what it means to really be a follower of Christ. And so when you come here, and that's my background, and so I see these young—many of those, I remember when we were training, you know what we do here. We train 411 Tree of Life. It is these discipleship models that are simple but biblical, but it's saturated with the Word. And I remember three and four believers would get around a Creole Bible because they had one Bible for three or four people with ripped pages. Or I remember in India, when we were there, they would only have the Book of John, and they would share it.

And so that becomes a struggle when you want the truth. Our goal is for a body of mature believers that can multiply. It becomes a missionary hub where they're at, that little group of disciples. We want to train them so they're making disciples around them. That becomes nearly impossible without the Word. I just found from my experience without the Word of God, a disciple cannot get to a point where he can make disciples. You have to have the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit continues to reveal that to them, and they know how to walk in it. And there takes some modeling and some coaching along that initial process, but eventually they're mature and they can do it on their own.

But without the Word, that would be impossible. So in my life, I saw that as my first seven years as a Christian, and I didn't have anybody around me to train me. And I had a King James version of the Bible, which I loved. I loved it, but I had a hard time understanding it, and so—and no one to really explain it to me. My heart goes out to those who don't have the Word in their heart language and then help to understand it and then be able to walk in it. So we take that as an important part of what we do here and across Africa and the other fields of harvest we're in.

It's a great question, brother, because it has a personal element to it. And I could see that when we're out bouncing around in the jungle somewhere or going to a village, it just comes out of you, like how much the Bible matters to you and the work that is done here and for those new believers that don't have it. And that really stuck with me, and I never forgot that. And I was like, someday I want to get that story on camera. This has been on a two-plus years ago. I've been thinking that. Anyway, so here we are, and that's pretty neat. You know, a lot of things have happened since, but let's bring it up to today.

So you were saying Senegal, which is where we are, when you were here, 2016, I think you said, when you first came, you basically couldn't get Bibles. They just didn't have Bibles. Guinea-Bissau, you said, had the same issue. Is that still the case right now where we sit? It's 2026, ten years later. Is that still the case for new believers here? No, because there's been some organizations that have stepped up that helped us. We let the need be known.

And this particular Bible here, if it's okay, this is a Portuguese Creole Bible. And so it is the language of Guinea-Bissau. It was a Portuguese colony, and everyone speaks a Portuguese Creole there. They may not know Portuguese, but they know Portuguese Creole.

But there's a lot of Portuguese Creole speakers in southern Senegal because they're right up there on the border. And these particular Bibles were shipped to us by Heralds of Hope, and they have filled a need for us with the Portuguese Creole that it's hard to explain the need that has been met through those Bibles.

We were never able to do that until organizations like Heralds of Hope, equipping a saint, sent us the first shipment, and then equipping the saints put us in contact with Heralds of Hope, and they have just been really a God-sent for us. And these particular French Bibles here that just we just got this shipment in was sent by Deed in Truth, another organization that partners with us. And we were out completely. We were almost out. We had about—if you can go back there and behind us and look, we had about two boxes of French Bibles. Really? We were down to nothing. Well, you're down to very few. That's great because we just walked in there yesterday, I think it was, in this building here behind us, and there's a lot more than two boxes of Bibles in there.

That was a great sign. There's about 12,000, 15,000 in there right now. And they'll go quickly because we'll use them in a few other different countries as well. So now there isn't. Now there isn't near the need. And also we've had another organization help us with audio Bibles.

Yeah, that's been a real blessing for us. So like, there is a real need for Scriptures, but what you're saying is like, there are options, basically. Like, because I think that was the piece I didn't understand until I got here. I was like, well, why can't we just go down the street and buy some Bibles? Like, okay, someone comes to faith and they need a Bible. I mean, of course, I think every Christian ever would agree on that, right? You need a Bible. Okay, let's go get it. I mean, it—and then you were telling me, well, yeah, you can't really just go buy one in-country. Like, right? Like, or it's hard to get, at least in bulk.

I know it varies depending on where you go, but talk to me more about that. Well, you know, when I first—when we were here, began to work in 2016, and work began to go in 2017, I went to the capital, to Dakar. You couldn't find a Bible here in Zig to buy. So I went to Dakar. I'd heard there was a Bible store, some type of Bible society of some sort there. So I went and I did find it, and they had—I needed at least—I needed 100 French Bibles, is what I asked for, and they had 10. And I asked, well, is there a way you can get me 100? And they said they, you know, they hadn't had Bibles for some time, didn't know if they were ever going to get any more.

And this is the capital city. That's the biggest city in the entire country. Yes, and it was in Dakar. Yeah, they couldn't get it. That's when I realized, okay, we're going to have to go to the outside. And we had very similar in Guinea-Bissau when Heralds of Hope came with us.

You could find some at a Bible society. There was a little pricey, and there weren't a lot of them. So, you know, when you have someone who's, you know, working, you know, hand-to-mouth daily, and it costs, you know, it would be expensive then if they could find one to buy anyway. So, and when you have lots of growth really quickly, and that's what a lot of the things that we do in training and training disciples, you end up having the gospel goes quickly, and then all of a sudden you have this need of the Word of God quickly. And it keeps, as you train disciples and they continue to make disciples and you have no, and this need just grows and you have no way to fill it, and it becomes a little, it's not, we always say, well, it's not a bad problem, but actually it can be.

You can grow so fast. Yeah, you can't even get them Bibles as quick enough, you know, if the church is growing so quick and you don't have access to get these. So like these two, say, the French ones and these Creole ones for Guinea-Bissau, these had to come from outside. Like, you couldn't get this in-country. Yeah, I couldn't get this. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't get these in. Well, just bring them over on a boat or a truck or like that. Yeah, that's it. Just, yeah, I think these were printed outside of the states, and then they were shipped in to Dakar where we got them and took them to Bissau. We left about 6,000 here and then another 12,000 or so into Guinea-Bissau because we needed them here.

And this one was brought in. These were shipped from the states and brought straight from to Dakar, and then we've got them. We got them in about less than a month. So we shipped them and got them less than a month and got them here. But like what you're describing is something that would have been an issue for years until people started trying to fill this need then for these countries. Yes, yes, sir. That's correct. That's kind of tragic, actually, if you think about all those years before. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to explain that.

It's not like there weren't mission organizations here. For whatever reason, that gap left unfilled. And so, and we can, you know, we see God's hand. We're very fortunate to come in, and we saw it, and what we had, you know, we didn't have the resources to fill it, but organizations did. And I'm grateful for the fact that they joined us in that because it's had a tremendous impact here. Just getting the Word of God in here is, you know, we're in the villages every day sharing the gospel and that you know some of those stories, and you've got some people here that you know, and there's such a hunger for the Word. You know, they're idol worshipers and they're coming or Islamic.

And so, and right now we're working in an area that's heavily animistic, and they've chased the idol for centuries, and they're tired. The idol leaves them empty. It takes from them, never gives anything back. They don't know Christ. They may have heard of Him or there've been some influence with Catholicism, where Catholicism mixes the two, syncretism. But you go in and you clearly explain the gospel and the hope in Christ, and man, they just grab Him. They want that. And so to follow that up immediately with, oh, here's an audio Bible, begin to listen to it, or if they can read, here, begin to read and we'll help them, guide them where to initially start, and then we continue to come back and train them.

We'll go back and that's they'll listen to that audio Bible. There's a girl, there's a lady that came to faith. She's sick, but she was hungry for Christ. She had been, they had taken her to the Marabou and did all these different things, animistic things, and to heal her. And I think she was just so tired, and she had a dream before we showed up that somebody was going to come and tell her about Jesus. And we were there that day. And my daughter shared Christ with her and with the team that was with her, and she came to faith. And we gave her a mega voice, which is the Word of God here from, that's preloaded, and this particular one is a Pular.

It's a Pulani. And it's a great little tool. It's solar. It has the New Testament in it. And so we gave her that, and we gave her also a radio with an SD card that's able to play her heart language in a two-gigabyte or four-gigabyte SD card. And what she does is she listens to her mega voice until it runs out of battery. This one's charging outside, and she'll go put that one in the sun, and then she'll listen to this. She's almost listening to it 24 hours a day. Wow! You'll go in and teach her, and she said, "Yeah, I've already listened to that scripture. I know what you're talking about." That's the power of the Word, and there's just a hunger for it.

And I just want to thank those who continue to give. I mean, it makes me emotional thinking about it because, you know, I grew up in America. I got 10 Bibles in my house. Every translation in the world that I want. I can get commentaries. I can get study Bibles. And they just want to just give me that, and they'll just sit there and they'll carry it around and listen to it. Just hungry for the Word. They've never heard it. They've never heard it before. They've never seen it.

You give them an SD card, and they listen to, like the area we're working is a manjack. It's a manjack area, and they've never heard the Word of God in their heart language, and you turn it on and listen to them and listen, watch them smile and say that. And in their heart language, they never heard it before. Yeah. And I was, my daughter gave one the other day with the team she was on, and he said, he started smiling. He goes, "That's my language.

That's my language." It's hard for Westerners to grab that because we've just been inundated with it. And if you've been in the church or you've been, you know, if you've been in a follower of Christ, I mean, I wasn't in the church growing up, but I came to faith in Christ, and I've always had a Bible since then. And now I've got many of them. And when you see the hunger and the joy, the joy that, and what the Holy Spirit does with that, and the transformation that comes through it, there's just nothing better than that. And so, I mean, I love the Word, and I'm just committed to, I think we as an organization is committed to get it to, well, to the ends of the earth.

So there's no place left. Yeah. Right? And, you know, I know KC does the Kingdom Channels, doesn't like plugs, but I love them. And I'm thankful because you all have been such a huge part of getting the Word of God to people that've never had it. And that deserves to be said. I'm thankful, so thankful for organizations that help us. Yeah, that touches an emotional core. Forgive me for being that way. This is supposed to be an upbeat interview.

But it means I just am so grateful, brother, because I see the transfer. You guys don't get to see it, but I see it. I see it. So I'm thankful. Well, when I was here last, that first container load of the Creole Bibles had gotten in, and you're like, "Hey, let's go see this in Guinea-Bissau and in one of the churches there, big church."

And started giving them out to the different people in the church there. And I saw one guy get it and immediately sits down, him and someone else who hadn't got a copy yet. And he literally does this and opens it at page one. He does this. He goes to Genesis 1. Let's see if we can find it. And he goes to Genesis 1, and he's like, and he starts reading. And like, 15 seconds later, he immediately looks to the person beside him. He's like, "Did you see this? Did you read this?" He had never read it. He had never seen it, you know? Isn't that awesome? I was like, "I wish I could understand their language and hear that conversation."

Can you imagine being a Christian never having one of these? And you're reading Genesis 1 for the first time from your very own Bible. Like, that would be an incredible experience. So glad you got to see that. Oh, well, there was another lady there too, and they asked to do the translator. And she was just overjoyed. And she said, "Yeah, I've been a Christian for 10 years. I've never had a Bible. I've never had a Bible." And she just, I'm just like, so, so happy to finally have one. And there was a part of me that's like, "Yeah, this is wonderful and so neat to see." And there was also a part of me that's like, "Well, that's just about wrong.

Like, we got to do something." Or, you know what I mean? It just doesn't feel right. Like, if we're all Christians together, it feels like something we should all care about that, wherever it would be in the world, whether that's your neighbor right next door or wherever that person may be, that is a believer and doesn't have a Bible. It just feels, there are very few things that I think all Christians can always agree on, but it feels like that's one of them. You know what I mean? You know? Yeah, exactly. That's right. I want to drill in on the audio Bibles a little bit more because you've mentioned that.

This was interesting because they were showing me this at your house the other day, right? But like, these little packets of micro SD cards, and it's like, okay, so this is 50. What language is this right here? That's Creole. That's a Portuguese Creole. Oh, okay. So it's a Portuguese Creole. And like, this is 50 of them. And I can easily, I could fit a bunch of these packets in my hand. It's like so cool because you can easily distribute these. That's right.

But I think we would say like, a print Bible would be ideal because then, you know, we can follow along with the preacher as they're, you know, doing a sermon. But I don't know if people, at least for me, it was a real shock when I realized how many people in this area have never learned to read or write. Can you speak into that? Because like that, in that case, if they can't read or write, you basically have no other option except an audio Bible. Yes. I think, yeah, especially outside the city, like outside of Zigginshore here where we live, once you get out to the village, the literacy rate jumps. And especially for women, most women don't have a lot of education in the village, and so they're not able to read or write.

In fact, I know very few that do. I think there was one girl that's helping, leading a small group now that's a new church starting. She's the only one that can read out of that group. But most of the time, ladies are more so up not to read or write. And in the village, I would say it's the majority, the majority. We give out more audio Bibles than we do the written text, for sure. And so it's a huge ask. I mean, without the SD card, I mean, we would be crippled to get the Word of God into people's ears because we just, we wouldn't. Most of, you know, 60, 70%, maybe more, cannot, at least where we're working now, it's been my experience in this area, don't read, especially don't read French because that's definitely for the educated here.

Even though it's the language, that's definitely for the educated. And for the Portuguese Creole, there is, in Guinea-Bissau, if you go to school, you can read it. But if you don't, more than likely, you can't. Even though it can't, you can kind of teach it. It's an easier language. But for the French, you have to have gone to school, and so many, so many haven't done that. That's really interesting, though, because like when you told me like, "Yeah, we can just simply put an audio Bible on a micro SD card, and then people can plug it into their dumb phone or a, you know, an MP3 player if they have one, or, you know, a solar player like this, which you can pick up in a market or something," and then bingo, they have a Bible because they don't have internet.

You know, they're not going to be able to get an app or, you know, whatever to be able to find that online or something, or if they can't read, you know. I was just, they kind of, I never thought of that as something that could be done. And I guess you guys figured that out or something. I don't know. Somewhere you put that together, right? And you just started. Well, we started in India. We had the same problem in India. We saw a lot of growth, and we had a large percentage couldn't read in the village. Just like your, you had a high illiteracy rate. And so we used the SD cards. So when we came in April of 2016, we brought that strategy with us.

And as we started to have growth and we solved a need for the Word, we, so at the time, I just bought a duplicator and had a team bring it from the States. And we had, we could duplicate seven cards at the time, which I would spend hours, and my daughter would be on there. We would duplicate cards, whatever areas we're working.

But now, you know, we get a lot of cards in from people that are duplicating them in the States for us. And so. That's really cool. Yeah. And so we were able to, we're able to get them out en masse now.

Yeah. So you've mentioned Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, because that's the area where we are. But if I understand right, there's a network of people that you're connected to and different national workers, missionaries, people that live in various places around the world, in a lot of places beyond these countries. Is there a need for Bibles where those people are working? Maybe you can name some of those places and so on. Yeah. I think we're seeing, we're seeing massive growth like in Sierra Leone, Niger, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Pakistan, Pakistan as well, even in some places in East Africa like Kenya. And so the need for the audio Bibles, specifically in those West African countries I just mentioned, like Burkina and Guinea, Niger and Chad, if you look at their illiteracy rate, it's pretty high, especially like Niger.

It's high. And I think you've met some of the leaders from there, and they've planted a little less than 300 churches over the last four years or so there. And we're not sure how many new believers, but a lot. And the majority can't read or write. And so we have a challenge is how to, okay, how do we meet the need? How do we meet, how do we get the audio Bible into their hands? Because that's what they need. We can, we, the written text, there are places inside the capital in Niger that we can actually buy, like French Bibles or some local language Bibles there for the need. But the audio Bible is what we need vastly there.

And so, and in order to get them in the Niger, you have to call our leaders outside. We got to fly them outside of Niger because of the security issues and then be able to get the SD cards into their hands. And so, and then by the local, we can buy the radios locally, normally. Like this is a locally bought radio for about $6, $7. And that's a normal, maybe $8 max in a local market to play the SD cards. So for places like Sierra Leone where they're working in the mountains and some of the, some of you guys that you know of that within, you know. And there is just nothing there, and nobody reads.

I mean, nobody's able to read. They've never had any education. So everything has to be audio Bible. And so we figure now that there's been 30,000 new believers in Sierra Leone, and the vast majority can't read or write. Well, that's an awesome challenge. Whoa. How do we. Whoa. You need a lot. Yeah. How do we get, and you've got to give them this. I mean, they call in the villages in Sierra Leone, they call this the little preacher because. Oh, really? Oh, that's neat. Okay. And so they'll put the SD card. And so they'll gather in most of the villages.

They come to faith en masse there. They tend to come as a village. And so they'll come together. Then once they come to faith, they'll build their own little structure. And then they'll come in the evenings to listen after they come out of the fields, and they'll listen to the Word of God. And so they'll take the SD card and just let it play from Genesis to Revelation in their heart language. And they'll all just come together. And so for some of them, if the church plants are close, then we can only give like one of these for three churches. And so they'll just pass it on. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. One of these for three churches, not three people.

No, just one. Yeah. We wish we could give it to every family. But yeah, just sometimes they have to share between churches. Well, that's an enormous need because those churches, I mean, they might be fairly far apart then. And so they would have to like share it amongst themselves, have it on a rotation or something. Every week, the new church gets it, and then it'll just keep working its way around it to where we're able to get all the churches.

I mean, that, okay. Whoa. Yeah. That's a huge, that's a huge need. So the SD cards, two bucks maybe? Yeah. Yeah. Something maybe. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. $2. That's to get them duplicated, and then they're locked so they can never delete the files or change them or anything, which I think is pretty important. You know, they're locked to only be the scriptures. And this, and so these become the challenge then is how do we get enough of these? Because that can get pricey. When you need several thousand of them, they're $8, $10 a piece in some place, depending on which country you're buying it in. And so, but, you know, we feel the responsibility to continue to try to meet the needs as we like.

When we go, when we visit Sierra Leone, we take lots of SD cards with us and as many radios as we can carry and taking them home up there. Wow. Wow. You always out, you know, you just outrun your resources. And that's, you know, when you see all that growth, you just outrun them. And so you just, you know, sometimes you have to read, okay, where's the most growth? It's here. Where's the most need? It's here. So, okay, let's focus it there. In other places, there's a need, but we just can't meet it. That's got to be tough, though, because if you get to a place and you only have one audio Bible for three churches, that has got to be hard to go ahead and give that and know that there's not enough and have to just continue on.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's, ugh. Yeah. You hope that, you know, the master trainers try to get back and do some teaching there as much as they can if they can't stay there. And so the, I mean, there's stories, I mean, there's so many stories of where they just placed the audio Bible. I know there was one recently in the leaders here, and you could ask them about it. They were the church, brand new church. They were getting ready to be, many of them were getting ready to be baptized. Our leader was with the trainers, and he was giving them, teaching them, giving them some scripture right before baptism. And about 20 people came out of the jungle, the bush there, and he didn't, even the people didn't know where they'd come from.

And so it was one of those villages where they had to share this. So the guy that was supposed to take it to the other village decided he was going to take it to a village that didn't know Christ. So he took the village, he took it there and played it for them, let them have it for a week.

And these people got saved. They heard the gospel through the radio. And they heard these, there was baptism, so they came and they found, they found our leader and said, "Hey, we want to be baptized too." And the trainers didn't know him, never had been to that village, but that's the power of the Word. And so our leader was able to sit down and clearly explain the gospel and, you know, they gave their lives to Christ. And they were all baptized that day. But that gives you an idea of the power, the power of the Word and the, and the, just the power of this, all these audio Bibles. They're just, man, I don't know what we'd do without them.

I don't, I haven't, I told you that before. Yeah. That, it's, it's, it's powerful stuff, but it's also really sobering because now we have like an obligation or a debt almost because now that we have a knowledge debt, that now that we know that this is real, this is a thing that exists in the world in many places. You've named quite a few countries, but I mean, I'm sure it's many places around the world, maybe even some places in America, you know? Yeah.

And now it's like a question of what do we do with that knowledge? Right. You know, I'm not quite sure myself. It's hard to kind of even know. I don't know. Do you have words on that? You know, we're being blessed to be out here and live, you know, to be in a place, you know, I always tell my daughter who works with, as you know, she works with us in the field, don't ever take what we're doing for granted to see, to do pioneering work and to see people hearing about Christ for the first time, coming to faith. And as the Lord says in this necessary sanctification process that begins from there, and to see the hunger for the Word.

I mean, you know, in the West, we don't see that as much, that hunger, just that hunger for it and the love for it. It's not that we don't love the Word, but, you know, it's just you, if you come from a Christian type of culture, background, just, you know, contrast that with never.

I mean, you've been enslaved to darkness. You've worshiped idols, some type of false religion. Or in the case of Sierra Leone, you're sacrificing your children to these idols. And all of a sudden, this hope comes, this light comes into the darkness, and you're, man, they grab it. And now they just want more. Give me more of that. Give me more of it. Give me more teaching, please. And then, and they, and please, I mean, we can't, we've got to have more radios than just one. You know, my family needs a radio to listen to. And so we're the only ones working in those areas. So we carry that weight with us. There is a, God has given us that fruit.

We have a responsibility to train them, disciple them. And I tell the trainers all the time, that's a heavy responsibility. Don't take that lightly. That is a heavy responsibility that we have. That's part of the Great Commission. You know, teach them all that I've commanded you. And I mean, how can you live if you don't know? You can't live the Christian life what you don't know about it. It's just impossible. So how, you know, so now you have these people that are coming out of this darkness and they don't have the Word. How apt are they to go back? How are they to turn, turn to the left and go back and try to mix it?

Mix the animism or idol worship or, you know. Any of, yeah, exactly. You don't know. Yeah. Without the Word. Yeah. And so for those who partner with us and help us with the Bibles or help us with the audio Bibles, I don't, sometimes the urgency and the weight of that, I mean, for us in the field, it's just we, we, we have to have that.

For the strength of the churches in these areas, we call them our networks, but they're really the church, these local churches that are being planted through networks of local trainers and local missionaries. Without the Word, it's weak and susceptible to the snake, to the Satan. It's very susceptible, right? I mean, he's going to, he never stops warring with the Word, though. When false teaching comes or that threat of syncretism, the Word keeps him from that. You know, they're being trained probably. The Word keeps him from that. It's not the way to go. We're not following that way. You know, we were out this path right before you all got here.

We went on Sunday night to have a new church. We had just baptized 14 of them. The church was forming now. They were going to take the first time, they're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper together. So we all went up there together to celebrate it with them. And there was a young girl that stood up and said, "Listen, you know," and she had a Creole Bible. And she had a Creole Bible from the days, the old, the first shipment that we had ever sent here was shipped by Keith Jones from Equipping the Saints. He's passed on the glory now. He was a dear friend. And he, she had one of his Bibles.

And we realized she was fruit of the first trainings in about 2017. And she had, and she had that Bible. And she stood up in front of all of them and said, "Listen," she was the only believer in that area. Now she's part of that church. And she's very stable. And so she was telling them, "Listen, this tells us how we should live now. This tells us you have to put away all those things now.

And you have to study the Bible that they've given you. You have to listen to the audio Bibles that they've given you because we can't live, we can't live the double life anymore. We're either all in or for Christ or we're not." And see that, she knows she's starting to understand the Word and what Christ has called her to do as a, called her to as a disciple. Well, you don't know those things without the Word. You've got to have the Word. And the Holy Spirit begins to convict and guide and teach. And we're seeing that happen now because we are able to saturate those areas with the Word of God. Whenever there's new believers, and even if there's not, they want the Word, we're going to give it to them.