Moving from a rural part of Senegal to the biggest city has brought a ton of changes to our lives and work – things are so different for us now, it’s almost like we are in another country. Many of the things we used to do very regularly we never do anymore – and so it was like slipping back into our old lives a bit when Katie started teaching Sunday School in Wolof at the church we attend here in Dakar. 

How it started…

…How it’s going

The picture at the top was taken in 2004 in a village near Kaffrine of Katie teaching one of her first (of many!) children’s Bible storying groups. The picture at the bottom was taken during Sunday School at our church just a couple weeks ago.

Up until now, Sunday School at our church here in Dakar has been mostly taught in French but recently a group of boys who don’t go to school and who have never been to church before have begun attending so we realized we needed to offer teaching in Wolof. So Katie pulled out her well-used chronological Bible storying booklets and the lesson plans she developed to go with them. So far she has taught the first four stories and she is still learning all the kids’ names but she is really enjoying this opportunity. Pray for all of the kids to understand, remember, and believe what they hear!

Sometimes our second time around provides a chance to improve something that was good and make it better – I recently had a chance to get some things right with a Bible study program I wrote a couple of years ago.

I put this together to solve some specific problems I had encountered when helping Senegalese church leaders with Bible study programs. The app was fine but showed my deficiencies as a coder – the text in each translation scrolled together to a degree but could only find the right paragraph, not scroll to the right verse. The data had to all be downloaded before the user could do anything – so it took more than a minute to load the web version. Not good.

On the other hand, once it loaded, it showed two Wolof versions, a French and an English version along with biblical Greek for the NT, and was simple and uncluttered. And above all, it was easy to get to and available for web, Windows, macOS, and iPad. And in 2023, getting that far was absolutely maxing out my abilities.

So fast forward to 2025 – and AI coding is now a thing. I have done some experimenting and even written whole apps with AI – and so I went back to try to solve some of the deficiencies in this app, and I got all the to-fix items done – plus some more! – in a week or so of work. The verses now scroll together smoothly, the content gets loaded from small chunked files, and the search uses many small index files – all to achieve a faster and less memory-intensive app. I would not have been able to do all that without AI coding assistant’s help! God uses many different tools to help send out His Word!

You can test drive the new version of the app:

web: http://app.kaddugyalla.com

(the above link will send you to the mobile app download page if you are using mobile or the desktop version if you’re on a computer or iPad)

Windows: http://sng.al/win

macOS & iPad: http://sng.al/mac

What does coding with AI look like? It’s a bit different than AI in the browser; it’s a command line tool that sits in your development environment and, with the user’s permission, can write code, make new files, save files, and even run the program and do diagnostic work. It’s amazing how much I can do and how quickly I can do it when using the AI assistant!

We are thankful for a wonderful four days with about 300 pastors from across Senegal from Tuesday to Friday this week. Thanks for praying with us!

Our guest speaker, Dr Keith Ferdinando, spoke on Christ’s victory over evil spirits. The treatment was a panoramic Bible exposition of the subject from across Scripture from someone deeply learned in the field. For the conference audio and information (in French) check out http://bpp.sng.al

Our teammate Andrew at left and Dr Keith at right

In between the plenary sessions, we had workshops led by folks who work in Senegal. We had sessions on:

• How the Reformers battled superstition

• Understanding our civic rights and responsibilities as a religious minority in Senegal

• Christians, the church, and politics

• Sending and supporting missionaries from Senegal

In addition to the books distributed at the conference in both physical and digital format, we also had asked a group of experienced Senegalese pastors to produce chapters for a new book on ministry in Senegal that we also distributed at the conference with chapters on:

• The Gospel that Removes Shame

• What is the Kingdom of God?

• How to Motivate a Congregation to Witness

• Urban Ministry: Challenges and Opportunities

• How to Do Ministry Among Teenagers

• How the Church Can Better Help Singles

• How to Organize a Sunday School for Children

• Ministry Among Women

• How the Church Can Better Help Widows and Those in Mourning

• The Challenge of Contextualization: Remaining Both Biblical and Contextual

I am particularly excited to begin reading this book completely written by pastor-scholars from right here in Senegal!

We also had of course wonderful times of seeing warm reunions of pastors who live far apart and don’t get to see each other often – and participating in those retrouvailles ourselves!

Our team leader Andrew did a phenomenal job of setting up and hosting the conference. Many had a hand in the preparation but he has really guided the planning through the past year-plus. We had a very smooth four days without any emergencies or hiccups.

I led two sessions on how to use the Livros app that I made – and I learned a few things during the conference about things I need to change to make the login process easier for other SIM teams in other countries who will use the app in the future. But by and large it was a successful launch! Many of the pastors really appreciated the ‘offline-first’ functionality of the app that takes into account users who have intermittent internet access.

A couple of quotes from participants:

    Thank you very much to all the organizers. We are so blessed by all the teachings and various resources received during the 2025 Pastor’s Book Set for our edification and improvement in our ministry.

    I thank you with all my heart for the library. May God prosper your work and continue to inspire you.

Continue to pray for these pastors and their difficult and often (from a human perspective) unseen work in far-flung parts of Senegal.

Above is the group shot from the last PBS conference, in 2011

We’re excited to kick off the conference tomorrow afternoon! We’ll spend the morning getting the remaining materials there and set up, and then in the afternoon start welcoming the pastors and church leaders; registration and some opening ceremonies tomorrow afternoon, and then get into the teaching on Wednesday. You can follow along and see what’s in store on the conference program at https://bpp.sng.al/programme (you can get your browser to translate it into English if your French is rusty). One of our intrepid teammates got the physical books up to Dakar from storage site out of the city today and they are ready to rock.

This conference is not just about the teaching and the books, it’s also about the fellowship – pastors from different denominations being able to see each other and catch up and trade notes on what is happening in different areas of the country and just be encouraged! It certainly was an encouraging time for us in 2011 and – I know this time will be different, it won’t be encouraging in exactly the same way, but I’m sure it will be encouraging, and I just pray that for each of the participants they would what God wants to give them during the time.

Pray for us with logistics, the facility, the food, and all of the things that happen during a (for us) big conference like this. This will be a busy time, but it will also be a special time of working together with our SIM teammates on this wonderful project – many of us work on projects with others outside of our mission, some of us work alone, and we see each each other, but rarely all work together on one project, so this is a special thing in the life of our team to all work on the same thing at the same time and just see each other a bit more than normal and enjoy each other’s company.

All the books are in now!

Of course pray that the PBS app would be well-understood and function as expected – with 300 people using it all of a sudden when it’s been about 5 to 10 people up till now. I spent today reducing the size of the files and loading in the rest of the books and audiobooks. I’ll do a session during the conference teaching the pastors how to use it. Pray that would go well too and that it would make sense.

Pray for Katie as she has a bad cold and is staying home from teaching school tomorrow – not fun and especially this week with all the extra activity.

Could this be our church’s new home? 

When our daughters were at boarding school in Dakar, we would come to the capital city every six weeks or so to see them. When we came to Dakar we would always attend a certain small church here because Corey had known several of the Senegalese church leaders for many years and a few of our SIM teammates were also a part of that church. It was also one of the few churches in Dakar that was intentional about using the Wolof language throughout the service. So when we moved here just over a year ago, we visited all four of the churches we were told used Wolof in their services and ended up quickly settling in at this church. It has been wonderful to get to deepen old friendships there and make new ones, and Corey was immediately invited to preach in Wolof every other month – which he has enjoyed!  But last year, after renting the same space for fourteen years, the landlord told the church that we had to move out. After some pushing back the deadline, the end finally came. We have a temporary meeting space for the next six months but the church’s desire is to purchase a property so we can establish a permanent church presence in the neighborhood.

Property in Dakar is very expensive due to limited land availability, with the city bordered by the ocean on three sides. Church leaders were discouraged by high prices, but recently found a building for sale in the same neighborhood for $300,000, which is a great deal for its size and location. The building has a large room suitable for a sanctuary and several smaller rooms for Sunday School and offices. If we can purchase it, we could begin using it right away! In addition to being an amazing find, it turns out that the landlord and our pastor are from the same language group and the landlord is not only open to selling his property to Christians, he is willing to hold on to it for a few months for us while we try to raise the funds! On a regular Sunday there are fewer than 40 people at church and the offering plate usually yields less than $200 US. Humanly speaking, we can’t afford to buy a building. But God…

Dakar currently has a population of three and a half million people and the city is growing. Our best estimate is that there are only about 15 Protestant churches in Dakar (some with questionable theological positions). This makes sense given that 97% of the population identify as Muslim. What doesn’t make sense is that of those 15 Protestant churches, only a handful use the Wolof language in their services. Most of the churches use only French and are mostly made up of non-Senegalese people. This use of solely French is worrisome not only because over 70% of the population speaks Wolof (and only a third speak French) but also because it perpetuates the widespread belief here that Christianity is a foreign (white) religion. (Never mind that this perception is false – there have been Christians in Africa since the 1st century AD and today more Christians live in Africa than on any other continent – there just aren’t many here in Senegal!)

We love that our church understands the need to use the Wolof language to reach this community. We deeply respect the church leaders and appreciate their thoughtful, sound biblical teaching. The church body is small but committed to Bible study, prayer, joyful worship, obedience even in the face of persecution, and regular fasting. The church members want to share the Gospel with others and have planted a church in another region of Senegal that is growing rapidly. This little congregation is truly a bright light! Would you pray with us that God will provide the money for the church to purchase this building? We serve the same God who provided for the believers in Jerusalem – partially through the believers in Corinth – and who promised through Paul: “God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.” (2 Corinthians 9:8)

If you want to help, you can send a check to this address with a note that it’s for the Evangelical Assembly in Dakar, Senegal:

Christian Life Center
6363 183rd  Street
Tinley Park, IL 60477

You will receive a tax-deductible receipt. For more information about the church and additional pictures of the house, visit the capital campaign page on the church’s website. We are working on a way to make donations online – we’ll keep you posted! Thanks in advance !