On an ordinary day in the early ’70s, 9th-grader Craig Clayton sat on the patio with his Great Aunt Suzie after a homecooked dinner. Aunt Suzie, a 70-year-old with a knack for dishing out witty spiritual mantras and a love for two-stepping to Frank Sinatra, asked her nephew to read Scripture to her. This was a typical occurrence. However, it’s what Craig uncovered next that turned an ordinary evening upside down.
“When I finished reading the verse, she said something to the effect of, ‘Sweetheart, I’d love to be able to read the word of God for myself one day,’” Craig reminisced. “So I handed her the Bible, and she said, ‘Baby, don’t you know I can’t read?’”
Stunned, Craig immediately set out on a quest to change things. “I said, ‘Well, Auntie. We’re going to fix that.’”
Fourteen-year-old Craig might not have been trained to teach literacy, but together, he and his aunt explored labels in the kitchen and grocery store until she was able to confidently decipher words on different foods.
At the time, teaching his aunt to read was simply Craig’s way of showing her love. However, it’s an experience that God used to prepare Craig for his eventual role as a volunteer with the Our Daily Bread Ministries Literacy Program.
Since its inception in 2021, the Our Daily Bread Ministries (ODBM) Literacy Program has taught more than ten thousand students across Africa to read English with modified Our Daily Bread devotionals, Bible stories, and more biblical resources.
Today, Craig is the founder and senior pastor of The Way Bible Church International, an independent Christian Church in Orlando, Florida. He heard about the ODBM Literacy Program after randomly striking up a conversation with another ODBM volunteer in a bank in June of 2023, and just five months later, Craig and his congregation helped introduce it to more than fifty pastors, teachers, and educators in Johannesburg, South Africa. Craig and his wife returned in May of 2024 to open the Mzansi Literacy and Education Center in the township of Kaigso, near Johannesburg, South Africa.
“I’ll never forget the way those kids responded,” Pastor Craig said about the center’s grand opening in May of 2024. “They don’t get the big picture of what that building’s going to do, but they know that they’re going to improve their reading. When they started doing the program, you could see lightbulbs going on. I got goosebumps.”
But for Craig and The Way Bible Church, their work isn’t just about helping Africans acquire practical skills. It’s about how literacy will impact their faith. “The scourge of illiteracy has allowed heresy to spread in many parts of the world. Without the ability to read, you can’t dig into Scripture and let the Spirit reveal itself to you,” he said. “Now, these kids won’t just be able to read the Bible but tell their mothers and families about the Word of God.”
Craig said that he hopes the Mzansi Literacy and Education becomes a launching pad for other ODBM Literacy Program locations. His travel plans this year include returning to South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
But he knows through every African child impacted, he holds closely the memory of his first student: “Someday, I’m going to sit with my Great Aunt Suzie in heaven, feet dangling over a cloud, and tell her, ‘You’ll never guess what I did.’”
If you’d like to learn more about supporting the Our Daily Bread Ministries Literacy Program, click here.
