For many, reading Bible stories is an important part of our childhood. Whether we read stories like David and Goliath during Sunday school or with our parents before bedtime, these moments with our children’s Bibles shaped who we are today and taught us about Jesus’ love for us.
In Africa, many Christian adults also recognize how Scripture can impact their children.
“My friend Dan had heard from Africans for over a decade that they need an affordable, accessible, easy-to-read children’s Bible for kids,” said Ashlie Head.
A nurse practitioner living in Michigan, Ashlie’s spiritual outreach was once limited to her community, but in 2020, her longtime family friend Dan Kramer, Our Daily Bread Ministries’ Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, invited her into a project that would touch hearts across the Atlantic Ocean: creating a children’s Bible for kids in Africa using simplified English.

At first, this project seemed daunting, but Ashlie trusted the Lord. “God had very much been prompting something bigger in me, so when Dan presented this project idea, my friends and I decided we wanted to do something that we could not do in our own power.”
This consisted of Ashlie and two other friends jumping into the world of children’s Bible literacy. First, they studied different children’s Bibles to see the kinds of paraphrasing and pictures one can often find in the market. Then, Dan, a 15-year veteran of the Bible translating industry, trained them to take English Scripture and modify it for lower reading levels.
“We weren’t interpreting Scripture,” Ashlie said. “Just seeing how it can be simplified. Like, maybe a verse has a long difficult word that could be broken down into three easier words.”
Ashlie and her small team of Bible “simplifiers” started with the book of Mark, pulling Scripture from the Unlocked Literal Bible so there wouldn’t be any copyright issues. After three months of hard work—plus help from members of their church—they simplified their first book of the Bible.
“We were proud, but God quickly showed us that this process would take forever if it were just the three of us working.”
Yet an unexpected blessing came soon after. When a trip to Ethiopia was abruptly canceled, Ashlie’s team and Dan looked for something else productive to do with their planned time off.
“We had a last-minute shift, and we took a long road trip,” said Ashlie. “We visited churches in Virginia and Pennsylvania that we had connections with and trained more people on how to do this. Once we started utilizing more of the body of Christ, everything moved much faster.”
Seeing the book I worked on in kids’ hands for the first time was so special.
Ashlie Head
With the help of these newly trained Our Daily Bread Ministries (ODBM) volunteers, plus more church partners in Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, Ashlie and Dan’s team were able to simplify the entire New Testament in a year and a half. They even tested their first modified book—Mark—with young Nigerian readers this past May.
“Our readers ranged from age 5 to 12, and we observed them reading but also asked them questions to see if they actually understood what they were reading,” said Ashlie. “It went super well, and seeing the book I worked on in kids’ hands for the first time was so special.”
But this children’s Bible project isn’t over. Ashlie explained the importance of “checking” each simplified book before officially marking it complete.
“We have volunteers compare our simplified English versions to the original Hebrew to make extra sure that we didn’t unintentionally change any meanings of Scripture,” she said. “We even have African churches that go through each book with a fine-toothed comb too.”

So far, 14 New Testament books have been marked approved, and as Ashlie’s team continues to send more books to these “checkers,” they’re also busy with the Old Testament.
“We’ve officially translated about 66% of the Old Testament, so we’ve got a ways to go,” Ashlie said. “But it’s our big prayer to complete the entire Old Testament by the end of the year.”
There are more goals, too, like creating study questions to go along with each book of the Bible and translating it into more languages for African readers.
“Our plan is that once our children’s Bible is finished, we can distribute [it] all across Africa,” Ashlie said. “We want this to be a children’s Bible that’s marketed to everyone and anyone who wants it.”
If you’d like to get involved in helping ODBM create this simplified Children’s Bible or sign up to receive Ashlie’s project newsletter, please email her at ashlie.head@odb.org.