Bonnes nouvelles! In November 2024 we were thrilled to launch a French version of the FreeBibleimages site with 888 translated stories. In 2023 we organised a fund-raising Bible Quiz to get this project underway and are so delighted God provided the additional funds needed at each stage of the development. We were greatly helped in this task by Bénédicte Bailleux and her sister Noémie who did so much translation work behind the scenes. Bénédicte is a school teacher and both sisters were keen to provide free Christian teaching resources in French. Altogether we were able to build up a team of 8 translators to get this project delivered and we want to thank them all. We are also very grateful to David Gosnell of Goznet Systems, who created the digital workflows to get more than 20,000 files online. It has been a great joint effort. We trust these free resources will not only be a help to those living in France, but also in the many African countries that speak French. Merci à tous.

We are delighted to launch a version of our website in German with over 1,200 translated Bible story sets. This has been made possible by the faithful ongoing translation work of Kathrin Berg over several years. She has volunteered her skills and worked with our development team to make this possible. Without her input and time, this project would not have been possible. Kathrin says, 'It is great to help others tell children about our great God.' She has also created www.derkindergottesdienst.de a German site with a curriculum to help Christians teaching in Sunday school, at home, or other teaching situations. The stories on that site link to the free resources at FreeBibleimages. We are deeply thankful to her for her dedicated service to God that will help those teaching this generation and those to come. There are over 100 million people in the world whose first language is German and we pray the German site – www.gratisbibelbilder.de – will be a blessing to many.

In September 2023 we launched a translated version of our website in Hindi. It can be viewed at www.hindibibleimages.org or www.3737371.org. Joining the FreeBibleimages team to work on this project were two Christians from India, now living in England. They have done an amazing job translating the website text and over 750 Bible stories using our online translation portal. They both have a real heart for the people of India and want them to have free Christian Education resources they can use. We also want to thank web developer David Gosnell who has created a brilliant online workflow that can automatically generate Bible story title slides with the correct text, picture and Bible reference. What a wonderful time saver! However, when it comes to maps, translating each location from English into Hindi is very time consuming. But we have put in the work as it is important to provide free translated resources for this and future generations. Over 585 million people speak Hindi as their first language so the potential to share the good news of Jesus is immense. Many Christians in India face growing persecution so it is important we pray for them and this project.

In September 2022 were thrilled to launch two new sites in Spanish and Portuguese. A church in the UK with a heart to reach South America with the Gospel funded the costs of translating over 1600 Bible stories and the web site text. FreeBibleimages captioned over 400 maps and created 1600 new credit and title slides in these two languages. We then assembled over 15,000 translated files in various formats that can be downloaded. The web developer we use, David Gosnell of Goznet Systems, did a great job developing the two sites and creating digital workflows for all the files. There are over 500 million people in the world whose native language is Spanish and more than 200 million whose first language is Portuguese. So in the years to come we trust our free resources will help those teaching the Bible in these languages. Biblica, the International Bible Society, kindly licensed the Nueva Versión Internacional 2015 (Spanish) and Nova Versão Internacional 2011 (Portuguese) to FreeBibleimages so that all the Bible stories references open the Biblical accounts for people to read. Do view and share our short promotional video about this new venture. Please pray for these two sites and the people it will help.

There are over 313 million people who speak Arabic and most have been taught that Jesus is just a prophet. To help people explore their understanding of Jesus we have just launched over 250 Free Bible story sets from the Gospels and the book of Acts on a new FreeBibleimages Arabic site. The Bible references for these are opened in an Arabic version of the Bible. Over 100 of these Bible stories have the option to view them as videos with the Bible narration in both a modern or more traditional version of the Arabic Bible. There are also options for Farsi or Urdu. People will be able to view these Bible stories online in story view or download the files for teaching. Do view our short promotional video about this new venture. Please pray for the Arabic FreeBibleimages site and the people it will help.

Wiesław, a Christian working in Poland has been translating our Bible stories to be used in Christian services and youth outreach camps there. When Poland went into coronavirus lock-down in April 2020 he assembled a team to work from home to accelerate this work. Should we develop a Polish site to host these? After all aren’t there languages such as Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese with massive populations we should prioritise first? Then a small gift of 100 złoty arrived from someone in Poland – the first donation ever from that land. We viewed that gift as the ‘widow’s mite’ and have moved forward in faith to develop a Polish site. The site, Bibliawobrazach is now live with over 400 Bible story sets in Polish with another 200 stories to go online soon. We thank God for all the hard work by the team in Poland and here in the UK to make this possible. God provided all we needed!

For many years a Romanian Christian woman called Tunde has been translating our Bible stories into Romanian. Last year we were pondering and praying whether to create a Romanian version of our site to host them. Just then an unexpected gift of £300 arrived from someone we did not know but had a heart to share the gospel with the people of ... guess where? ... Romania! So we decided to take a step of faith and go ahead. The site, Bibliainimagini, was launched in September 2020. God provided everything we needed!

So how do you reach families at home during the coronavirus shut-down? We were able to make all our images available to those setting up non-commercial live broadcasts and online videos. Over the last few weeks on public channels such as YouTube, plus church and school websites, thousands of people have posted Bible story videos in many languages. From a sample of 30 of these we calculated the average number of viewers for each video to be 516 people with the numbers increasing each day. We are so pleased to support this creativity.

In June 2020 we launched our 1,000th set of Free Bible story images. When the project started 10 years ago it took 18 months to get our first story online and we struggled to find more. So to reach a thousand stories in ten years is a great testimony of God’s help and provision coupled with a lot of hard work and perseverance. Once online a story is freely available all around the world and is a wonderful legacy for this generation and those to follow.

In mid-March 2020, as many regions of the world went into lock-down due to the coronavirus, we had a sudden loss of 16% of our visitors. Two weeks later, as churches and schools wrestled with the problem of how best to communicate to people at home, we had a sudden increase, new visitors rose by 65%. So, in this time of shut-down, new opportunities to help Bible teachers have opened up. So many are finding our Bible story images helpful as they broadcast live online church services and lessons.

We are looking for FreeBibleimages Promoters in regions around the world. What does it mean to be a Promoter? Well, firstly that you are a Christian who knows the value of telling Bible stories to all age groups. Secondly, you are eager to encourage those teaching the Bible at home and in local schools and churches in creative ways. Thirdly you are keen to publicise our free Bible story resources and find volunteer translators, where needed, to make these available in your region. If you would like to volunteer as a FreeBibleimages Promoter do get in contact.