A great deal of the month was spent on  indexing every language on the site in order to implement our new ‘native’ search engine. Up until now,  searching for a word or phrase in the Bible, in any language, would result in Google search engine results of our pages. From now on, the results are from an indexed page produced for each language, thus much more effective and concise. You may try it here [https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/kj/search.html], in English, and here, [https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/gb/search.html] in Chinese. It needs some fine tuning for each language but it is there and working for all 70 languages. PTL!

We have experienced a considerable increase in daily users of our main site this month. We registered an increase of almost one million in page views. It is encouraging to see how the Lord has matured Wordproject for such a time as this. So many are blessed with the Word of Life, at a time when fear, uncertainty and death is everywhere and there is very little encouragement  in the information and disinformation of the great confusion that is upon us. The truth is the first casualty in any war – as the saying goes, but in Jesus we have not only the Truth, but the Way and the Life too.

Considering that the internet is working at peak demand and it would not be a total surprise that it will get disrupted in certain parts of the world, we have renovated our  download page – this is a page where anyone can download the whole Bible in their respective language for use with a browser, but offline – It is here:

https://www.wordproject.org/download/bibles/

  We have improved our audio service considerably with the use of the new cloud service. Although slightly more expensive it is definitely a huge improvement as we continue to optimize it. This solution has come a time when we have received complaints from one of our service providers, who are concerned of our over use of their servers…we have obtained a concession of time to ease out the load and we are working on it.

The new WP plus Android App is growing as users seem happy with its useful interface and new features (4.8 approval rate). Reading and listening to the Bible has never been so easy – so different from the cumbersome cassettes we used 40 years ago, many times jamming inside the players, often braking and patched together again with scotch tape.  We are blessed. We reached 2500 users this month for this app. Since only 6 languages are included, we have been working on expansion and have started with audio indexing for Italian and German, while Korean and Swahili are on the horizon. This process takes some knowledge of the language and about 100 hours of work per language, a bottleneck that will keep us searching for solutions in months to come.

One of the new users, this month, said this: (Translated from Spanish)
“It is excellent, we can educate ourselves daily and turn to God, the only one who can protect us from this pandemic. See Psalm 91 and Joshua 1. 8 and 9 and their lives will change“

Almost every day we receive requests for improvements and many offers for help in correcting or improving different things on the website and the apps. Thus, Wordproject has become a network of people working together and contributing in different ways to bring the Word of God to the people in many languages in many regions of the world.  We are coordinating some of these efforts and praying  for the wisdom to bring it all together for the Glory of God.

Two (of many) comments received at our mail box this month:

Praise the Lord Jesus Christ – I take this time to thank everyone for the blessings in need of God’s word that can make me and my ministry seek God with the knowledge of Christ [O.S.]

“it seems there is something wrong with the audio version of the english KJV bible. none of the books will play. please look into this for me. I use this site a lot. I am dying with ALS. and I cannot move anymore .i use a special computer that allows me to use yourvsite to hear the bible.” [K.] (fixed)

Thank you so much for coming this far.

Stay safe. Wash and Pray!

by Donna

‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence’. Psalms 91:1-3
In reading these encouraging verses we realize that they do not promise that believers will never catch or die from a disease. Instead, we have a strong refuge and fortress to enter during times of pandemic. This keeps us from the dread and fear which accompany these times. and the psalmist later encourages us to call upon The Lord, set our love upon Him and and set Him on high. He in turn will satisfy us, deliver us and show us His salvation! O praise the Lord for these precious promises!
We have made it thru the month of March, another month of quarantine for us. After 40 days of zero reported cases of covid-19, Macau is again reporting statistics of imported Corona virus in the territory. Many residents and students have returned from abroad thus causing this new surge of infection. The government and healthcare entities are doing a great job of implementing isolation and quarantine measures regarding individuals entering from abroad, thus reducing the risk of contagion within the local community. A partial sector of the society is back to work, however many are still operating from home. Schools have implemented on line learning classes Meetings, sport and cultural events etc. continue suspended.
At home we continue with our home high school environment. No comments from our one and only student regarding his paradoxical life style😊! To keep the morale high between lessons we exercise, sing and play music ! We are able to get out for walks and daily exercise which is a great blessing indeed! Jorge many times fills up the house with sound – music or hammering down some home improvements. We are able to keep in touch with family members thru online apps which is nice as we are now separated in 5 different countries around the globe! All of these practical endeavors help us to stay busy and productive. But we must admit that our Hope comes from the Lord and we got a lot to be thankful for!!