By Donna

After His resurrection, Jesus helped his disciples to understand the scriptures by telling them “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.. (Luke 24:46,47) Paul states: “For since by  man came death, by  man  came also the resurrection of the dead.  For  as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15: 21-22!)  Job summed it up by stating, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; (19:21)  “The resurrection of Jesus  changes the face of death for all His people. Death is no longer a prison, but a passage into God’s presence.      Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there” (Clarence W. Hall)

Easter: But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/kj/45/5.htm#8

by Donna

Spring is in the air and we are so happy that the temperatures have risen and the leaves are back on the trees! One can sense the feeling of rebirth in the atmosphere!  Hallelujah!
During the month of March we have been making inroads in establishing new relationships on this side of the border. It does take time and effort as most people are extremely busy and life just gets in the way, added to the fact that we are studying Chinese again. a project that goes to infinity and beyond!!! However, we are meeting new brethren in the area and interacting with the neighbors.  Gloria has begun  using her music talent by teaching piano lessons to a few students from a nearby school.  Jason was able to participate in a friendly football tournament organized by a  missionary friend. In short, we are integrating into the local community.
We have been returning to Macau every other weekend to have sweet fellowship with the family there. It is a great time of elongated discussions over recent issues, fellowship in the Lord and prayer for one another. Ben and dad have been blessed with beautiful new guitars this past month and are making good use of them. Jason is also very keen on improving his skills and helps out with Sunday morning worship songs.  O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. Psalms 95: 1-2 .
In Macau, Joana took her graduating photo shoot with the  class of 2017. She is more determined than ever to finish all the classes, make good on her projects and graduate by the end of the year! Go for it Joana!!
Our very happiest wishes, to Julie Soares who celebrated her birthday this month! Philip and Julie keep us up to date with their life in Seattle as we watch them all grow cuter every day via pics and skype! We love them so much and are looking forward to the time when we can be all together again! God is good- all the time!

Julie with Zac

March: assorted photos

This past month we worked on improving the Portuguese audio on the Verse Selection. Using our improvised home studio – a wardrobe – we managed to re-record and improve the audio quality in the verses section: see sample here https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/verses/portuguese/19_creation_evolution.htm

Our recording ‘studio’ – yes it is a wardrobe.

Also, along other audio recording initiatives, we received Eddy, from Hong Kong, who is now equipped to start the recordings of the Cantonese audio Bible. We have been wrestling with some delays but finally it seems that it is starting to move in the right direction.

Consulting with Eddy and planning for audio recordings

From India, our friend Anil has sent the recordings of 3 books in Punjabi, Matthew, Mark and John. This is a very good effort to update the Punjabi Bible and we are thankful for those who have the vision to use their talents and skills  to help broadcast the Word of God in their own language. Raj is also working on the Tamil audio.

The android and IOS applications are a great blessing to many and we are thankful for the developers, Konstantin,  in Greece, and Hison, in Korea, who continue to give us assistance and invest their talent in improving this wonderful tool for sharing the Word with millions all over the world, through Mobile devices. One of those users, from France, sent this reaction to our Bible App:

Superbe ! Superbe ! Superbe ! Fantastique !!!  Dieu vous bénisse d’avantage !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  J’ai pu enfin télécharger complètement l’application et elle est << Wouhaouu (Incroyable je veux dire)>>.  Le souci que j’avais était du au fait que le réseau auquel mon téléphone était connecté n’était pas fixe (il balançait entre la 3G et la 4G MTN); mais après avoir fixé la connexion de mon portable uniquement en 3G, j’ai pu enfin … Trouver mon bonheur …

Auto-translated from French :

Superb! Superb! Superb! Fantastic !!! God bless you benefit !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was finally able to completely download the application and is Wouhaouu << (Unbelievable I mean) >>. The concern I had was due to the fact that the network was connected my phone was not fixed (it swung between 3G and 4G MTN); but after fixing the connecting my laptop only on 3G, I could finally … Find My happiness …

**

Thank God for enthusiastic users, who spare no words of appreciation for something that, indeed, we should all be very excited about.

Adjusting audio recording at Raj’s

Just at the closing of this month’s activities we received the surprise visit of Ling, a sister now based in Ningbo, who took the time between flights to come and visit with us. It has been many years, but we still remember the time when we first shared the message of Christ with her up on the mountains of Yunan. She is now active with her house church ministry and we were blessed to share a short but meaningful time with her. I Cor 3:6.

Donna with Ling at our home in ZH.

We have been exploring and experiencing on how to make our outreach in China more effective. We have made some adjustments to the reality of the Chinese internet – things do not work here the way they work everywhere else. For example, you cannot download apps from Google App Store because there is no direct access due to the so called greatwall filtering. Thus, we are offering a loophole in our site… you may download te APK file, the file that installs the APP, straight from our servers. Coincidence or not, this month traffic from China has surpassed any other country, with 22%. See below.

Get it (the APP) in China

22 % from China, 12% from India, 10% USA : Wordproject traffic in March.

A lot of our work this month was, as usually, to maintain and monitor our main site and all the different audio servers that supply the audio to the different pages and applications. FYI the location of the website and the audio are in different servers (computers) from the Android and IOS apps, which are in different servers. In total we are monitoring 7 servers, located in several parts of the world, i.e. Switzerland, South Africa, Singapore, USA.
We are also approached with innumerous questions from the field, i.e. Pakistan, India, Congo, Romania, just to mention a few which contacted us this past month.  There are always questions, many already answered in our online statements and disclaimers. For example:  ‘Sir Can I Have Hindi Bible In Document Format I Need To Give It To Easyworship Software. An App Known Widely All Over The World For Projecting.  I Am Sachin Khandeshe From Mumbai India. And In India Easyworship Is Used Widely But As They Don’t Have Hindi Bible In Their Software I Requested Them For One But They Dont Have It And PDF Format Doesn’t Work, i.e Why Needed Hindi Bible In Doc Format. I HOPE YOU CAN BLESS INDIA WITH HINDI BIBLE IN DOC FORMAT SO HINDI BIBLE VERSES CAN BE PROJECT IN OUR SCREEN INSTEAD OF PRESENTATIONS. ‘  or ‘ I am a pastor from India. We are designing Bible Apps with Text and Audio. Can I have your permission to use the Audio Bible. We are publishing the app for free with our any advertisement’, or ‘ I found your translation in Farsi very nice, I thank you for doing that for us. I enjoy the parallel bible useful. Can you send me a copy of this bible to my email’. etc., etc.

On the other hand, we worked on improving the site. This month there were changes to the Portuguese audio, with corrections to Psalms, and new Audio New Testaments were added in Swedish and Finnish. Check here, and here

Also, together with brother Raj, we have updated and corrected most of the Tamil bible that had many missing characters. A great blessing that we live nearby each other and can coorperate on these projects.

Working with Raj on Tamil Bible

Rankings in our case means people accessing and reading the Word of God. These were the main fields last month.

We are happy to report that our servers are more stable now and this last month we did not have any problems with breakdowns or hindering attacks. More pages were viewed than any other previous month (over 6 million) and the number of visits exceeded 1 million for all sites. As usual, we received interesting reports, comments, suggestions and questions in our mail box, some of which we share with you here:

From Congo:

In The name of Our Lord Jesus Christ ; that I send my greetings in this name. So Im very happy to find you in this Sit. My Objective. Is to seek the Parternship in your Organizetion. Im Congolese by nationality; thank you to receive my idear and thank you to accept me; Yours in Christ.

India:

One day God put in my heart to gather only JESUS WORDS and read in church. So we did it. We gather all the saying of Jesus from your site. And we read it for  three day. Now we want to print it in book format and distribute it for free in our congregation and whoever want it. Since we took it from your site, we would like to take permissions from you to print. Please allow us to print and put source name on it.  It is in Hindi. Only have Jesus saying. We want to put your project name on first page. It is for free. Please let us know about it. Thank You (RT)

 (Assam)

Greetings in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear Sir I am from Assam India, There are no any online bible version in our regional (Assamese)language. Can you help us too… (PK)

(Marathi)

Peace from the Throne of the Most High God. I found an error on one of the pages and have contacted you for the same. The Marathi Holy Bible- Matthew Chapter 24. At the end of verse 29 there is  the word ‘Isaiah 13:’ which is not supposed to be there. And immediately after verse 29, there comes verse 10 which is not right and in verse 10 you have these words ‘; 34:4’ which too are not supposed to be there and are there due to a mistake. I request you to make the required changes and keep doing the good work. God bless, (PP)

 Pakistan:

I really appreciate for the recording the Holy Bible. I would like to suggest about the pronunciation of some Urdu words, as is was pronounced in verse 8 Q-BEE-LA and in verse 13 QAB-ZA. these words will be written as it is but will be pronounces Q-BEELAY and QABZAY, according to the situation. Its a principle in the Urdu language.  Wish u the best and God bless all of u. (IDS)

Spain:

My name is JM, I am a mobile application developer, I currently attend a Christian church, since going to study I promised God that I would do something for him in the course of my career, I want to create an application where people with Visual disability can listen to the bible from a mobile device, my desire is that you can let me reproduce your link (http://wordproaudio.org/bibles/app/audio/6/1/1.mp3) from the application which I I am going to develop with the help of God, since you are the owners and authors of the audios, I will credit all the credits you deserve, if this is possible, I would be very pleased, otherwise I would be willing to listen to a solution for I get audios and incorporate them into my application. Happy day and god bless you.

Surinam:

I am living in Surinam where about 1/3 of the population is Hindostani
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suriname).
Many do not know how to read Hindi. Is the PAVITRA BAAIBIL – HINDI TRANSLITERATED BIBLE also printed? If so, where can I purchase a copy of this bible? Yours in Him, (LS)

Moçambique:

Os 10 Capitulos do livro de Ester, representam para mim, o poder de oracao e jejum. Vejamos que pela forca de oracao e jejum promulgado pela rainha Ester, virou o mal que iria decair sobre todos os judeus que habitavam em Susa, onde o Assuero era rei. Amados, oremos e jejuemos a favor de Mocambique que esta em todo o tempo em Guerra, deixando o povo mocambicano sem paz efectiva.
E oremos e jejuemos tambem para os nossos governantes para que governem o povo mocambicano com equidade. Que DEUS de Abraao e de Isac e de Jaco, abencoe Mocambique. (MCM)

Taiwan:

Dear Word Project, Thank you so much for making the pinyin Bible available! I regularly use it at church in Kaohsiung to follow along with the rest of the congregation. One mistake I noticed last week is in 1 John 3:22.  “22 Bìngqiĕ wǒmen yīqiè suǒ qiú de , jiù cóng tā dé zhaó . yīnwei wǒmen zūnshǒu tāde mìnglìng , jgkgcxíng tā suǒ xǐyuè de shì . ” https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/pn/62/3.htm#0  The original Chinese is: 22並且我們一切所求的，就從他得著；因為我們遵守他的命令，行他所喜悅的事。22 Bìngqiě wǒmen yīqiè suǒ qiú de, jiù cóng tā dezháo; yīnwèi wǒmen zūnshǒu tā de mìnglìng, xíng tāsuǒ xǐyuè de shì. Apparently the “jgkgc” just managed to slip in there somehow. You might want to fix it! (PB)

Nigeria:

Good morning! Pls upload Nigerian languages such as the Housa, Yoruba and Ibo Bibles: HOUSA- for Northern Nigeria has very strong attachment to this language and is the region where the Muslims are bent on putting Christianity in to extinction and please forget the media and Nigerian government they have archived this aim up to 75% through cruelty. YORUBA – for old Western Nigeria are traditionalists as they mix their culture with religion and speak this language more than English. The Muslims are growing nearly 50% if not more as it accommodates more of their traditions! IBO – for old Eastern Nigeria though this may be underutilized but often used mostly by preachers for clarification/ to understand or drive home the point from English version. This moves the audience and the language is used by over 12 million people which is about 45% and others us Pidgin English, Ibibio etc bout are smaller fragments that over 8 languages. Eastern Nigeria is the last battle for the Muslims to gain upper hand as the Region is 98% Christians and has more attachment to comers and industries. They are now gradually embarrassing Islam due to present hardship by the present Buhari lead administration. (president) in Nigeria. (CN)

France:

Je désiré recevoir la Bible em Français s’il vous plair. Pour lire et ecouté; Je tiens en Anglair mais c’est très importante pour moi lire et ecouté a lê même moment. Je désiré le site a internet pour tien a iPhone et aussi a mon computer. Merci beaucoup. (LC)

Germany:

We give wheelchairs away to the poor in developing countries.  We have given away almost 1,000,000 so far.  I am developing a solar powered audio player that we want to give to each wheelchair recipient.  We want to put the Bible in the language of the wheelchair recipient in the audoi player.  May I have your permission to use the the audio translations on your website? God bless, (DS)

Reunion Island:

Hello,  my name is J.L., i’m living in reunion island. I would like to use wordproject in French langage in my website : « www.vie.re »  during the construction of our own version for Indien Ocean People. ( i think the construction of our own version of the online bible will last between two and three months ). Vie.re is an non-profit association that aims to spread the gospel throughout the Indian Ocean. Do i have your permission for this ? God Bless you. PS : this is a link for an example. http://vie.re/bible/

This month we worked on two new audio and text Bibles, the Chinese Si Gao Version in Mandarin Chinese and the same version in Traditional characters and narration in Cantonese. They are available here and here. Also new is the Brazilian Portuguese narration available here.

WP Brazilian page

WP outreach contnues to expand:

International Ranking / Jan 2017

Ranking in several countries – Jan 2017

The year of the Rooster has arrived in China! Yeah! More Holidays for the local population! It was uncannily quiet as a government crackdown on firecrackers has been quite thorough. Hardly a peep in the village! 🙁 Our celebration included a scrumptious meal of homemade dumplings courtesy of Mandy’s father and mother. They are experts at the craft and they were very, very  patient with our attempts to “bao jiao ze”. Boy, were they delicious!

Making dumpling (learning with the experts)

Enjoying dumplings on Chinese New Year

By Donna

It has been a very busy beginning of 2017!  When we gave our hearts and plans to the Lord on January 1st, things started to roll and here we are!

First of all, we have had wonderful Sunday fellowships with the family! Reading Scripture and discussing a range of issues from church to the book of Revelations has been enlightening. Facing the battle in our minds between truth and deception is the greatest battle we face every day of our lives. In our quest to “come unto the knowledge of truth”, our time spent in study together keeps us spearheading towards the goal of a closer relationship with Jesus. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy is understanding.” 1 Tim 2:4. On cold days we gather in our cozy living room, and one glowing Sunday we had our meeting in a local park! (We had some interference from the bee population, but it served as an exercise for our concentration capacity!)

Donna accompanied Gloria to Hong Kong as she sat for SAT subject tests in biology, chemistry and literature. It was an intense trip, just enough time to study and test, but all is well that ends well. (We will only know if the results are well next month!)

Ben was able to pass his driving test first time around, which is a real feat of itself in Macau! It is certain the examiner could witness his complete self control, patience and ability to maneuver his vehicle!  Way to go Ben!!

House improvements continue as dad redesigned the upstairs bath. He reconstructed the pipes and drains which were presenting problems. With new floor tiles and shower installation, the restroom looks brand new! Many thanks to Jorge!

Cristiana and Auntie Carmo in Lisbon

During the year of 2016 we served more than 62 million pages of Biblical texts in 60 languages and we received over 13 million visitors. Our audio downloads reached 135 terabytes, which translates into an estimated 135 million Bible audio chapters.

In April our main website was doing well

In December we are doing even better.

In more countries

This is a private blog therefore not avaible to the general public.

Thank you.

Here is a page we worked on this month:
https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/resources/our_father/index.htm

Our Father, the prayer in Matthew 8 and Luke 11, in most of the languages of the world… “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”. In the most remote corners of the world, the same prayer Jesus taught His disciples.

Cherokee

Uyghur