We have been trying to go across to mainland China but, while the overall situation here seems to be improving as far as the virus is concerned, the border is still under tight restrictions and we cannot go over unless we be subject to quarantine – something we are not eager to do.

Thus, we have been able to do deal with SR600 audio Bibles production through online means. We received the latest production, which is now stored at Benjamim’s place in China, and we are in the process of making our first post-covir-19 shipment to Africa: the goods are on the way to Guangzhou right now and we hope the rest of the process will go well until they arrive at their destination in Nairobi, Kenya.

On another development, we received a request for permission to use our online Audio Tamil Bible, not from India, as it would be expected, but from Bahrain, an Arab state in the Gulf. They wrote: “We Bahrain Tamil Christian Congregation, one of the member congregation of National Evangelical Church of Bahrain. It a congregation of more than 500 members. We own a website www.btccnec.org in that we would like to embed your website in our webpage to enable the believers to access the digital copy of the Holy Bible.  We want your kind permission to use the link. Please let us know if you have any objection.”

We have no objection. Actually, we are always surprised with the requests we receive at Wordproject email. From Punjab to Cambodia, from Ethiopia to Nigeria, South America, North America, Asia, all corners of the world – this online means of distribution and broadcast of the Word of God is much wanted and appreciated.

Statistically speaking , it is sort of fun to compare, for example, our output one year ago with our output this year, as in the following self explanatory images.

Also, as you may see in the next image, you are not forgotten. As all those who contribute in any way to this endeavor are repeatedly blessed by the users of our online tools. They say:  ” In all truth! thank you very much, to all those who have contributed to this magnificent work. May the Lord Jesus richly bless you and grant you the desires of your hearts … and reward you.” [IK] ; ” I thank God for each brother who has promised to carry out this project, I thank God that the application is excellent. We use this version of the Bible, so it is perfect for us, to read our Holy Book, while listening. The voice is very nice. It can be downloaded and uninstalled from book to book. God bless you abundantly!” [AB].

From us here too: our heartily thank you for your support an prayers.

[from Donna]

This year, around the world, Easter followed a lent of desperation due to the corona virus pandemic.  It has been hard time for everyone and in many places around the world the light at the end of the tunnel is not yet in sight.

In spite of that, we had a breakthrough for Easter and because we live far from the city, in a small village, we were able to finally get together with some of our family members and celebrate a very simple, but meaningful Easter Sunday. We sang songs of joy from our thankful hearts. He is Risen, He is Alive!

The confinement measures imposed globally brought out creativity within the family. Jorge took time to record some of his old songs from the 70’s and get them out into circulation again. Cristiana is also sharing her lovely songs via video and Eman and girls have a great musical team now producing videos as well! Also, Eman is bringing us classic hymns and blessing our home fellowships with his amazing piano skills. Moms are perfecting new recipes and training new cooks, and the girls are enjoying the experience of indoor camping.

Two birthdays were celebrated this month. Little Aurora is now two years old and very happy to be so. Her vocabulary is increasingly by the minute, and she expresses herself with much confidence and ado! We had our first ever online birthday celebration for Ben, who is now 24.  As so many other people around the world do now-a-days, we joined to sing Happy Birthday together online! Now we wait to see each other in person again, hopefully over Summer.

Philip and Julie and their children, Zac and Riley have also been in touch with many communications and videos that we enjoy very much. It is always a blessing to see everyone even if just online.

Meanwhile, it seems there is great hope for restoration and healing around our city, with most cases of the virus already healed and no new cases for the past 20 days or so. The weather has been helping out, with the warm sun and great air quality bringing people out to the beach nearby us. Usually most people would go to shopping centers, however, since most of those are still closed and people are afraid to get infected, they come to the beach, and bring the children. Why not?

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!!

We spent more time at the desk this month working on cleaning up the website and also trying to find a solution for our audio servers. The good news is that, with Philip’s help, we were able to set up a much faster and more efficient audio server, which has been tested these last few weeks and so far it seems to be a great asset. The serving speed has improved considerably and therefore everything is working better. This has been a great blessing as we know a lot more people are staying home these days, due to the virus, and more are reading and listening to the Word.

To commemorate this new improved stage of Wordproject, we made a change in the interface colors and general feel and we optimized all content to be more user friendly.

On the other hand, it is encouraging  to see that our APPs are being downloaded and used in larger numbers than before and we attribute this to the improved speed in audio serving. We still have to do some adjustments but we are getting there.

It is always interesting to read the APP users comments. Here our favorite comments on the Android store this month:

‘WORDPROJECT is a very important application for me, I will rate it with five stars because I liked it so much. I can choose my preferred language and replace it whenever I want.’ [B.R. – (translated from Spanish)]

[from Korea :] ‘Wow! Thanks word project for the multiple languages option and making it free. I’m learning German, French and other languages through the bible. I must say the German reader in Psalm 59 and French reader in Matthew 6+7 are awesome. What a captivating reader! I love their engaging reading. God bless!’

and on WP Plus:

‘Finally! I’ve been looking for an app like this. First, that its ‘in-app purchases’ free and advertising free. I can listen and follow along uninterrupted. Secondly, the voice over is clear and smooth and flows nicely. I like that the page of scripture scrolls along so I can follow reading. I also appreciate that it continues chapter after chapter. I can listen for a long time without having to break concentration to hit a play button. Very nice app. Thank you. [Z]’

Meanwhile, the SR600 audio Bible is being distributed to several needy communities in Mozambique and Kenya. It is such a blessing to be able to offer these audio Bibles to such sweet people. Both in Kenya and Mozambique we have contacts with blind associations, who in turn distributes these Bibles to their members.

Right now, in spite of the restrains due to the Corona Virus, we have been able to place our next order to the Chinese factory. In two weeks we should be ready to make our next shipment and we hope and pray the delivery services (freight companies) are working normally by then.

Thank you for your prayers.

by donna

Our month of February was spent in domestic quarantine! A first in a lifetime experience! As the number of cases of individuals infected with the Covid-19 virus in neighboring China was extremely high and rising exponentially at the beginning of the month, the government of Macau decided to basically shut down the city. The rules of conduct were short and to the point: Stay at home, wash your hands frequently, wear a mask whenever outside and try to keep a good distance from others. All businesses, restaurants, government agencies, and medium and small size businesses were closed. All public events, church services, large dinners or assemblies and sporting events were canceled. In an unprecedented move, all casinos in the city were ordered to shut their doors and the number of tourists diminished drastically and rapidly. Overnight, the streets of the world’s most densely populated territory became a ghost town. All schools have been shut down and an effective online home education program is now in place. Fortunately, many are working from home to prevent circulation and thus the spread of the disease. Thankfully, the government has acted swiftly and efficiently to take all the necessary cautions of disease prevention as well make sure the citizens are supplied with basic needs in the supermarkets and also have access to the required facial masks and necessary medical care if needed. Although all these measures may be seen as extreme, the fact is that the spread of the Corona virus has effectively been halted and it has been nearly one month that no new cases have been reported! Praise God!

In result of this, we left our rented apartment in China earlier than expected, and moved to Macau. We are already implementing the home school program so we had no stress in adapting to a new system and Jason kept up with his lesson plan, business as usual. Our home here is far from the city center so we don’t have any issues with overcrowding, with various venues for outdoor exercise at our convenience. Jorge and Jason were diligent to complete more home improvement projects and also found opportunity to reconstruct our neighbor’s front porch covering. Jason also tried his hand at some new skills in the kitchen and we can now depend on him for some delicious meal preparations!

The main difference we encountered last month was a lack of fellowship but things are opening up and we are looking forward to more interaction in the coming month. “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
We are definitely trusting in the Lord to deliver us from this virus and in the presence of this global outbreak we pray that many will find Jesus as their refuge in the storm and their rock in a weary land.

[Donna:]

This month of January has been marked by the arrival of the Wuhan corona virus. It has changed the way we operate, changed our priorities and changed our plans. The virus, a strain related to the SARS virus that was present here in 2003, continues to spread and more and more precautionary measures are being put into place daily. The government has suggested that people stay inside their homes and keep away from public venues except for absolute necessities. All public events for the Chinese New Year annual celebrations were canceled. All schools are closed until further notice and working hours have been compromised. In addition, Many employers are allowing their staff to work from home as much as possible. These, along with the required wearing of masks and increased hygiene regarding hand disinfection are all measures put in place to stop the spread of the virus which has been confirmed as human to human transmitable. We are very thankful indeed that we live outside the city center and we are able to go out for walks, having activities in the local parks, etc. also, there  are very few people out here and the air is always circulating due to our proximity to the sea.

In spite of this, Philip and Julie had made plans to come for a long awaited visit during the Chinese Spring Festival and before things developed into a global health concern, they bravely decided to step out and carry through with such planned journey! It was such a great time together with their precious family . Everyone was excited to meet 1yr old Riley and interact with 4yr old Zak again! We actually spent a lot of family time together since we were granted extra work holidays and not able to visit any public venues.

God has been gracious, and although a few of us have colds, no one has, as of yet, any symptoms related to the corona virus. More good news is that Philip and Julie are safe back at home and are putting themselves under a voluntary quarantine to be sure that they haven’t carried anything with them.

We are doing what we can and trusting in the Lord’s protection. Psalms 91:1-16:
‘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.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation. Amen.

While at home, we were able to work on several DIY projects.With the help of Gabriel and Jason some more home improvements were accomplished before the CNY.

Wordproject is in constant demand. At this very hour there are at least 200 users accessing our pages, mostly from  countries like India, Brazil, Emirates, Tanzania, South Africa, Colombia, Kuwait, Japan, Italy, etc. It takes permanent update and maintenance to keep it up.  This month accomplishments:

1.Many hours were spent to update the website and make it easier to navigate.

2. We corrected many errors and format issues in several languages.

3. The Portuguese BR audio is in progress and the 4 Gospels have been concluded.

4. Filipino (Tagalog) audio Bible recordings of Psalms and Proverbs are now being done (We finished NT last month).

5. The new WP Plus App for Android devices has been ‘on the air’ for less than two months. The results are coming in – currently there are 1070 permanent users. Here are some reviews from the users:

– ‘I  liked the text scrolling alone and the audio also works with the screen off’ . M.O.

– ‘A high quality playlist. At home, on the street, in the car, on the train, training, he is always playing. Faith comes by hearing. Thanks to the creator (s)’  V.M.

– ‘Excellent! You can listen and read at the same time, the texts have large letters and read the entire book that one chooses, especially recommended!’ F.C.

– ‘Best app. Only the Lord’s words without any distractions. Love it!‘ C.P.

6.  The ‘old’ App is still going and of course, for the moment it contains many more languages than the ‘new’ one. Some users’ reviews:

‘WORDPROJECT is a very important application for me, I will rate it with five stars because I liked it so much. I can choose my preferred language and replace it whenever I want.‘  B.R.

‘Great service to the whole world, best gift ever‘  J.J.

‘Amazing app. Praise the Lord keep up the good work. One feature that would benefit your app is so you could make highlight.’ Thank you:) God Bless!!!‘ S.P.

7. Our SR600 audio Bibles are being distributed in large numbers to the Nairobi Blind community. Here are some of the most recent pictures we received.

8. Also, in Portugal our friend Teresa is reaching out to the blind community there.

9. As you can see from the volume of audio downloaded from our servers (40 Terabytes, this month – see stats page), our leased servers are being put to test and as the number of users of our Audio Apps increases, the volume of audio served will certainly increase in the same proportion. We are counting on Philip’s help to set up a new and more efficient audio server for us.

10. We are hoping to be able to get back into mainland China to resume our activities there and particularly to produce the new batch of audio Bibles (sr600) for Africa. Thanks for your prayers.

by Donna:

The month of December started out just as any other time of the year. Our lives were immersed in school, work and ministry and the general business of life. The area where we live is not particularly dedicated to the beauty of Christmas but rather the consumerism of the season. It was definitely a struggle to stir up any resemblance of a festive occasion.

Then everything changed. We traveled back to the place where we pay our taxes and began to prepare for the coming of the celebration of the birth of the Savior.

Jorge and Jason labored for days to add warmth and comfort to our living room by covering the cold, ceramic floor tiles with wood. A decorative tree was set up and most important of all, Christmas praises began to ring through the air! It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!!

Then, the extra ordinary began to happen! Little Aurora arrived and ran over to the stable and exclaimed, “Baby! ” and 4 year old Isabel broke out in her joyful chorus “Come and see Jesus!” These beautiful children ran to see Jesus! Friends and loved ones arrived sharing wishes of good cheer! What Joy! Christmas had indeed arrived! Jesus came into the center of the picture and that is when everything became transformed! Many years ago in Bethlehem, Jesus was born. Nothing was ever the same again! The King of kings lie in lowly manger, an angel revealed to nearby shepherds that in the city of David a Savior was born, which is Christ the Lord, and a multitude of angels began to sing

“Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth good will toward men.”
Christ blessed our hearts this Christmas as we sang of His advent and His glory! Everything is changed since we received our Savior!

New Year Resolutions:

As usual every year, for the past 40 years or so, we held our New Year Resolutions ceremony on the 1st of January. This is a simple but meaningful time together, where we pray and thank the Lord for the all that He has done during the previous year and make a Resolution for the New Year. Each person also claims one or more scriptures. Those who are not present may send their resolutions, which are read and kept in our records. Many burdens and wishes were brought before the Lord. My personal verse for the New Year was/is Isaiah 43:19 : “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

–

1. This year we had a similar year as 2018 but we did everything in greater scale. Among other things, we distributed a lot more audio Bibles than last year. (SR600) Besides Africa, namely Mozambique, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi (see pictures here, and here, and here) and we made new contacts in Pakistan, India and Portugal. Just this December we distributed over 500 units (200 to Kenya, 200 to Mozambique and 100 in Portugal).  We are still in the process of sending more audio Bibles to these different regions. Everyone is grateful for these precious gifts.

2. The online work, through the web site, was expanded and we are happy to report several new developments. We introduced new languages such as Khmer (from Cambodia), Sinhala (Sri Lanka) and Hungarian. There is a new feature on the main page called “verse of the day”. The purpose of this is to send an encouraging Bible verse everyday to friends and acquaintances who are interested. We know of several people who are using this feature in their own language to encourage others daily with the Word of God.

3. We have recorded the audio of the Filipino (Tagalog) New Testament. Also, we are in the process of recording the Brazilian narration of the Portuguese Bible. Our narrator in Brazil had a setback with some faulty equipment, and we found that the quality of the recordings was not good, so he is in the process of recording all over again.

4. The New APP (Wordproject Plus) has been finished and available online. There is work to be done to include more languages. Meanwhile the old App is being fixed and updated, possibly will still be usable.

5. Here are some of the new pages and sections introduced this year:
Khmer selected Bible verses
Hungarian selected Bible verses
Hebrew Audio Bible
Hungarian Audio Bible
Hungarian Audio Bible
Khmer text Bible
Sinhala [language of Sri Lanka] text Bible

6. We are always very busy with improving and maintaining the online presence. A lot of changes were implemented in our main website, including updating to HTML5, the most recent web language format. Internet technologies are always changing and we also have to monitor the operation of all servers to make sure that they do not breakdown and if there is a problem with one server, direct the web traffic to another server. It takes constant monitoring and maintenance to keep our site online and working 24/7

7. Our social media pages (Facebook and Instagram) are being populated with image banners that contain Bible verses. This work is done by one of our young contributors (Benjamim). He also does the follow up of those two media sites.

Stats

We believe the Word of God can make a difference in this world. In fact, from India to Russia from Egypt to South Africa, North America, South America, Asia, everywhere, people need the Word of God to lead and guide their lives and to inspire them and give them a reason to live. Many places where churches cannot go, we are there sharing the Word of God. Our online statistics this year show a total output of over 77 million Bible page views as compared to 76 million last year. The number of visitor to the Wordproject site was just over 18 million for the last 12 months, that is an average of about 1.5 million visitors every month. One of our strong points at WP is that we supply people with audio Bibles to download. That means a lot of people download the Bible into their mobile phones or computers and they use it in their own playlists. The data volume of audio downloads from our servers was amazingly high: 288 Terabytes, which means, 288 million megabytes, which at the average of 1 Bible Chapter = 1 MB, it is roughly equivalent to 288 million audio chapters of Bible served from our servers [154 million last year]. That include Bibles in most important languages of the world. Our main fields continue to be India, China, Brazil and several countries in Africa, with many users from Middle East countries, namely S. Arabia, Emirates, Bahrain, Turkey, etc. As last year, we have detected several sites that have copied our materials and published them under their own local name (domain). We continue to offer a copy of our site in every language, which can be downloaded for free and then used offline: 

2020 Planning:

1. We will continue to produce SR600 MP3 players to send to different areas of the world, Africa, India and Pakistan, Portugal and to distribute locally, including to Filipino community.
2. There will be lots of work to be done on the new APP, already available here in English, Chinese and 4 other languages, but the indexing of many languages needs to be done – it takes about 100 man-hours per language and we have 40 audio languages (that will be 4000 man-hours). Also, the IOS version of this new App needs to be developed and we are praying for a solution.

3. We finished the audio narration for the Filipino New Testament, but we could and should work on the OT. We hope we can do that this year.

4. We will continue with the narration of the Portuguese Brazilian Bible, now in course.

5. We will continue to look into the possibilities of a longer term investment in Portugal and Africa, for recording and distribution of audio Bibles.

6. The update and maintenance of our major site is a permanent task, and we also hope to have time to update other less visible sites, such as wordplanet.org and wordfree.org.

7. We appreciate your prayers and support.

This picture was taken a few days ago in the square of the village near where we live. On the other side, just across the water channel, no further than 500 meters, is mainland China. The message is clear: The Savior was born in a manger – to save all people, from all nations. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!”

We are happy to report that the Audio Bibles we sent to Pakistan started to be distributed. Apparently our Pastor friend there found out that a ministry to the blind could take a lot more units so we have been preparing another package to send them. Meanwhile, we have received the recording of the New Testament in Macua, the most wide-spoken language in Mozambique, with a request to include that recording in our next batch of audio Bibles. So, our latest production included 200 audio Bibles in Macua and Portuguese, and we are happy to inform you that we have sent them already. We have sent another 200 units for the ministry with the blind people in Nairobi. We hope and pray these goods will get there before Christmas, a great time to distribute these precious gifts.

Actually, from Mozambique we received the following note:

“Pela graça do Senhor estamos trabalhando em cerca de perto de 100 aldeias, evangelizando e dando inicio a novos trabalhos, é uma grande benção.
A Biblia falada tem sido uma ajuda preciosissima, as  pessoas adoram ouvir a palavra falada em Portugues e agora em Macua e nas suas linguas locais será de grande benção. …
A Biblia falada tem uma grande aceitação, mesmo no meio dos muçulmanos.
Pela graça de Deus um lider Moculmano converteu-se e levou a Jesus 30 familias e está evangelizando outros Muçulmanos é maravilhosos o que Deus está a fazer.
Em meu nome pessoal e em nome de todas as igrejas queremos agradecer a sí e a todos os doadores que tornam possivel esta benção de nos doarem as Biblias. Podem ter a certeza que milhares de Moçambicanos estão ouvindo o evangelho e se convertem ao Senhor, ouvindo a palavra falada.
Damos honra e glória ao Senhor, por esta maravilhosa graça e pela benção que os amados irmãos teem sido para nós.”
[Roughly translated it means:
“By the grace of our Lord  we are working with around 100 villages, evangelizing and initiating new works. This is a great blessing. … The spoken Bible has been well accepted even among the Muslims. By the grace of God a Muslim leader was converted and took 30 families to Jesus and he is evangelizing other Muslims and it is wonderful to see what God is doing. In may name and on behalf of all churches we want to thank you and all the donors that make this blessing possible of the donated Bibles. You must be assured that thousands of Mozambicans are hearing the Gospel and converting to the Lord hearing the spoken Word. We give honor and glory to the Lord for this wonderful grace and the blessing our beloved brethren are being to us.”] P.P.

Not least, from Portugal, our friend who works with the blind people there wrote the following:

“Não tenho dado notícias, porque tem corrido tudo muito bem, tenho distribuído as áudio bíblias com o folheto que ensina na sua utilização, quer nos lares, quer a pessoas com deficiência visual. A boa notícia é que só tenho meia dúzia que já estão prometidas.  Tem sido um trabalho muito interessante que me tem dado muito gosto fazer, para além de ouvir a palavra de Deus.” [Rough translated: “I have not been in touch because things are going well. I have been distributing the Audio Bibles with the sheet of paper that instructs the people how to use it, at seniors homes and also to people with vision impairment. The good news is that I only have a dozen (out of over 100) and they are already promised. It has been a very interesting work that I have been enjoying a lot, besides the fact that I also like to hear the Word of God.”] T.V.

The online work was mostly maintenance and improvements. We have received the new App for final testing and apparently we should have it uploaded before Christmas. Praying for that. We continue to work on optimizing the main site and recently we have invested time in Wordplanet.org, another site that has been sort of dormant and is now up for a new revival. The Brazilian narration came but had serious technical problems and had to be discarded and our Brazilian friend/brother is now starting again. We believe this new narration will be not only technically improved but also more inspired. We are glad to see a real network of people from all over the world who offer to serve and contribute to this great mission of bringing the Word of God to the Whole Wide World. Praise the Lord.

by Donna.

“Give thanks to the Lord : for He is good, for His mercy endureth Forever” 1 Chr 16:34. This verse obviously implies that we must be committed to a thankful heart every moment! We are extremely thankful for all the Lord’s mercies in our lives and for each and every one of you who are reading these Wordproject news clips!
A small thing is a small thing, but faithfulness in small things is a big thing! Jason has been faithful with his studies this year, giving increased importance to his Chinese studies. He looks forward to the release all of his pent up energy at the soccer court on the weekend! (Jorge is also able to join in as official goalie!).  Gloria is intensely battling out medical school, looking forward to a break in studies which never seems to arrive and sweet Isabel in K2 is a shining light in her school and local community! Gabriel was off to visit with Phil and Julie and the family and thoroughly enjoyed the time spent together in the lovely autumn atmosphere! Little Riley is now 1 year old and not wasting any time in life. She is walking around everywhere trying to keep up with her big brother Zach! She has a great challenge ahead of herself! :). Many thanks for all the Lord’s grace and mercies in all these endeavors.
This month we received a surprise visit from our dear friend Anna and her father. We first met Anna in 1994 and are so happy to witness her strong faith in the Lord and her determination to serve him with her time and resources!

The month of October has come to a wonderful end. Throughout the year we receive many letters from people all over the world, but this time one of the letters came from someone who is living close by. Pedro is a new-found friend and brother in the Lord who is eager to help and participate in the WordProject  ministry.  He loves to study the Bible in various languages thus, he greatly appreciates all of the work done on the site to facilitate his Bible study. He is also a musician who composes songs based on scripture. He is working hard at learning the Chinese language and has shared his Chinese worship songs with us. We found  encouragement in our  fellowship together, singing, reading the scriptures and praying together as we did yesterday in our small Sunday Morning home fellowship  here.

WP is really where we spend a lot of time every month. There are always corrections, improvements and upgrades to keep up with the times. We are changing all of our 100 thousand plus pages to conform with HTML5 standards, which sounds easy, and maybe it is, except that we have to upgrade and upload all those thousands of pages in a very repetitive work. There is also a new language ready to be made available on the WP site: the Khmer language, of Cambodia.

On the other hand, the new App we have been working on for awhile, is closer to conclusion, but obviously not ready for publishing.  There are still several translations and indexations to be made.  Not least, the audio department had a great time uploading the recent-recorded Tagalog New Testament audio, which was finally concluded, processed  and uploaded.  Available here:

https://www.wordproject.org/bibles/audio/46_tagalog/

The Brazilian Portuguese NT narration was also concluded but we found some technical problems with the recordings, which have delayed once again the uploading of this much improved version.

One of the reasons for us to be in this particular location, is that we are closer to the production site of the SR600 audio Bibles. As we mentioned last month, we have sent packages of audio Bibles to Pakistan and Mozambique and we are happy to report they all got to the destination – howbeit, not without a struggle and payment of some import taxes on their side. We have placed a new order for 500 units, mainly for the Blind Association in Kenya and also for the mission work going on in the North of Mozambique.

Meanwhile, we have received a New Testament  recording in the Makwa language, the most widely spoken language in that country, which we were asked to include in our new PT devices being produced this month.

We are excited about this, as many natives there only speak Makwa, thus it will be a great blessing to this field. To assess the impact these audio devices are making in people’s lives is hard but we are certain that His Word shall never return void and shall produce fruit that remains. PTL.

On the home front, we had some important birthdays to celebrate in October, namely Donna’s, who is looking happier every day specially when surrounded by her granddaughters, and Zach, of Philip and Julie, who turned 4 and already rides a bike…

‘…Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God’. Psalms 55:19

The month of September was marked by our move across the border. It was not a long distance move, however it is significant to our work. As far as being practical, in terms of producing, ordering, shipping Audio Bibles, and many other aspects, it works great! All our production contacts are located here. The companies are extremely efficient and get things done without much hassle and bureaucracy. Also, it is a better place for us to focus on language study: we continue with our home study but refocus again on Chinese language. We thank God for this open door, that is, the opportunity to live and work here once again.

As to be expected, many things are different here, mostly for better. There are setbacks though:  the internet being one of them. Google, Youtube and other international online services do not work here, although there are ways to get around that filter. Thankfully, all our sites are visible and access to all our servers, including Amazon, is not filtered, thus we have no major problems along that line.

No matter where we are, there is a great calling for every Christian in this world – besides our personal battles, our family, our work, we have the world around us: the conflicts that pop up everywhere, the natural and sometimes not natural disasters, the trends and fads that change minds and behavior – seldom for better and, now-a-days, the changes and concerns about the environment. For all this and much more we have to keep in prayer!

In local news, in recent days we have been having surrounded by the great celebrations of the 70 years of the PRC, that is, modern China, and we watched some amazing displays on TV.

https://www.koreus.com/embed/20000-choregraphes-nouvel-an-chinois-2019

It is amazing to us how disciplined and uniformed the Chinese people can become in occasions like this.

Not least, we also celebrated the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival a. k. a. Moon Festival, on the 15th moon day of the 8th Chinese Lunar month, based on the Chinese lunar calendar. This festival has a long story, but in summary, people are usually happy and celebrate it enthusiastically. We were able to go outside on Sept. 13, near the seaside, and enjoy the children, the lanterns, the moon and the moon-cakes!

We worked hard on several WP fronts: 1. We have been contacted by a person in the Middle East, more precisely Cyprus, who offer us the use of the Hebrew Audio Bible. She has contacted and obtain permission from regional Bible Societies for us to use it on our site for non-profit, mission purposes. Also, she supplied us with a public domain version of the New Testament audio in Hungarian. Both of these are now available on our site.

2. Gloria, and Jason have worked on the Chinese text and audio synchronization aiming to prepare the upcoming APP, while  Anit and his brother Ajay, from India, have been working on the Hindi. We are getting there.

3. We made a breakthrough contact with a Pastor in Pakistan, who requested to supply him with Urdu audio Bibles for his congregation, which includes several people who cannot read. We have prepared a special home-made edition of our SR600 in Urdu (we changed the audio language through  our own computers) and sent a package of 50 audio Bibles that should be arriving there as we write this. Praying for these to go through customs of this majority  Muslim country without any problems for the brothers there.

We always receive many emails and comments on our site and Apps every month. This month we chose this as our favorite:

‘Went through other audio Bible apps.. Came back to this with a much healthier appreciation of this app! Thanks for providing the audio word of God, without distractions, and easy presentation.’ RT

The home front is mainly back to school. Besides the home-schooling here, we have Gloria reporting very interesting and sometimes gory details of her course at medical school in Lisbon. The grandchildren are now starting to attend their first kindergarten and it is a new day. One more thing to pray for.

A little thing is a little thing but sometimes they mean a lot. Raj, our faithful brother in Christ, is a specialist in preparing Indian tea, which we love very much. Here he is serving us his specialty.

SR600 audio devices: Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Burundi, Tanzania and Mozambique, these are the fields in East Africa we have been able to bless with the distribution of Audio Bible devices, with the help of several organizations and missions.

From a missionary in Mozambique we received this message:

‘…The north, as shared in earlier reports, has most of the unreached and least-reached people and people groups in Mozambique. Therefore we have this opportunity to share the love of God around – I have been able to distribute audio Bibles and begin a discipleship session with some young people as I continue to trust God for more. ‘

From Mary, in Kenya, we received the following message:

‘…I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this support to our dear ones with visual impairment. God richly bless you…[see pictures] We have this school  for blind with 200 people. This is an institution where all those who lose their sight go for rehabilitation.’

Online activity

Depending on the hour of the day, Wordproject is accessed with more or less assiduity from different regions of the globe. Today, for example, at 3:50 pm in Macau, China, we took the image below, which shows in real time,  records of pageviews  at our WP server. Notice the huge difference between India and other countries. Also, circled in red are 3 predominantly Muslim countries,  in the Gulf region. We are always encouraged by the fact that we are serving regions and places where Bibles are practically non-available through any other way. Thus the Word of God, the Light of the World, the Water of Life, the Truth is also present in some of these arid lands of the  world. Fundamentally, this is the greatest and highest purpose for the Internet, in spite of the fact that large part of  the world is using it for vanity and moral corruption. It was so when the printed press was invented, it will be so whenever any new technological step is taken for humanity. God will always be praised and glorified by every means throughout  all the corners of the earth. See other online outreach stats here.

This month’s selected comment from our users:

‘ May my Lord God bless your Ministry and enlarge it. I am 80 and need to read The Bible in big letters, so I found your site that for many years I know but did not use. You may know that in the Internet there are people offering Bibles to download, and when the victim try to have a Bible, they send a virus to the computer. I only can help with prayer because I am a pensioner and the money I receive is good to pay for the services in this house that my Lord has provided or I would be sleeping under a carton box as many people here. But I have nothing complain for my Lord is good and His mercies are great every morning, praise The God of My salvation.’ H.E.

On the home front, we spent the beginning of the month in beautiful Portugal. One huge milestone was Jorge and Joana’s visit to Penacova.  Joana had not been back for 22 years so it was a historical father /daughter event indeed! They met with family and Jorge’s childhood friend during their brief stay and seized the opportunity of filling up their drinking bottles with Agua de Penacova water, fresh from the source!
Also, in another instance, Dad and Ben rendezvoused in Viana  and proceeded to cross the border to visit the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. This is known as the culmination of the “Camino de Santiago” (The Way of Saint James) pilgrimage route, and the alleged burial site of the Biblical apostle St. James. His remains reputedly lie within the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, consecrated in 1211, whose elaborately carved stone facades open onto grand plazas within the medieval walls of the old town. Jorge and Ben did not actually walk The Way of Saint James, but it was a meaningful father and son trip effectuated in a brief period of time. In a Biblical sense they are pilgrims and strangers in the world, so they could easily relate to the fellow travelers experiencing the spiritual benefits of the traditional pilgrimage. A special experience indeed!

Before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to loved ones and board the plane to Macau. We were very thankful for a safe journey, and the home and ministry and family which awaited us on the other side of the planet! It is an entirely different environment with heat, humidity and typhoons , but it is home! It is also a whole new world of opportunities just waiting to be explored and we are so excited!
Soon after arrival we initiated our school term. Lots to accomplish this academic year so it is imperative for us to get up and running early. Gloria is busy shadowing doctors in various medical wards before her second year at UNI begins in September.

August was yet another mega birthday month with Joana initializing the celebrations in Lisbon on the 2nd! Amazingly, we were all able to meet together and offer our congratulations! The following day, August 3rd, Isabel turned a BiG 4! She really is a BIG girl now and she never ceases to remind us! She is off to her second year of kindergarten and is really excited about her new teachers and friends in K2! On the 23rd, it was Jason’s turn to experience life at 16! Jason continues to get taller, believe it or not, and continues to enjoy playing soccer, basketball and guitar. Between playtime he is also a very good student. Next was Jorge’s turn, and needless to say, we are all amazed at his health and vitality and energy levels! May the Lord bless them all with a wonderful life!

jaybirthday2019 from J. Soares on Vimeo.

SR600: Below are some more pictures received this month concerning the Audio Bible distribution in Africa and India. It is a great blessing to know that there is a constant flow of audio Bibles going out and they are being used in a mighty way.

ONLINE: We have received noticed from Google to warn us that we need to update our old APP. We are asking our friend and brother in the Lord, Hison, to help us with this. He recently upgraded the IOS app and fixed some bugs. Our original Android App is still a very useful App because it is so easy to use, The new Android App is still in the works but it has been delayed due to some indexing that has to be introduced to sync the audio with the text while scrolling. We just found out that doing this indexing is much harder in non romanized languages (i.e. Chinese, Hindi, etc), thus taking more time and eventually someone who knows the language. Thank you for your prayers for this.

We reached near 40 Terabytes of audio served this month, That is a BIG volume of data. We are praying that we can continue to do this without being restrained or suspended by our server providers. In fact, that happened last month. One of our service providers, in HK, suspended one of our audio domains because, they said, we were using too much bandwidth. They said we passed over 300 Gigabytes, which actually is not that much volume when dealing with audio. So, we had to re-direct to another server. Ideal would be a dedicated server, which we might have to consider for the future. Thanks.

Selected Comments from Users:

• GodGiven app! Very practical as you could read it or/and listen to it plus very useful to have it in so many different languages. Thank you truly… 🙂 Plus no ads M.A.

• I am so grateful for the people who created this wonderful inspirational app! To have the Bible audio and text, where you can listen, and read along, as well as all the other features included. It is an app that would be very hard to beat! Thank you. Thank you. K.S.

• I love this app. it helped me a lot! A.E.

We took a trip to the North [Portugal] to visit our dear friends Abílio and Julieta in their country side place. The beautiful scenery of the Rio Douro and the vineyards are a feast to the eyes. We also learned a lot about Portuguese history on several excursions . The weather has been fantastic and above all we are in good health. It has been wonderful to spend time with family again and we thank the Lord that our relatives are enjoying the blessing of good health as well.

Along with personal visits we were able to meet new people who are interested in the Audio
Bible distribution – Abílio kept 10 to share with his friends. Armando took 12 to bring with him to Mozambique.

Jorge and Jason accomplished some handyman work regarding insulation of the attic. There were a lot of steps to climb, but with great eagerness they managed to get all the materials upstairs . It is looking good, but this is a work in progress so will have to be continued at some further point in time.

Ben finished his one month intensive language class in Braga. He met with a team of international students and is now conversing much more fluently in the Portuguese language.

Gloria and Jason put in quite a few hours editing Audio files. It is an operation that not even Google itself can accomplish and it is thanks to their knowledge of the Chinese language that they can get the job done. So much to do and so few to do it. Always praying for laborers. The harvest truly is plentiful but the laborers are few. Mt 9:37.

Here in Portugal, besides family affairs and the sunshine we are enjoying, we are also in the process of implanting an Audio Bible (SR600 devices) distribution center.  We made our first contact with an Association for the Blind here in Lisbon. We left 10 audio players there and we shall supply more should this  first test go well. Since “there  is none so blind as those who cannot see” – paraphrasing Jer. 5:21 “Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.”, (all of us?!) and Jesus own words in John, chapter 9, we have a lot to do here too. Thus, we hope and pray we can find the right connections during the rest of our stay.

This month we heard great news from Mozambique  and that was  through Samuel in Kenya and also that through shipments directly to Pemba, in the North, the audio Bible players  are being a great blessing there. Bro. Paulo, in Mozambique,  reports that (translated from Portuguese) “the Word of God through the narrated Bible  is a priceless asset especially in the villages where there is almost nothing.  Many are hearing the Word and giving their lives to Christ. ..15 Bibles were distributed in prisons and the prisoners are listening to the Lord daily…we have established 48 new centers and aim to establish 35 more before December. …”

From Bro. Samuel we received the following message: “… The north as shared in earlier reports has most of the unreached and least-reached people and people groups in Moz. Therefore we have this opportunity to share the love of God around – I have been able to distribute audio Bibles and begin a discipleship session with some young people as I continue to trust God for more. [OM]

Also, through Bro. Paulo,  WP helped support some of the repair work in the aftermath of the cyclones that affected the North of Mozambique.

Not least, with the help of Bro. Raj we were able to get our first package of audio Bibles (50) into India. It has been a great breakthrough as, finally, we hope to establish a center to distribute more audio Players in India’s many languages.

In cyberspace, we had the usual battles with servers (computers that suppose to serve) and we are considering all options especially now as demand for audio downloads is increasing considerably. In June we reached a new record of 25 Terabytes of downloaded audio.   It is a lot of data, by most standards, a great outreach, by God’s grace.

The impact of that outreach is clear to see in the emails we received in June. Let me just share some here, sorted by language or region, for your understanding of the situation. Mind you, some of the issues mentioned in the emails are being addressed, or will be in the future, if they are within our power to solve them, of course – many are not – changes to the Bible, for example, we cannot do.  That is beyond our “mandate” and more likely the work of the Bible Societies in those respective countries. So, enjoy the following comments:

Chinese (from Chinese person in mainland China)

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Hey brother and sister. Thank you so much for Jesus Christ and your project. Am a chinese in mainland. And the app is so available to be downloaded here. This probably is the Only one biblical  app with download options. That my family can listen offline. May I show my much appreciation again. Jesus loves you. FC

Tamil

Praise the Lord! This is a wonderful website helping people where word of GOD can’t reach in hard copy. I am not sure whether it is right to ask, but I hope you don’t  mind. I would like to have the complete Tamil bible to be used in our church to present in projector during the Sunday service (non commercial usage). I already have a copy that comes with the software that we use for presentation, but it has a lot of errors. Since I saw that you allow to download the complete bible (it comes as separate chapters), I thought of asking for the complete Bible in single file. Kindly advise.

Arabic

I have two comments regarding two issues, could you please help me sorting out them. First, I’d like to ask why the English audio is not working while I am running it with the Arabic audio. Second, I noticed that the Arabic voice is pronouncing the Arabic name of Peleg wrongly. It should be Falej and he is pronouncing it Falah. Many thanks in advance. M

Gujarati

Jonah 1:9 Gujarati Bible the word should be I am a Hebrew, gujarati translation for that is “Yahudi”, though in the gujarati bible at the moment the word used is “misri” which translates in English “Egyptian”. It needs to be changed. And really good work on bible. Praise the Lord, and thank you for making this available for everyone in every language.

Africa

I would like to know if you have files for each bible that you have online available in pdf, xml or some other format that can be used for printing out bibles in different languages. I would like to know if you have texts for the Bible in Ewe language from 1913 and Louis Segonde French Translation from 1910. I would like to print bibles for use in Togo (Africa). Thank you

USA

I love your website design.  How was it built?  I’m interested in building a website to host just one Bible similar to yours with the chapter, and audio able to be played.  I hope to hear back from you.  Thank you for making the Bible available in many different languages.  God bless! Serving the King, S.R.

Denmark

Dear Wordproject. I’m in the process of making a video project and I’m in need of some audio files that read some Bible verses out loud. I wanted to ask if you permit the use of your audio files in public videos that is non commercial for creative use only? Sincerely, M.

Kannada language

Dear Brothers and Sisters at Wordproject, I have prayed for a while for a complete audio bible in Kannada. Thank you and praise our Lord, for your efforts in achieving this. How can we make donations to this work at wordproject. I do not find any bank details on your website. God Bless, M.

Urdu language

There are some typing mistake in urdu bible. Just like psalm 40 verses 10 and last missing.

French

What a shame! Your translation in French is much too fast.  The man should stop a longer time between two sentences.  I mean he speaks very fast and God’s word has no time enough to come into our hearts.  He should think about what he is reading and let it come deep in his heart when he is reading God’s word.  If you register again, please make the reader go much more slowly, reading God’s word. D. B.

Tagalog

A pleasant day to you my brothers and sisters,  I am R., and really appreciate your website for spreading the words of our God thru the Holy Bible. I got my calling a few months ago and now started building my project to spread the will of our God and his words from the Book of Revelation. May I ask permission to use your Tagalog Files to put in my project website? I am using a WordPress Theme and I can’t find any Plugin to finish all my things. I am hoping that you will read my message. Thank you my Brothers and Sisters. May God Bless you.

Spanish 

I was always listening to this (Spanish) biblical version, but I do not like that the word Philistine was changed in Jeremiah 37 by Palestinians, because they are not the same, the Philistines do not exist, the Palestinians are current invaders in Israel. I also do not like how they changed in Ezekiel 1 where he talks about living beings and you call them animals is not the same. They walk very badly in translation, pity because the voice of the one who reads I like a lot, it is very peaceful.

Amharic

Hello, My name is J.B. the reason I send this email is that I am writing a children’s book in Amharic and in English, so I want to use this Bible for reference or  to quote Bible verses. However, I need your permission to use. Can you give me permission to use verses for my book?

Portuguese

Olá boa noite paz do Senhor Jesus, queria agradecer a Deus e a voces por disponibilizar as Bi­blias em audio. Me tem sido uma benção!!! Que Deus possa fortalecer toda a equipe deste site, toda a equipe de tradução e revisão. Deus abençoe os locutores sempre!!!!