WP November Update

In my second visit to China, at the beginning of November, I had the opportunity to meet with Robin, our brother in the Lord who was instrumental in starting the audio Bible production and distribution, back in 2007. He shared a bit about the situation in the mainland and it seems he is sort of on the watch list, so he has to be careful. We talked about the old days, when we had more freedom to meet together in the golden age of the “House Church” – a blessed time. I also met with mr. Hao, our audio Bible developer. He was eager to meet us, and he was also hopeful we could place a large order of audio Bibles . Due to financial limitations, we could not place a large order, as we planned to, but we did place an order for 200 units, which we had promised to send to the blind people’s ministry in Kenya and a ministry in Congo. Also, we had some extra audio Bibles in Macau, and I brought them with me to China, in order to be shipped to Nairobi, and eventually sent to Tanzania, to the Masai ministry there. The images we received from our friend Jack, who works with the Masai, are very compelling and almost makes us feel like we live in a different planet.

We are thankful to be able to share resources with some ministries in Africa, as no matter how bad things are looking for us here, they are a shadow of the realities they face there. Another ministry we are trying to support, as much as possible, is Patrick’s mission with the peoples of East Africa, including Northern Mozambique. Funds are helpful, and we try to send some, but audio Bibles last longer and have a deeper impact. This seems to be an idea expressed by the leaders of those communities themselves.

Patrick and his family

We also received news and shocking images from Pakistan, where real persecution to Christians is taking place.
India and Sri Lanka are also in contact with us. They are very much in need of our prayers. They frequently asking for audio Bibles. We have encourafed Raj, our dear brother from India who works now with shipping from China, to help with the difficult task of bringing audio Bibles into these two countries. We hope this will succeed.

The audio Bible and the online Bible are really an answer to prayer in these difficult countries. In Pakistan, for example, we hear that they attack churches and burn Bible books. Also, having a personal Bible book is incriminating. A digital online access is much safer in the majority of situations. That could be one reason why we have so much online traffic from India, (and increasingly so from China).

Our online stats show the constant demand for Bibles, all over the world, as people seek guidance and encouragement in times of global crises:

The world is changing right in front of our eyes and as evil seems to thrive in world, with its cult of death, we also should abide more and more in the work of God, sharing and spreading the life that comes from Jesus’. “…the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63) .

Thank you for your support and your prayers.

WP

WP October Update

One of the main events this month was that our servers were not responding during many hours of the 23rd of October. It look some maintenance of the servers to get it back into action and we are thankful that Philip was there for the rescue. We are trying to figure the reason for the event in order to find a definitive solution and avoid future downtime.

Other than that, things went smoothly and the number of users seem to be raising again. We are serving the Word of God to people in countries where Bibles are not available and with increasing world tensions, comes a greater need for peace and blessed assurances.

It is encouraging to see that besides our direct outreach, we are influencing and supplying means for others to build their own websites and media. Raj, our long term friend and brother in Christ, while he was in Souteast India, during covid restrictions, dedicated himself to create a youtube channel in Tamil. Using WP recordings and text, he made inspirational videos with full Bible chapters and audio from our site, which he made available in his channel. This initiative has produced good fruit, not least he feels very blessed in his life.

Meanwhile, he has moved back to China, where he does export business and hopes to move his family again next year. I went across the border to visit him there and we both met with Eagle, another long term friend.

Back in China

Took a package of audio Bibles from Macau, to be shipped to Africa as soon as we can get our contacts in line. Also helped Raj with some changes to the Audio files in older SR600 devices, which he plans to send to India. In this post-covid world we are now living in, we hope to rekindle production and shipping contacts, transfer processes and other details in order to be able to send more audio Bibles from China.

Sr600 audio Bible – a blessing to many

I have spent some time to film this area to keep up with the our Video outreach. We have now over 2100 subscribers and they need ‘food’ – that is Biblical input.

Above: Video stats

Bringing the Word of God to the world is one of the most exciting jobs one could ever have and there is no unemployment in this field. Actually, ‘The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few’, as the Scripures say in Matthew 9:37-38. Your support and prayers are part of this effort and we thank you.

WP September Update

This past month we tried to keep up with video production, although at a rather slower pace because of our involvement at the ‘farm’. This farm is located in an area where we find many beautiful places to film, and although we have done some filming, there is a ‘mine’ of images to be explored around here. If you go to WP channel you will see many recent clips with images from this area, including the ‘farm’ itself. Sunrise, sunsets, full moons, colorful fields and vineyards, there is a lot already on the channel and much more to come.

By the way, the channel has reached over 1800 subscriber, with a total views of 386 thousand since April 17 of this year, when we started publishing regular videos and shorts.

Recent short clip:

Also, WP web-pages are doing well: Over 22 Terabytes of audio was downloaded in September and the number of visitors for all sites was more than 2 million. We had more than 2300 users from Saudi Arabia, for example: knowing quite well how difficult it is to introduce the Bible into a country that is so absolutely closed to the Gospel, we feel honored and accomplished to be able to have an audience there. We can say that the Gospel is really being preached to the whole world. There is always a flow of communication with many users interested in using our materials on their web sites and media channels. This is good news for us, as we see the indirect impact of our work, which is rewarding.

See our stats here:

In our WP Android app reviews some interesting comments showed up:

"It's the best Bible app I've ever used! I give thousands of stars...." (EC)
"Great tool I use it every day in the morning to read the Bible. Thank you God bless" (RG)
"Very good Bible App in several languages ​​including the important original version Louis Second in Fr (LSG), you can read or listen to it in human voices, without advertising, and in disconnected mode. I listen almost every day on timer mode. Even if the interface can be improved, I recommend it without hesitation, because the signs of the end times are there! Seek God, save your life while you still can, repent and have faith in God through Christ. Bless you all, and those authors." (BJ)
"An update to the review of 3.9.23. After a few months and many attempts to download the app, finally, I have succeeded. It works as ever before. I am glad that you do not go for novelties, as many others. The Bible and the Bible only with great audio quality and scrolling screen. Well done!"❤️ (A)"
"Thanks for this application. I'm starting to use it and I'm really liking it. I want to give you my opinion later." (JC)
"Perfect I loved it" (EN)
Above: Sample of WP Plus APP user comment

We thank God Who has brought us this far. We are blessed. Thank you so much for your support and prayers.

Love.

WP

WP August Update

We have two Android Apps. The older one is having some issues with Google Play Store. The reason is: Android keeps evolving and the old App has to be updated to comply with new features. It is hard to keep up, but we are trying.

The other Android App, WP Plus, has been recently updated by Phil, (the other Phil) and now it is doing well. Here are a couple of recent reviews from users.

The average rating for this App is 4.7.

Here is a short inspirational video, which we adopted in our resources page, pointing out some good reasons to adopt the reading of the Bible in our lives:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/589727230

We continued with the production and uploading of several new videos of nature, enriched with the Word, of course. The short videos stats show some interesting nuances, which we are trying to understand – many viewers, vs few viewers. Overall, we have now over 1600 subscribers , that is about 300 more than last month. Total of 62 thousand views for the month. The following image concerns last 90 days: Go there

We get substantial feedback from users of the WP website, from different parts of the world. India continues to be the place of most of our users, along with China, Africa, US and South America. It is a blessing to serve this great demand for the Word of God. Go there

We are blessed to have people around the world who cooperate with us is different capacities. This is a project that could not be done by one person alone, and as it grows in size and outreach, all the more we need help and prayers.

“The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.” – Psalms 68:11

Stats are here:

Shorts this month

WP July Update

Above: Shorts with more than 2000 views in July 2023

By far, most of the viewers of our youtube shorts are from Latin America and Spain and therefore almost all shorts with more than 2000 viewers are in Spanish, as you my see on the above link.

Other than that, this month we had over 93 thousand views and reached 2.3K subscribers. The total watch time was 359 Hours.

Some comments are starting to show up here and there. Overall, there is moderate progress.
On the webpage front, the new analytic graphics give us an overall view of the situation. Some countries, do not have Google, so we have no way to know the exact number of users from those countries.

Analitic Stats
Important is we have lots of people all over the world interested in reading the Bible, in their own language, and that is why we are here, to facilitate that. The volume of audio Bible chapters downloads is increasing again and reached 20 Terabytes again this month. You may see the full stats in the link below:
Not least, at request of a user, we worked on the Estonian Bible, which was missing in our site. This Bible could be found in other sites, but we were requested to make it in our format, which apparently is preferential to some.
Above; Estonian Bible.

TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are NOT a priority for us but we have a presence there. Tik Tok in particular seems to be in some demand. Below:

Above: TikTok WP input

There are other elements of our outreach, such as the IOS and Android Apps, which are runing on autopilot, so to speak. We just have to monitor that servers are serving the service that needs to be served to serve the audio.

We received this picture from Patrick’s trip to Mozambique. Good work:

Above: Teaching the Bible in Mozambique

We are happy when everything is working and reaching out to the needs of the people. As it written: “Behold, the days come,” saith the Lord God, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.” (Amos 8:11).
We thank you for your support and prayers.

WP June Update

Romans 8:28

We are glad to see that our efforts on the video front are being rewared with some interesting viewership. Since last month, the number of subscribers to our channel almost doubled. We also had over 75000 views, for a total of 287 hours. Since we only place the Word on our videos, we are encouraged with the outreach. Still not impressive, but it is growing.

WP Google Stats – June 2023 (second half of the month)

We are thankful for the opportunity to travel and film the beauty of nature from above, the images of creation to illustrate the Word of the Creator. We produced several new videos this month and from the videos we took the shorts, that is, small segments. The videos are inspiring but it seems they do not take off in viewership. However, the demand for the shorts has been encouraging, special in Spanish, Portuguese, English and Italian languages.

Above: Videos this month.
Above: Shorts this month.

On the App front, there are always encouraging comments from some very thankfull people. We love to read those and transcribe just a few for you here:

 My eyes give me headache. The audio I great.I can still listen to the bible daily as long as I desire. No problem. I love our Lord. This audio pleases me and our Lord. J.
For a long period of search a bible app with audio at last I am thankful to have your awesome application which a big help for me in my age that I can't read a text longer likewise I can do something while listening contentiously without bothering of what I'm working, again thank you for your genius creation that I have now. G
Já uso esse APP a muitos anos e gosto muito! I've been using this APP for many years and I really like it! RM
La meilleur application biblique que j'ai trouvé. Merci infiniment aux développeurs. The best Bible app I have found. Many thanks to the developers. GF
Very helpful. Wonderful that this audio Bible app is free. One can download the books of the Bible one wants to be available offline. These are clear. NPP

And the last one is in Turkish:

Cok yararlı bir uigulama gerçekten çok Rabbin sözleri bizlere ışıktır bu zifiri karanlık dünyada.  A very useful application indeed, the words of the Lord are the light for us in this pitch-dark world. B.Y.
On the website front, we made a few audio corrections to the Portuguese audio. We are blessed to have a proofreader who has been going through the audio very carefully looking for small glitches, errors or omissions on the recordings. As you know, we recorded the Portuguese audio Bible in China, back in 2002 – 2005, and the conditions were not always ideal. We had to wake up early in the morning, before the house got noisy (with the childen) and before the trash collector truck started to roar on the street in front of our house. Thus, it is possible, even after 20 years, to find a few glitches here and there. Now it is getting perfect.

There has been a change to Google analytics, which is manifested in the image below:

We thank the Lord that we are able to bless so many people all over the World with the Word of Life. Below are the WP stats for June

We continue to help support some missionary work in Africa, and we are blessed with some amazing pictures of the work there.

Teaching the Bible in Mozambique

We thank you for your prayers for and your support of Wordproject.

WP May Update

Starting with a comment received concerning one of our APPs.

The word of GOD is WONDERFUL for those who love it, it is food for our souls. I listen to it when I do various tasks while waiting to read it. Be blessed beloved of GOD in the name of JESUS ​​CHRIST Our HAPPINESS’.

In the original French:

‘La parole de DIEU est MERVEILLEUSE pour ceux qui l’aime, elle est la nourriture de nos âmes. Je l’écoute quand je fais divers tâches en attendant de pouvoir la lire. Soyez béni bien aimé(es) de DIEU au nom de JÉSUS-CHRIST Notre BONHEUR. ‘ (J.N.)

This is one of the several comments we received during the month of May concerning the WP Plus App, which is indeed a great blessing to many people out there. Personally, I reiterate and subscribe what is stated above. I use it practically everyday. There are a number of features that are not so obvious on the APP. For example, we use a feature to collect audio in different languages for our verse of the month videos. Basically, we create a playlist with the assorted verses and then we use that same list playing it in different languages on the APP. We save the screen in video mode and then we extract the audio from the resulting video… that simple.

This is obvious a little bit of work but, that is what we are here for. Some people think I should be retiring and sit around just drinking ‘pina colada’ and enjoy life. Hopefully, nothing like that will happen because I do enjoy life and this work. Actually, I am glad there is no retirement age for missionaries. As a matter of fact, I think there is more work to do now, for old missionaries, then for young – maybe just a matter of prespective.

On the video front, our adventure into this amazing world of social media continues and youtube reports are sounding encouraging. Their algorithm is granting us more viewers and we will see how far they let it go. Mind you, the quality of what you do has nothing to do with your fame online. There are worst things being very visible online, and better things being completely ignored. In any case, it is what it is, and the Word is reaching some people – that is the goal. See the report below and draw your own conclusions. An interesting thing we a are learning is that, for example, Spanish and Italian shorts have more viewers than in other languages. So, I suppose, if we would produce only two languages, we would produce those first.

Shorts are short and sweet. Above are shorts produced this month.
Above images: Videos produced this month.

The recording of nature is a pleasant task as there are so many beautiful places to choose from. We never run out of places, we do run out of space in the video cards, sometimes. Keeping data is a challenge when recording in 4K, which takes a lot more space in the disks. Just in the past 2 months we filled up one 2 Terabytes hard drive with images. As the cards get filled we dump the volumes into the external hard drive. That is how it goes.

Wordproject webpage is still our flagship. This month was mostly on ‘autopilot’. We just monitored the servers and paid the bills. There were a couple of glitches that needed fixing and we did that, but mostly, the site had no major changes or updates. Nevertheless, stats show that users are active and audio Bibles are in great demand, all over the world, in particular in India.

We thank you for your support and prayers. You are always in our prayers.

You may wish to read a few more encouraging comments to our WP Plus Bible App:

Excelente, la mejor de todas, la recomiendo, bendiciones a los creadores hicieron un gran trabajo?Excellent, the best of all, I recommend it, blessings to the creators they did a great job ? SLR
La mejor de todas las aplicaciones de biblia que he tenido la recomiendo al 100, lo mejor que me encantó que la puedes escuchar en segundo plano, es gratis y no contiene anuncios, felicito a los creadores esto si es una gran creación, Dios los bendiga ? The best of all the bible applications that I have had, I recommend it 100%, the best thing that I loved is that you can listen to it in the background, it is free and it does not contain ads, I congratulate the creators, this is a great creation, God bless you ? ZR
love it soooo much ?￰゚ᄂᄅ thanks for this amazing app .. now I can read and listen and improve my English & Spanish reading & listening Skills with the beauty of God's words ♥️

Grazie, mi trovo bene, un buono ed utile compagno per il viaggio verso la casa del Padre; lode, onore e gloria a Dio;nel nome del nostro Signore e salvatore Gesù Cristo. Dio vi benedica. Thank you, I find myself well, a good and useful companion for the journey to the Father's house; praise, honor and glory to God; in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. God bless you. GC
Maravilhosa aplicação. wonderful application FG
Blessed every morning by reading and hearing this wonderful Bible. EF
Hallelujah ?. Thanks God for App in this play store. I am happy with this service. Thanks God Bless You All For Glory of jesus christ god. Love you always. .. SK
Vaya qué grata sorpresa encontrar este recurso. Wow what a pleasant surprise to find this resource. PR
De todas las aplicaciones de la biblia me he quedado con esta es magnifica grandiosa sencilla y muy muy facil de utilizar y nunca falla la amo gracias que el padre celestial los mantenga siempre en buen exito a los creadores de esta aplicacion gracias muchas gracias me encanta. Of all the bible applications I have stayed with this one, it is magnificent, great, simple and very very easy to use and it never fails. I love it. Thank you, the heavenly father, always keep the creators of this application in good success.  MP