533420 was not just another number; it was an opportunity for me to help someone engage with the Word of God.

I once heard it said that God gave us computers to help advance and accelerate Bible Translation, and he just lets everybody else use them. Well now I’m saying that God has given us smart phones to be able to read all those translations anywhere we go He just lets everyone else use those too.

As a Wycliffe member and a User Advocate with YouVersion app I’m thankful that I’m able to connect people around the world with the Bible in their heart language and provide them with a way to connect with God’s WORD in their heart language

How can volunteering as a YouVersion User Advocate connect someone in Ethiopia with the scriptures in their mother tongue?

Well let me show you a recent dialogue that I had with someone.

Well it starts out simple. How can I change to my language on my phone, I do a quick check on my phone and see that the Amharic language is there, so I type in ##switch in my message box and it fills in the rest of the message for me except the sentence about Amharic.

I get a reply the next day that YouVersion doesn’t have the Amharic language.

Undeterred I just figure, they must be clicking in the wrong place because the language is there.

I receive another message the next day thanking me but after a thorough search it’s still not there.

So thinking maybe just the Bible wasn’t there I asked if they even saw the language.

And it wasn’t there!

So I send a screen shot of my screen and ask them to send one back.

Before I looked at tickets that morning I read my email and saw that YouVersion had just added another 86 languages and Amharic was one of them so I asked the user to clear their cache, which I do by simply typing ##cache in the message box and they responded by saying “It is all done now! I just got the best app in the language of my heart.”

Praise the Lord one more person engaging with God’s Word in the language of their heart.

One ticket at a time.