Soul Food Ministry became a special ministry of the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, DC in January of 2000. At present, there are hundreds of GLBT friendly spiritual reflections in English on the site, and the Spanish pages are nearly a complete mirror of the English pages. In addition, there are 9 articles each in Portuguese and French, as well as 1 article in Russian. We list links to other GLBT friendly spirituality web sites, and have provided links to Spanish and Portuguese language sites, as well as those in English. We include a link to the MCC-DC Internet Intercessory Prayer team, with invitations to request prayer in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Our site, while GLBT friendly, is not Gay centric, and we have ministered to a number of straight people in addition to our Gay readers. An outgrowth of the work on the website is the publication of Rev. Dr. Bochonok's book, "Living as the Beloved: One Day at a Time," through Chi Rho Press.

          The past year has seen a substantial growth in the readership of the Soul Food Ministry web site. The number of hits per month recorded in February of this year (which is the 1st month in which we had means to evaluate the statistics), the total number of hits for the site was 4248. By language, this breaks down to: English - 2887, Spanish - 1169, French - 29, Portuguese - 53, Russian - 108. By November, the hits per month had grown to a total of 10,452. By language this breaks down to: English - 5303, Spanish - 4291, French - 330, Portuguese - 365, Russian - 161. Complete December statistics are not yet available, but appear to be similar to November statistics. More than 80 countries are represented among our readers. Nearly every nation in the Western Hemisphere has checked in, as well as Australia and New Zealand. We count readers from nearly every nation in Western Europe, and get visits from Russia and several other former Soviet Bloc countries. In addition, there are visits from a scattering of African and Asian countries, including South Africa.

Goals for 2001:

• Translate the popular Lent Devotionals, which Rev. Dr. Bochonok coauthored with God's Gnome, into Spanish, Portuguese and French. Rev. Fabrice Lebert is already working on the French translation. We have applied for a grant from UFMCC to do the Spanish and Portuguese, and accomplishing this task is contingent upon receiving the grant, due to the cost involved.



• Translate the Advent 2000 Devotionals, which Rev. Dr. Bochonok coauthored with God's Gnome, into Spanish and Portuguese. Again, we have applied for a grant to do this, but it may be possible to do this task even if the grant does not come through.



• Locate a reliable French translator. We have had 2 or 3 translators do work for us, but none were reliable enough to warrant ongoing business with them. While Rev. Lebert has offered to do some translation for us gratis, we don't want to wear him out.



• Recruit some additional volunteers to help put the articles into format suitable for the web page. The small size of our team is limiting what we can do.



• Translate the link inviting people to send prayer requests to the Internet Intercessory Prayer Team into French.



• Finish translation of Rev. Dr. Bochonok's year-long Daily Devotions into Spanish.



• Substantially increase the number of Portuguese and French articles on the site.