Soul Food Ministry saw continued growth in its multilingual ministry to GLBT Christians the world over. We received visits from 132 countries, with very heavy visitation from South and Central America, and nearly 275,000 articles were downloaded over the course of the year. We started out the year with 20,078 files downloaded from the site in January: 8,574 in English, 8,193 in Spanish, 759 in French 2,382 in Portuguese, 79 in Russian and 91 in Chinese. The downloads reached a peak in November, with 28,122 hits. This breaks down to 10,662 in English, 11,259 in Spanish, 1,354 in French, 4,487 in Portuguese, 224 in Russian and 136 in Russian. The year ended with 23,055 hits in December: 9,513 in English, 8,231 in Spanish, 1,240 in French, 3,732 in Portuguese, 203 in Russian and 136 in Chinese. We have about equal traffic in Spanish as in English. There has been nearly a doubling in the Portuguese, French and Russian traffic. There is beginning to be significant traffic coming to the Portuguese pages from Portugal, so we hope this portends the establishment of a church in Portugal soon. Likewise, we are seeing more and more hits from Canada to the French pages, and we hope the day is not far off that there will be a French speaking church in Canada.
We are diligently translating documents to increase the multilingual content of the site. We posted the Portuguese translation of the popular Advent 2000 devotions, written by UFMCC's Rev. Dr. Sandra Bochonok and Anglican pastor Rev. Vera Bourne. We are also in the process of translating and posting the Spanish translation of the Lent 2000 devotions, written by the same 2 authors. We expect these to be finished in time for Lent this year. We posted an additional 10 articles in French, as well as a Russian translation of the UFMCC authored article "The Bible and Homosexuality". We also created a Russian home page, in anticipation of posting more articles in that language. As we have seen in the past, the increase in the number of articles translated into a particularly language resulted in increases in the traffic of that language. We also continue to identify and post links to UFMCC churches in other countries.
English contributions to the site included articles by a number of UFMCC clergy. Rev. Bochonok finished her devotion series "To Zimbabwe with Love". Both Rev. Bochonok and Rev. Elder Nori Rost contributed articles addressing the emotions generated in the aftermath of the war in Iraq. Rev. Vera Bourne submitted a revision of her Epiphany devotions which were posted 2 years ago. In addition, Rev. Clay Witt has been contributing a series of weekly devotions entitled "Soul Food for the Week's Journey". We also translated and posted an article, originally in Portuguese, entitled "Palavra de Deus (The Living Word of God)", written by Rev Luiz Fernando Pereira Garupe of São Paulo, Brazil.
Rev Bochonok was frequently called on to minister to readers of the Soul Food Ministry site. When letters arrived that were in Portuguese, Soul Food Ministry Translation Coordinator Geraldine Wright acted as a translator to facilitate communication. If a letter in French or Spanish arrived, Skip Jordan acted as translator. Needs met ran the gamut from encouraging doctors who care for sick people in the strife torn country of Zimbabwe to getting a French student in touch with the MCC in Provence-Languedoc, France to information about UFMCC theology.
Rev. Bochonok and Soul Food Ministry Translation Coordinator Geraldine Wright were co-presenters with Rev. David Farrell of a workshop at the UFMCC General Conference in Dallas. Rev. Bochonok and I detailed some of the practical aspects of Multilingual Internet Evangelism. At this workshop we passed out small CD's which contained the entire site, in order to publicize it. Afterwards we posted an article on the site with the hints for making a site multilingual, and also submitted this article to the UFMCC Ministry Development Center site. This contributed significantly to our exposure in the denomination. In addition I submitted 4 advertisements to the General Conference program inviting readers to visit the site: one each in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
"Living as the Beloved: One Day at a Time", Rev. Bochonok's book containing her Daily Devotions, will be on the market in January of 2004. Many visitors to the web site have been blessed by Rev. Bochonok's daily devotions, and now they are being made available in print through Chi Rho Press.
We continue to work on getting volunteers and developing a fundraising/grantwriting program. We do now have 1 regular volunteer, as well as a few people who can be called on occassionally. It is my hope the we can cooperate with the Coordinating Council of Ministries to identify more helpers. We have been doing research to identify possible grant and fundraising possibilities, but lack of volunteer resources prevented the development and implementation of a strategy.
Rev. Bochonok began a year long sabbatical in November, and Rev. Clay Witt will be the clergy leading the ministry in her absence. We look forward to working with him. In addition to his theological training and pastoral experience, he brings a computer savvy that fits well with the demands of running Soul Food Ministry.
In addition to activities already mentioned, here are goals for 2004:
