Ron Graham’s Report
— for Jan-Feb-Mar 2016
This page reports my voluntary ministry activities for the information of those who take a special interest in my work.
Dear Brethren... This report covers the first quarter of 2016.
Preaching at Bundaberg
During January, February, and March 2016, I presented 19 Sunday lessons in Bundaberg. These included 11 sermons, and 8 Bible class studies. The sermons were a variety. There was no particular theme. The class lessons were mostly on the theme of grace. We especially looked at the doctrine of "grace alone and nothing else". Susanne and I were away from Bundaberg for two weeks, because of illness.
New on simplybible.com
In the quarter, I added one new slide show; two new Bible crosswords; a page of notes on the Passover; and a new series, “True Grace,” consisting of seven new lessons.
Social Media
Susanne has continued maintaining the facebook pages. The simplybible page has exceeded 900 likes (for the page itself). Posts on the facebook page for simplybible often reach over 200 people weekly (without paying for promotion). Susanne regularly posts links to lessons on simplybible.com and she creates and posts Encouraging Bible Verses which are Bible texts superimposed on her own photo images. You can view the page at facebook.com/simplybible
COMPLIMENTS. The simplybible facebook page gets some very encouraging messages about simplybible.com —for example:
- "Excellent, simply profound."
- You have ministered to my heart with Isaiah 6 article. Thank you. May the Lord continue to use you to reach the nations.
- "This is a nice place to be educated. I love this site."
- "Thanks a bunch." (sticker)
- "This is an awesome page."
In other social media, I posted and tweeted a number of times on Google+ and Twitter. These other simplybible accounts also attract regular interest, albeit not as much as facebook.
The 2016 Upgrade simplybible.com
I've been busy on the upgrade program for 2016. This is not a major upgrade, but rather it pays attention to details:
- adding keywords to SiFi (automatic indexing clerk)
- adding internal links (cross-linking pages within the website)
- adding notelets and note pages (where explanations and comments are helpful)
- adding quiz pages (quizzes on Bible books are sought after)
- adding fact sheets (also popular, for example "Facts about Jeremiah")
- adding pdf documents for people to download
- more magazine pages, Bible readings, encouraging Bible verses (images)
- identifying and optimising landing pages (explained in previous report)
- adding SiFi cross references to appropriate pages
For these tasks, all the necessary designing and coding had already been done before the year began —except for a few tweaks. So now, in 2016, I am using that basis to enhance and optimize pages in the important ways listed above. While I have a page open, I check it for typos, correct structure, and make other minor edits as needed.
Other website work
During the quarter I also fixed some problems with the display of the special page views. These are the simple view and the print preview. Whilst the normal view was displaying very well on mobile phones, these special views were not. So I made some alterations to scripts to correct these problems.
Website Usage
The figures for page views (total of pages opened by visitors) continued to be high over the quarter: January 127,680; February 124,257; March 129,407 (source Awstats). That is an average per month of more than 125,000 pageviews.
The Website’'s Worldwide Outreach
To give you an idea of the website's outreach, here are the page views for the four weeks, from March 1st to March 28th 2016...
| COUNTRY | PAGEVIEWS |
| United States | 66,444 |
| Australia | 8,603 |
| Great Britain | 8,359 |
| Philippines | 3,961 |
| Canada | 3,576 |
| India | 2,540 |
| South Africa | 2,286 |
| Ukraine | 1,437 |
| Nigeria | 1,299 |
| Singapore | 1,007 |
| Russian Fed | 963 |
| Uganda | 952 |
| France | 800 |
| Ghana | 786 |
| Malaysia | 770 |
| Germany | 752 |
| China | 694 |
| Poland | 600 |
| Kenya | 543 |
| Jamaica | 540 |
| New Zealand | 532 |
| South Korea | 485 |
| Norway | 435 |
| Italy | 395 |
| Trinidad & Tobago | 372 |
| Other Countries | 7533 |
Vanuatu Update
Another two big boxes of Bibles and class materials have gone to Vanuatu. Seven of the Bibles are gifts to the seven leaders of villages in North Ambrym. The people of Vanuatu appreciate the simple English of the New King James Version. We included with each Bible a copy of Ken Craig’s book "The Big Picture" which clearly explains the Bible's message of sacrifice and rebirth. We also included more folders of printed lessons from the simplybible.com website.
Boxes sent to Vanuatu get a rough journey, so they have to be well padded. We pad the bibles and books with linen items such as bed sheets or towels. This is more useful than sending bubble wrap rubbish. But it also sends an important message that we don't limit our gifts to the spiritual needs, but also like to help with material needs.
Thank You
To those of you who helped with the Vanuatu project, we say "thank you" for your fellowship in the gospel. Also, Sali Maseng, the chief to whom we sent the boxes, asked us to pass on thanks from himself and his people. “Tanku tumas” (Thank you very much).
Thank you for keeping on helping me in the Lord’s work and for your confidence in my work, especially the website, by means of which we reach out to many thousands of people. By sharing with me in the ministry you enable things that I could not possibly accomplish on my own.
Love and best wishes in Jesus.