Today is AudioVerse's birthday! Believe it or not, AudioVerse launched only five short years ago on October 22, a very well known date in Adventism. Rather than being a Great Disappointment, this special day marked the beginning of a movement that would eventually grow to be the Seventh-day Adventist Church. What an appropriate time for AudioVerse to reflect on its own history and celebrate the marvelous providence of God!

The story of AudioVerse began in the spring of 2005. Several young adult ministries that I was involved with in Southern California were searching for a way to easily distribute recordings from their events. At this time the popularity of digital audio players and MP3s were growing by leaps and bounds. I dreamed of a consolidated resource for online sermons that would be free to anyone with an Internet connection. During Southwest Youth Conference that fall, I brainstormed this concept over lunch with Curtis Farnham, a friend and web programmer who eventually co-launched AudioVerse with me. He immediately felt convicted about the idea and pledged his support. On October 22, 2005, the original AudioVerse website was launched.

Since then, the Lord has blessed beyond our wildest dreams. We now consistently rank in the top 0.5% of the most visited websites worldwide. More than 40,000 unique visitors listen to almost 220,000 sermons every month. Over the last twelve months, AudioVerse has provided over 1.8 million sermon downloads! Praise be to God!

In celebration of AudioVerse's fifth birthday, we are preparing a special gift for you. Exactly three weeks from now, we will unveil a completely redesigned website that preserves the best aspects of AudioVerse yet completely updates the look and feel. Based on your feedback, we will also be overhauling the topic system to make it easier to find the exact subject you are looking for, and enhancing the search functionality of the website to make search more intuitive and responsive. A special timer on our home page will count down the days until the unveiling.

I hope you enjoy the first issue of our newsletter. After five years, AudioVerse remains committed to the same goal: to hasten the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ by making high quality Bible-based and Christ-centered media available to the whole world. So if you have been blessed by AudioVerse, please tell a friend!

In Christ,

Tim Arakawa
President