By Jessica Gurnsey
Students concerned about finishing President Hinckley?s Book of Mormon challenge by the end of the year might want to start checking their e-mail.
A new Web site, readthescriptures.com, offers subscribers the chance to create reading schedules that will e-mail a portion of the scriptures to them, in text and audio formats, each day.
Deann and Wayne Dixon created the Web site in response to President Hinckley?s Book of Mormon challenge.
Wayne came up with the idea during October?s General Conference and began work on the concept immediately. The site is free to users and funded entirely by the Dixons.
?If you want to challenge yourself, unless you actually figure out , you?ll never sure if you?ll make it,? Dixon said. ?Here, they?ve done it for you. It takes away the worry.?
Once each section is finished, the user clicks completed on the bottom of the e-mail. E-mails are sent each day only if the previous day?s reading was marked complete.
Readthescriptures.com allows users to create reading groups with friends and family members to discuss the scriptures and track each other?s progress. A stake president even contacted the site hoping to implement a reading group for the youth of his stake.
The site also offers space to keep a personal journal. The journal can be downloaded to Microsoft Word and printed out or kept solely on the Internet.
?Journals are totally private,? Dixon said. ?We don?t even have access to it. You can include pictures or make back entries. It?s completely editable and searchable.?
The Web site, which has been operating for the past month, has approximately 650 members and receives nearly 6,000 visitors every day, Dixon said. It has members from such diverse places as Australia, Chile and South Korea. The couple hopes to gain permission soon from the LDS church to offer the scriptures in different languages, which are copyrighted, Dixon said.
This site is one of the first to offer a scripture e-mailing program, but having the scriptures available online is not new.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offered text and audio versions of the scriptures at lds.org.
Nancy Randle, a junior from Orem majoring in advertising, listens to the Book of Mormon online to help her complete President Hinckley?s challenge.
?It?s really interesting to hear someone else read them to you,? Randle said. ?He knows what?s happening, so he reads it to you like a story. Instead of me reading it verse by verse or picking things out, it?s a story.?
She said she also enjoys listening to the scriptures because it allows her to do other quiet activities, such as folding laundry or dusting, at the same time.
Randle, who was introduced to the audio scriptures by her husband, chooses to listen to the Book of Mormon online because it is free, she said.
?I have found when I listen to the scriptures I get a lot more out of them than when I read them,? Randle said.
There are 27 reading days left to finish President Hinckley?s challenge. Students deciding to start their reading today will have to read 245 verses a day to finish in time.