First Sabbath Offering for the Spanish Hymnal

Dear brothers, sisters, and friends around the world:

Music was born in the heart of God to be a meeting place between the Creator and the creature—a moment of communion, in which created beings could express their adoration and worship for the great Creator. The psalmist declares: “Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; shew forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people. . . . Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come into his courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth” (Psalm 96:2, 3, 7–9).

“Music forms a part of God’s worship in the courts above, and we should endeavor, in our songs of praise, to approach as nearly as possible to the harmony of the heavenly choirs. . . . Singing, as a part of religious service, is as much an act of worship as is prayer.”—Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 594.

Music can facilitate learning and “it is one of the most effective means of impressing the heart with spiritual truth.”—The Faith I Live By, p. 273.

Bearing in mind the importance of good music in the context of worship, education and evangelization, we present to the Reform family our urgent need to have the first official hymnal in the Spanish language. There are 21 countries having Spanish as their main language and estimates range that somewhere between 527–580 million people speak Spanish worldwide, with the vast majority of these being native speakers.

The process of preparing this hymnbook in Spanish includes exhaustive translation work, legal copyright issues, the technical work of reharmonizing the hymns, transcribing them into new keys, inserting the notation in the respective scores and editing them in the software.

As it is a high-cost enterprise, we call on all Sabbath school students kindly to help us with this project, so that soon we can have our official hymnal appropriate for worship services to our God.

We pray that the Lord will richly reward you for giving freely to this cause, and we thank you in advance for your support and generous contribution.

Your brethren and sisters from the South American Region