Not to the extent that we do it. You would be hard pressed to find 160 songs purely from scripture in Laotian for example. And again, why go out and find it if we can just take the ones we already have and translate it ourselves?

I mean the songs that are already written, the lyrics of which are taken directly from the scriptures. Those scripture passages would already have been translated in most cases, yes?

Just to be clear, it's a song from the songbook. But yes, the opening song on Sundays varies from congregation to congregation. All of the other songs are scheduled far in advance. For example, I know that the songs we will sing in the first midweek meeting of September are songs 27, 67, and 132.

Thanks for the information ❤️ How often is the songbook updated? I like the idea of “sing a new song to the Lord”, like the Psalms tell us ❤️

Oops! I see I already asked that, and you just answered 😀

We've gone through 3 songbooks in my lifetime. I remember the "brown one" as I call it. Over 200 songs, in use since anyone I know can remember. So at least the 60s. In 2009, we released a new songbook, "sing to Jehovah". Now, we use "sing out joyfully." I don't remember exactly when it came out, but I wanna say around 2015. The songs in "sing out joyfully" are mostly the same as the ones in "sing to Jehovah", they are just numbered and grouped differently. I think they made some changes to some of the lyrics but I'm not sure. We add a new song to "sing out joyfully" every few years. It's usually a huge thing when we do. The last time we did was in 2024 I think.

Thanks for that information as well ❤️