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Afrikaans Chinese (中国人) Dutch/Flemish (Nederlands/Vlaams) English Estonian (eesti keel) Finnish (Suomalainen) French (Français) German (Deutsch) Hebrew (עִברִית) Italian (Italiano) Maltese (Malti) Portuguese (Português) Romanian ( Română) Russian (Русский) Slovak (slovenský) Spanish (Español) Swahili (kiswahili) Swedish (svenska) Tagalog

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Language: Chinese

Language: Dutch/Flemish

Language: English

Language: Estonian

Language: Finnish

Language: French

Language: German

Language: Hebrew

Language: Italian

Language: Maltese

Language: Portuguese

Language: Romanian

Language: Russian

Language: Slovak

Language: Spanish

Language: Swahili

Language: Swedish

Language: Tagalog

Musicals

Images

Image Type: Vera Griffin Paintings

Image Type: Morgan's Drawings

Image Type: Paintings

Image Type: England

Image Type: The Rocky Mountains

Image Type: Florida

Image Type: Washington DC

Image Type: New York City

Image Type: California

Image Type: Mesa Verde

Image Type: Coins

Image Type: The Mediterranean

Image Type: Houston

Image Type: Miscellaneous

Image Type: Our Family

Image Type: Caves

Image Type: Alaska and B.C.

Image Type: Hawaii

Image Type: New England

Image Type: Costa Rica

Image Type: Dallas World Aquarium

Image Type: India

Image Type: Nepal

Image Type: Oregon

Image Type: AI Images from the "Your Love Surrounds Me" video

Image Type: AI Images from the "How Long" video

Image Type: AI Images from the "The Stars Are Out Tonight" video

Image Type: AI Images from the "A Purpose And A Promise" video

Image Type: AI Images from the "You Opened My Eyes" video

Miscellaneous

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The Story Of This Site

In 1996 Gilberto Barreto and Elton Smith met at Church of the Savior in Plano Texas. Gilberto, a Brazilian native, was a songwriter and we started singing his songs in church. Elton was also a musician and was learning how to develop websites. The internet was young and bandwidth was very limited, so audio recordings were not yet practical. We began collaborating together and created midi files for Gilberto's songs. You can still find these midi files on the website, though how they sound depends on the audio quality of the computer you are using.

In that first year we also gave a dozen prison concerts in the Texas prison system. This is documented in detail on the Prison Ministry page.

Elton created increasingly complex websites featuring the midi files, lyrics and music scores. We were one of the few websites publishing songs at this time, and were at the top of the list when someone searched for "praise songs". Without doing any advertising, we magically began receiving thousands of visitors each day. You can see the total number of song displays for each language at the bottom of the Song Search screen.

To see what the website looked like over the years, visit the WaybackMachine. They started capturing screens from our website in April 1999. Be patient. Their site is a little slow.

Eventually Gilberto returned to Brazil and Elton began collaborating with other songwriters using the knowledge he had learned from Gilberto. In 1997, Elton began working with Larry Holder and wrote some of the most popular songs on this site. People around the world began singing our songs in their native languages and sent translations. The very first translation was received from Vincenzo Miuccio in 1997. There are currently 185 translations in 18 different languages.

Other people contributed songs, recordings and lyrics. Some found the songs we had written and sent recordings (Silvia Fleming and Lisa Piper). Some sent recordings of their own songs (Ed Rieck, Lynn Cooper, Paul Gentry, Nick Mott and Ralph Merrifield). Others came to collaborate (Lenny Smith, Linda Edge, Peter Gringhuis, Rhesa Siregar, Rick Founds, Steve Israel and Susan Tolle-Knight). Search the songs by Author to find people who have contributed.

In 1998, we began registering our songs with Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). Churches around the world purchase licenses and report their song use, and CCLI distributes royalties to songwriters.

In 1999 we added New Christmas Music featuring our original Christmas songs and several traditional Christmas carols. Each Fall there is a spike in traffic as people seeking Christmas songs find this page.

In 2000, Dan Zigler proposed we create musicals incorporating the songs on this site. We have published three: The Perfect Gift, a Christmas play, Resurrection Song, an Easter play, and Come Fill My Heart, an inspirational play. The Christmas and Easter plays have also been translated to other languages.

Starting around 2000, Elton began working with his mother on creating her own site. She had been a teacher for several decades and used her knowledge and experience to create Garden of Praise. Her site soon eclipsed the traffic of Songs of Praise as she was discovered by people all over the world trying to teach their children at home.

In 2001, people began requesting CDs and songbooks, so Elton started mailing them out. Between 2001 and 2015, he distributed thousands of CDs and songbooks. As it became easier to download recordings and music scores, the demand for these products thankfully tapered off.

In 2018, Larry Holder and Steve Israel started working with Elton on new songs after several years of inactivity. Many of the new songs feature instrumental tracks by Rhesa Siregar and vocals by a number of great singers from Fiverr.com.

In 2020, Elton began creating song videos and posting them on YouTube. These videos are embedded on the song pages. Many other people have also created videos for our songs.

The user interface for this website has been refreshed several times. The latest version was made in early 2024 and incorporates AI generated images. Stable Diffusion and DALL-E were used to create the images for the website and several of the videos.

Thank you for visiting our website. Please send any suggestions you might have. If you have translated a song on this site to a language other than English, please consider sending the translation in an email and we will post it for others to use. As Matthew wrote, "Freely you have received, freely give".

Blessings,
Elton Smith
October 2024