The technology available through your smart phone can do amazing things. But perhaps the best thing it can do is to help you stay in God’s Word. WELS publishes daily devotions and Bible readings in audio format that your phone can easily retrieve and play for you. Today I’ll focus on how this is possible on an iPhone. Later I’ll do the same for those of you carrying Androids.

While Siri, the iPhone and iPad’s perky little digital assistant, doesn’t always do what you want her to do, I’ve had good luck getting her to play WELS Daily Devotion and WELS Through My Bible podcasts through Apple’s Podcast app. I’ve included a screencast of the rather simple process below, but here are the steps:

1. On your iPhone or iPad, make sure you have the Podcasts app installed.
2. Open it and tap the Search link at the bottom.
3. Search for “WELS” and then find and tap “WELS – Daily Devotion” or “WELS – Through My Bible.” They should be on the second row of results.
4. Once open, tap the purple “subscribe” button.
5. Give it a minute or two for Siri to figure out that there is new content in the app.
6. Now give it a try. Say “Hey Siri” (or otherwise use whatever method you prefer to wake her up), and then “Play WELS Daily Devotions”. She should find the latest episode and start to play it automatically. Nice! What a great way to put Siri to good use :-)

That’s it. Give it a try if you are an iPhone or iPad user.