Monday, June 30, 2008

How to Install LDS Scriptures on a Blackberry

This is a short tutorial on how to install the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price on a Blackberry. People are amazed when they see the scriptures on my Blackberry. I keep getting asked how to put scriptures on a Blackberry, so here’s how you do it. (I have a Blackberry Curve 8320, but this should work with all the newer Blackberries - Pearl 81xx, Curve 83xx, and 88xx.)

Step 1: Memory Card
- Make sure you have a large enough memory card. These are pretty cheap these days. My microsd card is 2GB.

Step 2: Install MobiPocket Reader
- You can download MobiPocket Reader here and follow the instructions listed on the website.

- Alternatively, you can install it over-the-air (OTA) by going to http://m.mobipocket.com/ from your Blackberry’s browser.

Step 3: Download LDS Scriptures
- This was the thing I had the most difficult time with. The church website, lds.org, does not offer the scriptures for MobiPocket. So, I had to find one online. Not just any version, a free version :). It took me a while, but I found one. I tried looking for it again the other day, but I couldn’t find it again for some reason. I’ll save you all some time by putting a copy of the one I downloaded here.

- After you download the file, unzip it and copy it to your Blackberry. (Basically, you plug your Blackberry into your computer with the USB cable. In Windows, click on My Computer and then click on the Blackberry drive; it should be listed as a flash drive. Then open the eBooks folder and copy the LDS Scriptures Blackberry.prc file to the eBook folder. On Macs, open up the mounted drive and go to the eBooks folder and copy the LDS Scriptures Blackberry.prc file to the eBooks folder.)

- That’s it! Open up MobiPocket on your Blackberry, and you should be able to see the scriptures.

Installing Additional Church Content
- Although you can’t download the scriptures from lds.org, you can download a bunch of other stuff like general conference, manuals, Ensigns, and hymns. Click here to go to the church download site. It says it's for Palm devices, but the files work for Blackberry as well.

(Disclaimer: I’m not responsible if you mess up your Blackberry. Make sure you back up your data before you try this!)