Preferences and your Letters edition

Two places hold your account preferences. Time zone, date format, and email verification sit on the Login & preferences page — the one the gear icon in the top bar opens. Your Letters interests have their own page in the sidebar.

Time zone and date format

Time zone — choose from the full list of time zones. It applies to how times are shown to you across Homeward. Until you set one, Homeward assumes UTC, so it is worth fixing.
Date format — one of YYYY-MM-DD, MM/DD/YYYY, or DD/MM/YYYY. The default is YYYY-MM-DD.

Both show as read-only values with a pencil control; picking a new value from the dropdown saves it immediately, with no separate save step.

Verifying your email

If your account email is not verified, the Email row shows a Verify Email button. Choosing it sends a verification email to that address; open the link inside and your account is confirmed. The button disappears once the address is verified. If the email itself is wrong rather than merely unverified, that change happens in the finish-account flow, not here.

Letters interests

Your homepage Letters are a daily selection of stories from the field. The Letters interests page lets you tilt that selection toward the ministry areas and places you care about.

The personalization switch

Use my selected interests is on by default. Turning it off shows you exactly the same edition that signed-out visitors read.

Homeward states the privacy promise plainly on the page: your giving, your browsing, your private profile data, and your connections are not used to choose these stories. Interests are the only signal.

What you can choose

Ministry areas — checkboxes grouped by cause group; picking a group selects the group itself. Up to 8. Strong stories outside your choices may still appear for variety.
Regions — broad regions such as a continent or region. Up to 5.
Countries — up to 5, added one at a time from a dropdown and shown as removable chips for a more specific geographic signal.

Clear selections empties all three lists without touching the personalization switch. Save interests saves, and Homeward confirms that your Letters will use these choices while personalization is on.

What an Edition is

Letters are published as an Edition: one edition per UTC day, the same set of stories for everyone. Personalization never adds or removes stories — it reorders the stories already in that day’s edition so the ones matching your interests come first. Turning personalization off shows the edition in its default order.