Right before Covid hit and the world shut down, my family and I were in Washington, D.C., promoting the release of my husband Jeremy’s movie, I Still Believe.
While there, we took our children to the incredible Museum of the Bible.
There were many enlightening exhibits, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. However, there was one exhibit in particular that blew me away.
At first glance, it didn’t mean much to me, and then I realized what the exhibit was. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with blank spaces shaped like books or, more accurately, Bibles. They represented all the languages throughout the world. The words still waiting or not yet started were inscribed along the spine. It was overwhelming seeing all of the blank spaces.
I looked around the exhibit and thought about the number of Bibles I have in my home written in the language that is most familiar to me, the language I think and dream in. We have multiple translations and paraphrases on our bookshelves. I could pull up my phone, order one on Amazon, and have it delivered the next day. My kids even have a plethora to choose from.
Emotions flooded over me. I looked over at my daughter, and she had the same response. “What can we do? This isn’t right!”
How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.”
Romans 10:14-15
I had no idea that day that this exhibition in the Museum of the Bible would spark something that would change my life forever.
Fast forward a couple of years: my husband and I were invited to participate in a planning meeting and perform some music for an organization called “illumiNations.”
We had heard a few things about this organization and how they hoped to eradicate Bible poverty. I wasn’t even sure what that was, but I was intrigued and eager to find out.
As we attended that weekend, we were absolutely blown away, and our lives were changed forever. It dawned on me that this was the organization whose exhibit we had seen at the Museum of the Bible which had had such an impact on my heart.
We discovered that illumiNations is an umbrella organization partnering with some of the world’s largest Bible translation organizations. There are around 7,000 languages in the world, and only about half of those have access to the Bible. That’s approximately 165,000,000 people who have little or no access to Scripture. Don’t read that too fast. Please think about it for a minute and take a look at that number again, each representing a person. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never heard Scripture in his or her native tongue, or as they like to say, your “heart language,” or never held a Bible in his or her hands.
We heard story after story about brave translators committed to making immeasurable sacrifices to translate Scripture, as well as villages miraculously transformed. People’s lives radically changed as Scripture was introduced to them. They could hold Scripture in their hands for the very time and process it as a community. I knew immediately that it was one of the most essential kingdom partnerships Jeremy and I could be a part of.
In honor of the As For Me Bible study on Psalms I recently released, our dear friends are joining us in translating the book of Psalms along with a few other portions of Scripture for a persecuted people group in the Middle East. To say we are thrilled and overwhelmingly grateful to be participating in piercing the darkness with the light of Christ would be a massive understatement.
Please join me in praying for the global church, for Scripture to reach the ends of the earth, for the precious people waiting for God’s Word in the language they understand the best, and let’s do our part in sharing the gift of hope we have to the furthest parts of the world.
If you want to know more about illumiNations, visit their website here.
Adrienne “Adie” Camp, a South African singer and songwriter, was the lead singer of the Christian rock band The Benjamin Gate before launching her solo career. She is married to fellow musician Jeremy Camp, whom she met on tour in 2002. They have been married since 2003 and have two daughters, Bella and Arie, and one son, Egan. Adrienne is deeply passionate about her marriage and her family. She homeschools her children as they often accompany Jeremy on tour.
She has authored three books—Even Me, an illustrated children’s book about her daughters’ adventurous trip to Uganda, In Unison, which she coauthored with her husband, Jeremy, about navigating their marriage and relationship, and As for Me: Life Through the Lens of the Psalms, a Bible study book with Lifeway Women. So far, she has traveled to twenty different countries and is motivated by a desire to see people encounter God’s love all around the world.
