It was a first edition—the Reach Out Living New Testament, and off it went with me to Bluewater Bible Camp in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I loved that paperback Bible. I underlined favorite Bible verses in bright pink ink. I drew daisies in the margins. I even blackened out a few teeth of the smiling young people in the photographs.

It was at camp that my Reach Out Bible met its soggy fate. Standing on the dock, my friends and I stared at my Bible slowly floating out of reach. Then to the delight of this giggling gaggle of high school girls, the dashing water ski instructor drove by in his boat and rescued my Bible from the clear blue waters of the Canadian lake.

The rescue effort didn’t come close to my effort to dry out the Bible. Beginning with Matthew’s gospel and ending with Revelation, I worked my way through the New Testament, resting it on a tree stump in the sun trying to get the pages as dry as I possibly could before packing it in my suitcase. Fortunately, a dry Reach Out Living New Testament made it across the Canadian border to Michigan.

But more than a dry New Testament came across the border that summer. God’s Word began its transformative work in my heart as I began to read and re-read (and re-underline in aqua blue ink this time) those favorite verses and more.

Another first edition Bible, this time with both testaments, a hard cover and my full name stamped on it, went with me to Moody Bible Institute. At the time, the preferred version of the Institute was the New American Standard Bible. The discovery of a misspelling in that edition of the Bible, the book of "Galations," more than made up for my disappointment over its lack of photographs. (I like to think that the typo inspired my future vocation in editing and writing.)

While the typo may have inspired my future, it didn’t detract from the school’s then-motto of 2 Timothy 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” (NASB, of course) As I was proving to be a somewhat diligent student, I realized that the study of God’s Word wasn’t contained to semesters or syllabi.

There are still a few of my Bible artifacts around the house, including one with a Chiquita Banana sticker on the cover. I’ve never experienced a scarcity of Bibles in my life, unlike believers my husband met in Russia.

“My first time traveling to Russia, it was the foundational country of the Soviet Union,” Wil recalled. He was working for Slavic Gospel Association at the time and spent much of his time reporting on Christians who were arrested, imprisoned or hospitalized in mental wards because they were Christians.

“Many Russian people were desperate for a Bible. They copied portions of it in books that looked to me like bluebooks. People cobbled together makeshift printing presses and hid them in their basements and made duplications of Scripture any way they could. People in prison would scratch Bible verses on bars of soap or on the walls of prison walls.

“So, when I stood in front of the customs agents and they took the New Testaments and Bibles out of my luggage and the pockets of my clothes, I started to argue with them. ‘These are gifts,’ I insisted. ‘I’m not bringing them into your country to make a profit, or to subvert your government. They are to help people.’ I was as insistent as I could be in a situation where I had no real power. I prayed and continued to insist. After a while, they agreed to keep half and give half back to me. People later told me they probably wanted to sell them on the black market. It was a great joy to give those gifts of Scripture to Christians I met in the days afterwards.”

To this day, I remain envious of my husband’s first trip and first friends in Russia. Now that I’ve made my own friends in Russia, I can imagine the genuine and emotional response to holding a real, honest-to-goodness Bible in your hands for the first time.

Those Bibles were more precious to these Russian believers than fine gold, even much fine gold.

Today—as in Saturday, August 29, today—in Benin, West Africa, believers from the Yom people group are celebrating the completion of the Yom Bible, an almost 70-year project in which College Church missionary Dorothy Forsberg has been involved. (A New Testament in the Yom language was completed in 1986.)

Imagine the joy today as a Yom believer reads Psalm 19 in his or her first complete Bible, “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

I hope that in a few years, a teenage girl in Benin will be underlining her favorite Bible verses and drawing flowers in the margins of her Bible.