It all began in 1917.

William Cameron Townsend (known by friends as “Cam”) was a passionate 21 year old, fueled by a vision to obey Jesus’ command to take the gospel to the nations.

“The greater need is where the greatest darkness is,” Cam said. “Our orders are to forget self and to give our lives in service for the Master.” While many of his friends and peers were fighting in World War I, Cam decided to fight a spiritual battle — a battle for lost souls. He packed his bags, said goodbye to his family and moved to Guatemala to sell Bibles to farmers and villagers along the sparsely populated trails of Central America.

When Cam stepped off the boat, his youthful enthusiasm for sharing the gospel was high, but he soon realized that most of the people he was meeting didn’t understand the Bible in Spanish!

Cam faced a dilemma. If they didn’t understand, how was he reaching people for Jesus? Frustrated and disappointed, Cam began to wonder if he’d failed. But God had other plans in mind.

As he continued to travel around Guatemala, Cam soon learned about the Cakchiquel people. People of Spanish heritage often thought of them as inferior and uneducated members of society, but Cam disagreed. Instead he was impressed when he met the Cakchiquel man who first brought the gospel to his own language group and led 40 people to Christ — all without a Bible in his own language! After sharing a short testimony in Spanish, Cam decided to put behind his first failure and help reach these people with the gospel. So he abandoned his attempts to sell Spanish Bibles to non-Spanish speakers and began serving as a missionary to the Cakchiquel by helping start a school to teach them how to read and write. 

Still, Cam didn’t have any Scriptures in Cakchiquel. When he’d brought Spanish Bibles to men who only spoke Cakchiquel, they’d asked him something that really made him think — why didn’t God speak their language? Was he only the God of English and Spanish speakers?

Deep down, Cam thought everyone — man, woman and child alike — should be able to read God’s Word in the language of their heart. So although it would end up taking almost 10 years of his life, he decided to learn the complex Cakchiquel language, create an alphabet and translate the New Testament.

When he was done, the Cakchiquel finally had God’s Word, but thousands of other languages still needed it. So in 1934 Cam started “Camp Wycliffe,” a linguistic training program named after John Wycliffe, the first translator of the entire Bible into English. Less than 10 years later, the humble training camp had grown into two affiliate organizations known as Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL Global).

Cam served for over 60 years in Latin America, witnessing the work spread across the continent and reaching language communities in Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and more. SIL Global established an SIL Americas branch, focusing on reaching people with the translated Word of God in the language they understand best. Cam’s work in translating the Bible for the Cakchiquel was just the start!

Almost a century later, Cam’s legacy lives on. Today there more than 550 language groups have the entire Bible and more than 1,300 have the New Testament in the language they understand best. It's believed that up to 1,800 languages likely still need a Bible translation to begin.

And it all began in 1917 when a man’s eyes were opened to a people who were vastly overlooked and desperately needed to know that God spoke their language too.