Where Your Treasure Is

At Whit's End, Camilla Parker steps into the Room of Consequence for what Mr. Whittaker promises will be no ordinary treasure hunt. It is interactive, he explains, and will change based on her choices. The timing is no accident: just the day before, Camilla announced she was quitting her Awana club because she does not have time to memorize Bible verses. Each clue on this hunt is a Scripture reference written on a parchment, and Whit sends her off with a strange glowing Bible that speaks verses aloud in his voice. Her first clue is Proverbs 18:10, about the name of the Lord being a strong tower, and Whit warns, "There might be a few surprises along the way."

Camilla finds herself in an unfamiliar neighborhood of run-down shacks, where she meets a friendly girl named Asmita, who lives there and knows Mr. Whittaker from his visit to her Awana club. Camilla is astonished to learn she is standing in Kathmandu, Nepal, south of China and home to Mount Everest. Asmita, who has been told she would help someone with a treasure hunt, leads Camilla to the nearest tower, a smokestack at a brick factory down the road. The air is thick with haze, though Asmita insists it is unusually clear since the factories are closed for a national holiday. Camilla gamely shrugs, "Sure. I'll breathe later."

Inside the pitch-dark tower, the girls discover the special Bible's secret. When Asmita recites a memorized verse, Psalm 119:105 about God's Word being a lamp, the Bible transforms into a flashlight. By its light they find the next parchment: Matthew 13:44, about the kingdom of heaven being like treasure hidden in a field. But they are not alone. A boy named Pashwan, the self-described neighborhood hoodlum, has been listening over the wall. He announces he would rather find the treasure and keep it for himself, guesses that the clue points to the clay field behind the factory, and races off. Camilla is upset until Asmita points out a second verse on the parchment, Matthew 20:16, saying the last will be first. Getting there behind Pashwan is exactly what they need.

At the field, which Asmita quietly reveals is the last place she saw her father before he left their family, the girls put more memorized verses to work. One turns the Bible into a map marking the next clue's location; another turns it into a sword, and a verse about hammering swords into plowshares gives them a tool to dig with. The hunt carries them all over the city through clue after clue, past a pit, a cave, a gate, and a lake, until they reach an abandoned prison where local children play. Along the way Camilla keeps arguing that memorizing is hard and pointless when anyone can just look verses up, while Asmita gently answers that knowing verses by heart shows her right away how God wants her to handle hard times, and that things being hard does not mean God's people should skip them.

Inside the prison, Asmita quotes the earthquake verse from Acts 16 to shake open a locked cell door, and the girls find a parchment with two verses: one about treasure in jars of clay, and one warning about a trap and a snare. The warning comes true immediately. Pashwan springs out, snatches the talking Bible, locks the girls in the cell with a key conveniently left on a peg, and runs off to find the treasure alone.

Trapped in the dark cell, Asmita shares her story. When she first came to the city five years ago, she did not believe in God at all. But at church and Awana she heard verses that filled her with wonder, especially the one about the man who joyfully sold everything for the treasure in the field. Having lost her home and then her father, she could not understand how giving things up could be joyful, until the verse showed her how precious the kingdom of heaven really is, and she opened the door of her life to Jesus. That, she says, is why she loves hiding God's Word in her heart. Then the girls realize the real point of Mr. Whittaker's hunt: the verses have power because they are written in Asmita's mind and heart, not because they are printed in a gadget. Without the Bible device, Asmita's memorized verses still work. A verse about consuming fire, a verse about justice rolling down like waters, and a verse about the keys of the kingdom set off a chaotic escape involving flames, a flooding cell, and Camilla diving underwater to grab a fallen key before the door bursts open in a rush of water.

Soaked but laughing, the girls hurry to the building with the clay jars, where they find Pashwan surrounded by smashed pottery. All he has found is a final verse, Matthew 6:21, which he grumbles makes no sense. Asmita explains the twist: the verse does not say your treasure will be where your heart is, but that your heart will follow whatever you treasure, so whatever you give your time to becomes what your heart loves. Pashwan only wants gold, and when he learns the hunt was designed to teach a lesson, he storms off in disgust: "Next time, Esmita, why don't you hunt for a treasure worth stealing?" Camilla apologizes that there is no treasure, but Asmita is untroubled. Jesus is her hope and her treasure; she only wanted riches to build a bigger church so her whole village could come hear about Him. Following the golden rule, the girls stay to clean up Pashwan's mess so he will not get in trouble, and when Asmita quotes a verse promising God will restore double, the broken jars are restored two for one, and heavy with coins. Just as they celebrate finding the treasure, the adventure ends.

Back in the Room of Consequence, Camilla protests the timing, but Whit has one more surprise. Asmita walks in, real and in person. Whit's organization has brought her and her mother from Nepal so she can share her story with the local Awana clubs, and everything in the adventure, the city, the brick factory, the field, even Pashwan, came from her real life. Best of all, the coins in the jars are real too: money Whit's church collected as a gift for Asmita's church, which will now build enough rooms for her whole village. Camilla, completely won over, announces she will be at Awana on Wednesday before Asmita flies home, because she wants to hear Asmita's story again, and besides, she has verses to memorize.