Do You Remember That Night...........?

DO YOU REMEMBER THAT NIGHT....?


The other day I met Cindy at Sears. Ten years had passed since our camping trip, but she asked the question they all still ask when we meet. "Do you remember that night at Scout Lake?"

Of course I remember. It isn't something I would easily forget. Besides, whenever I run into others who were there that night, they all ask the same question.

In l976, I decided to start an after-school Bible Club in the Grange hall next door to the school where I taught."Granny's Gang", as the kids dubbed it, was an ordinary kind of Bible club. We sang choruses, memorized verses, and studied the Bible. Most of all, we had fun together.

One Summer, the group decided to go to Bible Camp. The cost was $35.00 each, and they planned to take me along as their counselor.(Naturally,
I loved the idea.)

So, for three months, we held garage sales, rummage sales, and bake sales. Then, when we were all "saled" out, we picked nightcrawlers and sold them to a local bait farm.

My plans to accompany the group were scuttled when my youngest daughter contracted chicken pox; after a lengthy discussion of the problem, it was decided that I would drop the kids off at camp on Sunday and return home to nurse my ailing daughter through the week. On Friday evening, I would retrieve the group from Bible camp and spend one night with them at a public campground before returning home.

When I arrived on Friday evening, "Granny's Gang" was bubbling over with the experiences of their week at camp. Loading their gear into my dilapidated van, we drove down the road, found a perfect campsite overlooking nearby Scout Lake and planned a brief sharing time before bedtime. The girls unrolled sleeping bags while the boys gathered pine cones and small limbs for the campfire.

Down the hill, a group of young people were making themselves obnoxious; yelling, revving the engines on their motorcycles, and breaking beer bottles against the trees. (I considered a hasty retreat but decided we were a safe distance from them. Maybe they would calm down eventually.)

Rick, unloading an armful of firewood in front of me, commented that he had invited a couple of kids from another campsite to our sharing time.

"Great idea," I replied. "It's good for you kids to share your faith with others." (How was I to know that the "kids" he had invited were from the rowdy crowd down the hill?)

A few minutes later, while we were singing some of our favorite choruses five couples from the other group strolled into our camp.

Dressed in typical motorcycle gang garb; black leather jackets, high top riding boots, handkerchief headbands..... each of the five men had an earring dangling from one ear and a cigarette from his lower lip. Marching up to me, one of them said, "The kid there said you were having a meeting and we should come. That right?"

Thinking that perhaps Rick had given them the wrong idea, I told them we would be reading Bible verses, singing Christian songs, and sharing what had happened at Bible camp. I really emphasized the words Bible and Christian, but it didn't help. They stayed.

For two hours, they joined in our singing, listened to testimonies, and heard us read and discuss the Bible.

Then, in response to some direct, (even nosey), questions from our group, they began to talk about themselves.

Most of them admitted being heavily involved in drugs. Several had spent time in prison, and two of the girls had been prostitutes. "Not, now, of course," they told us. One young man said he had swallowed a large amount of heroin to keep the police from catching him with it and had remained unconscious for weeks afterwards. He had spent a year in a mental hospital.

Hardly daring to believe my ears, I heard Rick telling that young man that he ought to become a Christian. "Jesus could really help you with your problems you know", he said.

Was I dreaming? A week earlier, my group had never even seen a group like this. And now, Rick, the very soul of timidity, was actually sitting there telling this hoodlum that he needed to get right with God.

The man got a strange look on his face. "I wish I could", he said "but I'm afraid it's too late for me. Come on you guys, let's get back to camp now." Without another word he walked out of our camp, and his companions, one girl crying, followed him down the hill.

Extinguishing our campfire, we crawled wearily into our sleeping bags. Most of the kids fell asleep immediately, but a few talked quietly into the early hours of the morning.

About 3:00 A.M., Rick suddenly sat up and hissed in my direction, "Mrs. Gibson. They're coming after us!"

Sure enough, I could see the faint outline of legs running on tiptoe toward the other side of my Volkswagon and could hear the sound of gravel crunching. What should we do? Rick offered to chase them off with the shovel we had used to put out the fire, but I thought it might be better if we all yelled to attract the attention of other campers in the area. Terri started to cry, and then everyone was wide awake again.

Just as we were about to start yelling, lights went on all over the place. A voice over a megaphone yelled out, "Police! Everyone freeze," and several troopers brandishing guns came rushing through our camp.

Only then did we realize that our earlier visitors hadn't been coming after us; instead, they were trying to elude the police by sneaking up the hill past our camp.

It didn't work. A few minutes later, the young men were all brought back down the hill in handcuffs.

Stopping at our camp, one of the officers asked, "Have these characters been bothering you folks tonight?"

Rick, volunteering an answer before I could open my mouth said, "Oh no. They came to our prayer meeting and sang choruses with us."

The officer raised an eyebrow and informed us that the group had caused trouble in a nearby town before coming up to Scout Lake, and that a number of campers had phoned in complaints about them.

No one slept after that. Karen hoped aloud that something shared around the campfire would make a lasting impression on the young men and women; Tom pointed out how lucky he felt to have parents who really cared about him; and Elizabeth said, "If we could just have got to know them better."

Then, as the sun touched our campsite, and without any prompting from me, the whole group joined hands and prayed, one after the other, for each of the individuals they had met that night.

Later, as they gathered up their sleeping bags, they continued to talk about the night's great adventure. (I didn't have a lot to say; I was too busy wondering how I would explain the great adventure to their parents.)

"Oh, well," I thought. "Two weeks from now, they will have forgotten all about the big excitement at Scout Lake."

But I was wrong. They have never forgotten, and neither have I.


Jeanne Gibson
Copyright 2003