August 18-28, 1969

After a weekend spent painting our newly rented apartment in Champaign, we cleaned our brushes and raced back to Wilmette to gear up for an adventure as counselors at Camp Moyoca, the Moody Church youth camp.

This would be another new experience for Nate, but I had counseled in other summers and had a memory-bank full of good times there. Each of us would have a cabin of high school teens, boys for him, girls for me, though we hoped we’d be able to slip away between events to have some boy-girl time of our own.

Day #1 at camp happened to be Nate’s birthday. Tradition had long dictated that anyone having a birthday while at camp got thrown into the lake fully clothed. With my summer birthday, I’d experienced that “loving” attention repeatedly through the years and knew it often grew into a combination of wild and embarrassing – not to mention the Kangaroo Court that sometimes preceded it.

I wondered how Nate would take such a brute-force baptism. He had lived a quiet, orderly life and had never experienced (or even witnessed) such a thing. So as we drove the 45 miles to the camp, I tried to warn him.

But I needn’t have worried. Mercifully, he was spared. I don’t know whose directive that was, but I suspect the camp cook, Jeanette. She was going to be the caterer for our wedding, and we’d already met with her several times about the menu, giving her a chance to get to know Nate a little.

Jeanette cooked at camp every summer, and if we wanted to eat, we stayed on her good side. All of us did whatever she said (a healthy mix of admiration and fear), and I was pleased that she’d taken a special shine to Nate. To this day I wonder if she hadn’t been the one to order his birthday pardon.

Thankfully my birthday had just passed, or I would have been tossed in the lake for sure. And if Nate had seen such a scuffle, he might have felt compelled to rise to my defense, assuring a dunking for him, too – all in the name of fun, of course.

As the days passed, Nate became friends with other staff members, some of whom had been my friends since early Sunday school days. It pleased me that he was getting to know them, but even more important was that these friends were getting to know him. I was proud of him for throwing himself into every activity with enthusiasm, despite so many new experiences. Throughout the 10 days I didn’t hear a single complaint. Actually it was quite the opposite.

When we were able to steal away privately here and there, Nate reflected on all he was learning in the meetings and how he hoped to apply those things to our marriage. Both of us were growing closer to the Lord and also each other, and we began to see that God Himself had been the one to arrange these very special days at camp.

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1)