OK, I'll come to camp with you," Becky said. "I've never canoed before. I think it might be fun. Can my friend Nancy come, too?"
"I guess we have room," I said.
That was my introduction to Becky and Nancy. Becky had been referred by the Juvenile Court to go to a camp for girls in trouble. Becky had been involved in drugs and shoplifting, and came from a family that "had their own wing at the state prison."
I was the Director of Youth Guidance, which was a part of Youth for Christ. The pro gram would take kids to camp who had been referred by the court system. In our case this was a ten-day wilderness canoe trip to Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada. When the children returned from camp, they would be involved in weekly interest-centered clubs.
The girls and their environments
As part of Youth for Christ, we were hoping and praying that the kids would accept Christ and that the Holy Spirit would change their lives. The majority of these girls came from fatherless homes. The girls had been exposed to promiscuous sex (if not prostitution), drugs, and a generally antisocial lifestyle. They were lonely, unsupervised, and, like all adolescents, trying to discover who they were. They had no idea that what they had seen in their lives so far was not all there was to reality. As a result, they were starting down their own destructive paths. Many were simply repeating what they had seen in their mothers.
Yet the Lord can take a life that is "crippled-broken-ruined" and turn it into "something beautiful." Many of us hear those words, but we have never really been "ruined" as these girls have been. Many of us have had hard times, but not like the times these girls had seen. Their surrounding communities had all but written them off as useless and hopeless. The courts, the school system, and their parents saw them that way. And worst of all that's the way they viewed themselves.
I believe that the gospel speaks to this hopelessness. Jesus came to "preach the Good News to the poor and to set the captives free." These children are certainly poor and enslaved. But they can be redeemed. They can be useful to God and to the world around them. Through a dedicated staff and the prayers of those supporting a program such as ours, God would take these young women and turn them into something useful.
Visiting Nancy's house
When I arrived at Nancy's house, she was there alone. Although she was only 13, being alone was normal for her. I described the camp, but she was reluctant to go off to the wilderness. I suggested that she call Becky and they decide together what they would do.
So far, Nancy had not been in trouble with the courts, but she was having problems in school. She was chronically truant. Her moth er, a single parent, wasn't very helpful in this, and Nancy had chosen a negative group of friends. But after talking with Becky, she said, "OK, I'll go. When do we leave?"
"August first at 8:00 a.m. We'll be driving all day to get to the camp site. We camp the first night in the campgrounds and leave the next morning for the wilderness."
Arriving at the camp
And so we arrived at Algonquin Park and began our adventure.
One of the joys of this type of camping is the growth the kids experience in camping skills and teamwork. By the end of the trip, this team could do a mile portage through a swamp in less than an hour.
Each morning began with devotions, and the girls were given a thought about God to think about during the day. At night there was a time around the campfire. The girls were given an opportunity to accept Christ and thus to commit to a new way of life. There was also counseling throughout each day. The last night at the campfire there was opportunity to make a commitment to Christ.
On the second night out, Becky began to hemorrhage. By morning the bleeding was so bad that the counselors sent a group to the ranger station, a five-hour canoe trip. The ranger called for the rescue plane and in an hour or so the Cessna 172 with pontoons landed near the camp site.
When Becky and Bev, a counselor, arrived at the hospital, I was called. The doctors were not sure what was wrong, but stated that surgery needed to be done immediately to stop the bleeding. The hospital received per mission to operate from Becky's mother via telephone.
The next call I received from the hospital was good news and bad news. The surgery had been successful, but the cause of the problem was a tubular pregnancy. Becky would recover but it was doubtful if she would ever be able to have children. The doctor said that she might have died within a few hours, had she not been flown to the hospital.
A maze of confusion and tragedy
Three days later I arrived at the hospital to get Becky, and found that Nancy had also been admitted. There had been another airlift and another surgery! This time Nancy had been bleeding as a result of untreated scar tissue from an abortion she had had because of an unwanted pregnancy that had resulted from a relationship she had with her brother.
The story, it seems, is that both these 13-year-olds had been involved with Nancy's brother. He was 23, married, and a convicted felon who had slept with both his sister and his sister's friend (Becky). His wife was pregnant, and when she discovered him in bed with Becky, she had tried to commit suicide, which had caused her, in turn, to lose her baby.
Nancy's abortion had never been treated by a physician, and the scar tissue which had developed had caused the problems she had encountered in the wilds of Canada.
I was amazed at the staggering complexity of these sordid revelations. Yet this is why Youth for Christ had Youth Guidance, and exactly why I was where I was. These children needed to hear that God loved them. Somehow, they had to experience what that love meant. They also needed to know that God could bring them into a completely different kind of life. This is the Good News, and in the case of these girls such news is dramatically good.
When I finally brought the girls home, their houses were dark. No one was there to greet them, even though their mothers knew what time they were to arrive.
The gospel in such lives
How does one relate the gospel to such children? What does the good news of Christ mean to them? How can they understand God's love when they have experienced such emptiness, neglect, chaos, and tragedy?
To begin with, we relate the age-old story of God's creation, humanity's fall, and our redemption through the love, life, and death of Jesus. It took the girls some time to begin to under stand this kind of love. It was easier for them to grasp the significance of the fall; they both had experienced severe pain, both physical and emotional, as a result of the entry of sin.
Our counseling moved along two tracks. First, we tried to help them develop a relationship with Christ; second, we worked with helping them understand how that related to in the reality of their daily life; what life choices God was guiding them to make.
Nearly a happy ending
The story nearly has a happy end ing. Becky joined a local church and got her mother to join the church with her. They both made commitments to Christ and have been faithful. Becky is a lovely Christian woman, wife, and mother. She has learned what redemption means.
Nancy was not able to make the connections she needed. She is in and out of jail, she is using drugs and working as a prostitute.
