Pam Padgett ... teacher
My
older sister had been at college two years when I started attending the
same school. She dated a man who was a member of a fraternity, and had
been invited to become a member of the fraternity's "women's
auxiliary", assisting with fraternity social functions. She was very
excited for me to join the social circles she was in, and especially
wanted me to meet members of the fraternity.
The
first week of school she invited me to go to a student bar where many of
the fraternity guys gathered on Thursday nights. I went, but found
what was going on there to be so bad (lewdness, drunkenness, etc.) that I
was unable to stay and walked back to the dormitory.
A
week or so later my sister asked if I'd go to an outdoor luau with one
of the freshmen "pledges" at the fraternity. The luau site was about 20
miles away near a river, and there would be a campfire. The setting
was very appealing to me, plus I was excited about having a date, and I
agreed to go.
Then, a few days before the luau, my
sister told me that arrangements had been made for one of the other
fraternity guys to take me to the luau because my date would be spending
the day at the luau site building a hut for us ... a young man I had
never even met was building a hut "for us"!
Suddenly the reality of this luau became very clear to me.
This was not going to be people sitting around a campfire roasting
marshmallows. The lewdness and drunkenness I had seen at the student
bar was probably mild compared to what would be going on at this luau
... and I wouldn't be able to walk home.
I told my
sister that I couldn't go along with this and did not want to go, but
she kept insisting that it was too late for me to back out, that it was
too late for this guy to find another date.
I turned
very strongly to God, asking Him to somehow get me out of this
situation, but there seemed no way out. At one point I asked God to
let me have appendicitis, preferring to be in a hospital having surgery
than to go to this luau.
The morning of the luau I
woke up and checked to see if I might have any pain that might indicate
appendicitis, and was disappointed that I felt fine. I kept praying for
God to somehow work this out. Time was really running out! When I
looked outside, it was raining a little, but not much. However, the rain
became heavier and heavier as the day went on.
Around
2 pm I received a call from the fraternity guy who was going to take me
to the luau site. He told me how sorry he was to have to tell me this,
but the luau had to be cancelled. The luau site had been totally
flooded, washing away all the huts that had been built, this would include the hut my date had built for us..
He
told me how many years the luau had been held at this same site (a lot
of years), and that nothing like this had ever happened before.
I rejoiced, knowing that God had delivered me!