The following is excerpted from an article by William Taaffe which appeared in our August 2001 Catch the Vision.

As a Middle Creek board member and as a Christian who can’t get enough of the outstanding preaching the conference always offers, I’ve found Summit Lake to be a little annual gift from the Lord to my wife Donna and me. Each of the past four years Donna, our son Will, and I have driven to the Gettysburg area from our home in northern New Jersey. We check into a nearby motel, drop Will off at Summit Lake (child care begins at 6:00 p.m.) and take in the Friday night session.

Eight-year-old Will is convinced that Summit Lake Camp, a ministry that’s closely related to Middle Creek, is better than New York City and Washington, D.C., combined. First thing Saturday, we scoot him across the nearby Maryland border and up the mountain to Summit Lake (it’s about a 15-minute ride), where he spends the remainder of the day and evening in the care of trained counselors, doing Tom Sawyeresque things like paddle-boating on the lake, catching frogs, finding insects and hiking in the woods.

Meanwhile, Donna and I are getting the kind of spiritual boost we need after weeks in our secular jobs. We pick him up around 9 at night, his amazing stockpile of energy thoroughly spent.

As often as not, when we drive back to Summit Lake to pick up Will, we find ourselves wondering how we’re going to extract him from this leafy setting for the trip back home. After all, you can get dirt between your toes at Summit Lake. You can try to dunk your newfound friend in the swimming pool, cruise around the basketball court, catch a beetle in a bag, do arts and crafts, or try the confidence course.

Since Will has been spending this day and a half at Summit Lake since he was 4 and has become something of an authority on the place, I decided to interview him.

“I really, really love it,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I get to go swimming, go on pedal-boats, take hikes. You get to go on a little walk in the woods with one of the counselors. You look for animals that you can find. We didn’t find any, but we did hear some. We heard mostly cicadas.

“And we get to go up by the cabin and find insects that are outside the cabin. One time I caught a frog, a little one, but then I let it go.”

I asked where he would rate the camp on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

“I’d give it 100,” he said.

Meals at Summit Lake are hearty -- scrambled eggs with bacon or French toast made with homemade bread for breakfast, chicken filets with mashed potatoes and corn for lunch -- though Will confessed he was too busy chasing insects outside the dining hall to pay attention to much of it.

The preaching (and eating) under the tent, and the free professional child care at Summit Lake make for a God-given combination that's hard to beat.