The Miracle of the Cockroaches

I was a Beehive Advisor in South Carolina with twelve and thirteen year olds attending their first year at Girl’s Camp. The South was well noted for cockroaches. This year we had a bumper crop of them. The cabins at camp were infested with them. As soon as it got dark they came out and my eight girls were petrified. They were not going to spend another minute in a cabin with cockroaches crawling all over. I could see mutiny and welling up in their minds as terror and tears welled up in their eyes. I knew I had to do something fast or there would be a mass exodus for the door and home.

It was then that the Spirit reminded me of the Miracle of the Fire Ants. I told that girls that if they asked Heavenly Father to, He would remove the cockroaches from our cabin. The girls quickly knelt on their bunks to ask God to remove the cockroaches from our cabin. They put their faith in God and stayed the night even though they feared cockroaches crawling on them in the night.

We only saw one cockroach in the cabin from that time forward. It was on my shoulder just before we went to bed that first night. One of the girl’s calmly and sleepily stated in a nonchalant manner, “Sister Nay there is a cockroach on your shoulder.” Thinking that a cockroach would raise hackles with this bunch that night, I deemed it a camp prank and said, “Thank you for telling me, dear.” I laughed it off and went to sleep. In the morning the same girl came across the cabin while lazily wiping sleep from her eyes to inform me that my pet cockroach was still on my shoulder, like a parrot on a sea captain’s shoulder.

I shrieked and flipped the thing off outside. To this day I think the cockroach spent the night with me, because I had God shoo out the cockroaches out of our cabin for the whole week we were at camp. And that’s the miracle of the cockroaches.