The people repent in chapter 7. This involves acknowledging that they have sinned (v6) and also involved physical action - removing the altars and idols. I can imagine saying, "well I wont worship the idols any more, but I don't need to physically destroy them do I?". Real repentance involves taking any action you can take to stop doing whatever it is you are doing. That's not to say that it's our effort that can defeat sin, it can't. But if there's no desire to change anything, there is no repentance.
This time, the people rely on God Himself when they are in trouble and He rescues them. They have stopped looking to religion and have turned to God.
Samuel then goes on to build an altar to remind them what God has done. This is a constant theme throughout the old testament - God does something, you build an altar to remember it. When I'm totally caught up in whatever situation is going wrong at the moment, I need to look at the altars and remember what God has done. In the middle of this chapter the people ask Samuel to pray for them and he offers up a sacrifice. this was good, but was just an imperfect reflection of what Jesus eventually did perfectly and permanantly - He died as a sacrifice for all our sins in the past and in the future and allows us access to God - we don't need Samuel to intercede for us because Jesus is constantly doing that (Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25), and we can approach Him oursleves
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