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4B. A Runaway returns Home 
I traveled many hundreds of miles for Sunday services, sometimes with a group of children along for the ride. One morning, I was talking to my organist on the church steps in Great Bend. That same afternoon, we traveled seventy miles to Pratt, with her daughter and two other children in tow. Nearby a lady in a large hat stood straining to hear our every word! She was a character in town and asked if she might ride along with us to Pratt where she had business.
My only condition was that she arrange her own meal as we had been invited out to a farmhouse for dinner. We drove that day through rolling wheat fields and past Dutch barns. Large aircraft thundered overhead landing at the Air Base in Pratt. At the church, our lady friend with the large hat stepped out of the car, and after arranging to meet her later, we drove off to our prearranged dinner date.
Classy Restaurant
As the farmhouse came into sight, we smacked our lips at the thought of a roast beef or turkey dinner. Instead, we found a note on the screen door. "Sorry, called me out of town suddenly. Can't prepare dinner for you after all." Disappointed, but now hungrier than ever, we drove down to the coffee shop for hamburgers before they closed. Munching away, our organist gazed out of the window deep in thought. Suddenly it occurred to us that the lady with the large hat was waiting on the church steps.
We decided to send one small boy along with a hamburger for her. When he strolled up casually with a hot burger in his hands, she scratched her head in bewilderment, thinking that we should have been at dinner. She thought we had been lying so she asked the tassel haired boy discreetly, "Where is the Captain, and where did you get this hamburger?" Thinking it was none of her business, he replied mischievously, "Oh, they're in a classy restaurant downtown eating T-bone steaks and french-fried potatoes!" With a laugh, he ran off down the main street!
Furious Stare
As we drove up to Pratt Church, she waited impatiently on the steps and pierced us with a furious stare. She sat in silence in the car, her face frozen in a marbled glaze. Escorting her to her door, I began to admonish her in a pastoral way for her harsh attitude. Suddenly, to my utter amazement, she lashed out at the top of her voice, "Don't talk to me, you liar! Fancy giving me a measly hamburger, while you were gorging yourselves in that ritzy restaurant on T bone steak and french-fried potatoes." As her door slammed behind me, her words rang in my ears, "T bone steak and french-fried potatoes!" The others in the car grinned and repeated the words back to me. "T bone steak and french-fried potatoes!" The mischievous boy who made the announcement as he delivered the hamburger later asked to be confirmed, perhaps to make restitution for his prank!
Runaway Returns Home
Other problem boys were arriving at the new St. Francis Home at Ellsworth. This boy's hostel was established long before we could hire a "shrink." Like our namesake, St. Francis, we had to draw on our Christian community to help those who came. Sometimes the pressure was overpowering. My solitary comfort was to throw myself on the cool tiled floor of the chapel. "How am I going to do this job, Lord?" I would cry out. "You've got to help me!"
As a young Church Army Officer, I was considered something of a troubadour careless of discipline and dignity. I admired the young people from broken homes and unloving parents who eventually made good and became respected members of their communities. One of these, Dick, had a deep encounter with Jesus Christ when God marvelously changed his life, but not before many an escapade. Dick ran away from the Home one hot dusty day.
Lost Child
He was lost amongst wheat fields which stretched as far as the eye could see. Police helicopters buzzed overhead as I crawled through scorching dry corn stubble calling his name. My pleas were urgent as I knew that if the police found him he would go straight to jail. At last I spotted him, a dirty crouching bundle in the bottom of a ditch, exhausted and hungry. Dick was transformed by his two years in our community. After a spell in the Navy, he related to us how he felt that God was calling him into the Church Army. He asserted, "it serves God and man in a special way."
"You've gotta have a glory in the things you do, an alleluia chorus in the heart of you" 
