Well, let's see if I can catch up with the news at Barb's. She looked tired tonight; said she was in turmoil and didn't want to go into it all. I had asked her about Donald. She's been going over to Thomas and Barbara's to talk, late every night. They’re Sondra's parents. She says she really enjoys some adult fellowship in the neighborhood. Sondra's in the Youth Study Center I hope to talk with her tomorrow.

Frosty has found a job in a restaurant at 10th and Market, and Jo Jo's mom said he could live with them as long as he had a job. He moved all his stuff last night. Lord, I pray this job will be good for him and that You'll guard him from undue temptation. Barb confronted him about taking my money and he confessed and said he would pay me back. That's encouraging. Frostie rarely confesses.

Barb left for camp tonight and left Ronnie and Ronald St. Clair with Greg all week. Ronald St. Claire had been staying at camp, and was sent home. He has been staying at Barb's. School lets out Thursday, but the last day of school is known to be a hey day for the gangs, so Ronnie probably won't go.

Donald is staying here this week while Barb's at camp. He's going to stick with Larry, so he'll probably be with the guys doing street work. I guess his future at Teen Haven is rather undetermined at the moment.

Larry was out till 1:15 last night! Around 10:15, Kinney and Jeffrey, who is Sooty's younger brother, rang the bell and said, "Larry! You gotta come out! There's a man out here that don't believe there's a God, so you gotta prove it to him that there is!"

So Larry went out and rapped. It touched him that the kids were so eager to set this man straight. Larry and I have been together a lot since Delores is at camp. I really appreciate him. I feel no awkwardness or pressure around him, and can talk to him quite naturally and freely. He's so practical about everyday living details: kitchen appliances, cars, house repairs. He has a beautiful spirit in dealing with people he just doesn't force or put them down. Today, we visited Jerry at the hospital, and a young Jewish guy came up and asked some "intellectual" questions about God and evolution. Larry just listened and answered. I tried to put him down, show off my knowledge. Nici, Jerry's girl friend was there. Boy, is she gorgeous! She's lovely and she's built! Her parents are Christians, and they were the ones who got Jerry interested in the first place, before Delores ever came along. They go to the Deliverance Evangelistic Church on Broad Street. I think that church has healing and speaking in tongues and doesn’t believe in eternal security. Anyway, Jerry said he had read 15 chapters in Genesis. He wants to read straight through the Bible so he can understand the whole thing. We sat and watched him, and some of the other guys in the ward play cards before we talked with him.

Larry let me drive his VW four on the floor home. It went pretty good. I had to drive down Market Street, the expressway, Broad Street, and tiny Toronto Street. Larry doesn't lose his cool.

11:30 the doorbell rang. Ronnie, Greg, and Ronald dropped over for some bread. Greg said they have had visitors that came in through the cellar, broke a window, and took all their bread and snack food. He thinks it was Frostie. He was perturbed. I invited the three over for supper tomorrow night, guess I'll get some snack food for them when I go shopping tomorrow too. Broad Street Teen Haven has a big freezer in the back, so we keep the bread supply. Every year someone from Lancaster donates a carful of bread. We freeze it, and nobody has to buy bread the whole year.

The staff went to a real neat Presbyterian Church tonight to sing. Oh, did I explain about our summer program of presenting the ministry to the churches? Well, every summer we travel around the state on Sundays and do that. Early in the spring Charlene and Pam and Ann Deschler, our secretary and camp registrar in Philadelphia, call and write pastors and set up dates for us to go to different churches to present the ministry. The ideal is to have a different church to speak at every Sunday morning, and every Sunday evening while the summer staff is with us. The presentation, depending on the time the church allows us and the part they give us in their worship service, consists of the whole group singing, some special solo or small group numbers, testimonies, and a challenge by our field director Doug Rogers or some male staff guy, who is full time. When the girls are at camp, the guys present the program; when the guys are at camp, the girls present the program.

Anyway, back to this church. It was in a suburb of Philly, and it was a mixed black and white church. More and more blacks are moving into that neighborhood, and the church has made it a point to welcome them. I guess two nearby Presbyterian churches closed down within the last year because they weren't willing to accept blacks. The pastor of this church feels that it is his function to prepare the church for black leadership. Lots of young people black and white there. That's what I like to see a church that ministers to the neighborhood that it's in. Let me give you the pattern of most inner city churches especially sound ones. They move out they desert the inner city when the neighborhood changes, thereby leaving a spiritual vacuum in the ghettoes, for all kinds of cults, and false religions to move into and fill. I guess it happens like this. First the neighborhood starts to change. Soon all the middle class people move out to the suburbs. But they come back to the neighborhood to go to church. After a while, they get too fearful, and sell or abandon the church building, and build a new church out in the suburbs.