United Way

Today I went through a day-long training at United Way of Central Indiana. I am slated to be a torchbearer for them, representing my organization across the city of Indianapolis during the 2006 United Way campaign. Though I'll admit it was a LONG day, I learned a lot more than I'd ever known about United Way before. Sure, I'd heard of it, but I never knew what it did, exactly. Now I even have it's mission statement and basic principles memorized! In the afternoon, some consultants/facilitators from DaleCarnegie, a company that helps others improve their public speaking, helped us piece together and practice our speeches. The experience reminded me how much I love public speaking and working with groups. It then, of course, made me wonder about exactly what I want my career to be. I still wish I could figure out where I'm headed. But God so often tends to reveal just one step at a time. :)

On another interesting note, football season is starting up, which means Indianapolis airwaves are crowded with publicity and media coverage of the Colts. I've recently discovered that one of the Colts who will be involved in our upcoming fundraiser has a band. He and another guy do a Christian acoustic rock thing. I was skeptical at first, but after taking a listen at their MySpace page, I'm actually pretty impressed. Football player and musician. Incredible.

And as a final bulletin, Indianapolis has become kind of a dangerous place lately. There have been 13 homicides in the last week. This makes their year-long total seem exorbitantly high to me, but I don't really have anything to compare the statistics to. I've never really lived anywhere this large before for more than a couple of months. There are police ALL OVER THE PLACE in response to this new toll. I don't particularly feel unsafe - most of the deaths aren't random, and I don't think I've had the opportunity to tick anyone off that badly yet - but the numbers are disconcerting all the same.