Hillary Clinton Comes to Town

I covered Hillary Clinton's visit to Muncie last night. It was a pretty neat experience. Every local and regional media outlet was in attendance along with the travelling national media so it was a big stage for a college kid.

My photographer and I arrived around 6:30 to the Muncie Central High School gym. Clinton was scheduled to arrive at 8:45 so we had some time to kill so we set up our stuff and waited...and waited...and waited. Finally, around 8:30 we heard that the Clinton train was running about an hour late. So we decided to do a few quick interviews with some of the crowd members and get that part out of the way.

Finally, around 9:30 Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Middletown, USA. The crowd was very energetic as Clinton arrived. In fact, the entire crowd stood for the first 20 minutes of her speech.

Clinton touched on issues that affected nearly every person in attendance. She hit home with the laborers (Muncie has many although many of those jobs have been lost in the last 5 years) as she promised to stop tax breaks for companies that outsource to another country.

Clinton hit home with the college audience (I would estimate between 300-500 BSU students) by promising to lower interest rates on college loans. She also mentioned a plan to forgive the college debts of those who will go into public service such as the millitary, teaching, public safety. (A lot of good that does me! Let's forgive their debt and push it off on the Tcom majors!)

Ultimately it was a good experience. The speech finished around 10:15 and we headed back to the newsroom to edit our material. The completed package will be done sometime today while a 2 minute clip of Clinton's speech is now available on newslinkindiana.com.

Selfish Christian

Far too often, I'm a selfish Christian. I miss the point altogether. Too often I get all caught up in how I am doing. How do I get past this sin? Why do I feel this way? When will I know what the Lord wants in this part of my life? Too often I forget that Christianity is not about me. It's about Jesus. It's about his love.

Sometimes I minimize Jesus to a cleaning solution...something that I spray on my scum littered heart to clean it up. However, the truth is that Jesus is so much more than that. The reality is that my sins are forgiven. And not just the sins of my past but the sins of my future, they're all erased. That is not all that Jesus and following him is about...although far too often that's exactly what I make it about.

Love.
Today, I came home to my apartment to find a stranger sitting on my couch. He was a young man about my age. I sat down, logged on my computer and checked my e-mail. The man was on the phone so I didn't interrupt him. Finally, he hung up his phone and stood up. I looked at him and we introduced ourselves.
I asked him, "So, what are you doing around here?"
"Well, my mom kicked my out of the house," he said.
"Her boyfriend doesn't like me much so they kicked my out about two weeks ago," he continued. "I'm friends with ASB and I've been living on the streets since I was kicked out. My sister brought me here last night."

I was stunned. Part of my heart broke for this young man, and sadly, part of my wondered what he did wrong and why he wasn't making something of his life. He went on to explain that he was looking for a job but it would be tough because he didn't have a car. I didn't have long to chat so that was about the extint of our conversation.

Tonight, I realized how often I think about my own spiritial status. I get caught up in my sins that have already been forgiven. Meanwhile, there's a young man out there who's been thrown out of his house and just needs to be loved. This truth broke my heart. I am certainly a selfish Christian. Lord, give me a heart for people like you had when you walked this earth, the kind of heart for people that led you to send your only son. Lord, let me love like you. Amen.

Notes

A couple of notes for everybody.

You can check out a couple of packages I've reported on www.newslinkindiana.com. My photographer on both of these packages was Derek Kratzer and he has done a great job shooting and editing these spots.

Also, I turned in my application for another immersion program next semester. (Yes, I know I'm crazy) However, this immersion program is brand new and this coming fall semester will be the pilot semester and I will be completely immersed in SPORTS MEDIA!!!! I am so extremely excited. The competition is pretty stiff to see who will get to take part in it next semester so I'm praying that I'll get the opportunity.

One last thing...I want to encourage everyone to cheer hard for my UK Wildcats in their games tonight and Sunday. If they're able to win...they should make the NCAA field of 64. Also, everybody cheer hard for the Paoli Rams as they play in the regional this Saturday in Huntingburg. I'll be there and can't wait to see Indiana High School basketball at its finest.

More Stuff

I had a good weekend this past weekend. Jessie and I went to a really good concert on Friday night at The Living Room (which I've mentioned before) and saw a guy who graduated from Ball State last year and is a friend of mine...Jon Hainstock. (You can check him out on myspace)

Saturday- Jessie's family came up and we looked for and found a place for Jessie and her roommate, Katy, to live next year. It's actually the apartment complext next to mine which is cool and their place is really cool. They've also got a very nice and strict land lord which is a very good thing.

Sunday- Jessie and I tried a new church. We went to the 10:45 service at Madison Park Church of God in Anderson. It is a really really big church (comparable in numbers and buildings to Northside Christian). The service however was not what neither of us had anticiapated. The church has a full orchestra for worship to go along with a probably 100 person choir. It was cool but I don't think I would enjoy it every week. Jessie said it best at lunch when she said it felt a lot more like a show than a worship service. It just wasn't very engaging.

Monday- It was a pretty boring day...my partner and I had no luck while trying to work on stories so we ended up just writing some short stories for the newscast.
Today- I worked on a story about the ice storm that slid through our area and the havock it wrecked on the area. It was a pretty straight forward story but I worked with Da Yan...the student from China...and I found out that she is a Christian and has been since about August. We got to talk about that and she shared that she has convinced her parents to read the Bible when she goes back to China. It was cool to talk to her about that.

I also got to do the play-by-play for the Ball State men's basketball team tonight. It was senior night for our lone senior, Peyton Stovall. The Cardinals won against Northern Illinois 67-63. It was a fun game to call and a very emotional night. For one it was Stovall's last game and he is a wonderful player and an even better person. (He's one of 10 finalists for the John Wooden Citizenship Award this season) The second reason it was a little emotional although not too much was the fact that it was the first road game for Northern Illinois since the tragedy on Feb. 14th.

The other cool thing about the game was that it was simalcasted on the internet. Basically a crew shot the game on video and used our audio on Ballstatesports.com. It was pretty cool.