Thoughts From Our First CONTACT

Here are a list of things that I picked up from our first CONTACT outing.

• "I'm new here." -- We live in an area that has a high influx of people in and out.
• "The B&A Trail" -- The people were biased because of where they were and what they were doing. They were totally focused on the trail, and it reflected in many of their answers.
• "I'm not from around here." -- The trail brings people from all over central Maryland, because AA county has the best trails. We talked with people from Baltimore City, County, Howard County, as far away as Waldorf.
• "Hey, they're giving away water." -- It was a bit of a fluke. I wanted to have some type of giveaway. It turned out that I picked the number one thing. Everyone took note that we were giving away water. What was great was how many people stopped, but then ended up not even taking a bottle.
• "Are you part of the Ranger service?" -- I loved that people assumed we were with any number of organizations before they found out we were from the church. That way they equated us with organizations that they said in their survey were the top notch groups in the community. Now in some ways we've been coupled with these other organizations. Not bad company.

--Ben