To the Bible Quizzing Family,

We enjoyed a very good day of quizzing at our January quiz, and it was also special in that it was the 25th anniversary quiz meet of our program. That very first year of quizzing was only half-a-year long, and it started with the January quiz in 1985. Wow. It is truly amazing to see how God has blessed and used this program over the years. I still enjoy recalling the testimonies and stories we heard at the Anniversary Celebration last October. We look forward to what God is going to do with the program over the next 25 years.

Worship and Devotions: A special thanks to Ben Raygor for leading us in worship and devotions. We’ve got volunteers for the remaining quiz meets, so thank you all very much!

Crown College Tournament: We’re just back from a wonderful weekend at the Crown College Tournament. We continue to marvel at the spirit of the tournament and how uplifting and encouraging it is to everyone. Besides the quizzing, we were able to join in praise to God in worship, and were challenged by Mary Anne Enns to live out our faith.

There was a lot of good quizzing, including the A Gold division finals, which took 4 quizzes before finally one of the three teams was able to win 2 quizzes. Most of those quizzes were quite close, so those three teams were well-matched. Our Iowa team (Alan & John Talmage, Ben and Daniel Weieneth, with coach Alice Talmage) did a tremendous job, putting up an awesome fight, never giving up, and in the end, finished in second place.

And in the B division, all of our teams took home trophies:

● Sebastian Groothuis, Katie Roberts, and Sarah Weieneth (with coaches Dave & Mary Roberts) took first place in the Gold division.
● Faith, Grace, and Seth Boyum, and Kohl Hanson (with coaches Dwight & Judy Boyum) took second place in the Gold division
● Margaret and Thor Alexander, and Ryan Golley (with coaches Tom & Ruth Alexander) took first place in the Silver division.

Individually, our quizzers took first place in each division – Alan Talmage in A division, Grace Boyum in B division.

And there were several others of our quizzers who received top 20 awards:

● A Division: Ben Weieneth (12th) and John Talmage (14th)
● B Division: Kohl Hanson (4th), Sebastian Groothuis (5th), Ryan Golley (12th), Katie Roberts (13th)

Congratulations to all of these quizzers, and to everyone else for a job well done. We were very well-represented. You can find all of the standings online at nwdquizzing.com (though the team standings are only through the preliminary brackets).

Chicago Tournament: The Chicago Tournament is on the horizon, the weekend of March 27. We will start making registration plans during our February quiz, and will plan on wrapping up all of the details in March. This tournament is for both leagues, and I would like to encourage as many of you to go as possible. Be thinking about which quizzers would make up the teams, and who the coaches would be. We can register at a lower rate ($65 per team) if we register before the March quiz, so I would like to register as many teams as possible at the February quiz, and make any necessary updates to the rosters at our March quiz. If you’ve got a team ready to register, have your share of the team registration fee ready (non-refundable) at the February quiz and we’ll get you signed up.

The tournament will be at First Baptist Church in Geneva, Ill, in the Chicago suburbs, where it was last few years. Besides the opportunity to quiz against other teams, just going to a place like this as a group is a lot of fun.

The Chicago tournament is a bit expensive, mostly because of two nights in the hotel. Here are some suggestions for reducing the cost, or “earning” the money for it:

● Sometimes it helps to go as entire families and make a mini-vacation weekend out of it.
● All of the quizzers are welcome to participate in the Verse-A-Thon. Similar to a Walk-A-Thon or a Bike-A-Thon, a quizzer would invite people to pledge a certain amount of money for each verse from this year’s material that he would quote from memory. This is a way to raise a lot of money. The money a quizzer raises would go first to cover his share of the expenses, and the rest would go to the benefit of the Quizzing Program.

Cleaning up after quizzes: We had a good number of vacuum cleaners to work with, and with several volunteers we got the job done in pretty good time. We need to keep doing this in February and March. If you can bring a vacuum cleaner with you, and stick around for a few minutes afterwards, it would be very helpful. Thank you!

February Quiz: Our next quiz is coming up on February 13, at Emmanuel Baptist Church at 1:00 pm. Points earned that day will be multiplied by 180% when accumulated toward the yearly total. The A/B League will quiz over II Corinthians 2:5 - 8:15, and the Little League over I Corinthians 15:12-58 and II Corinthians 4:1-18.

March Quiz: We would like to make a special effort to invite potential next-year quizzers and families to join us during our March quiz. This would be a good opportunity for anyone to get a look at what quizzing is like, and in addition, we hope to have some mini-quizzes to help newcomers get a better feel for what it is like to quiz. If you know of people whom you would like to see be involved in quizzing next year, please invite them to our March quiz. Next year, we really need several new teams in each league, and we’re thinking of how to start a Novice league as well.

As always, feel free to contact me with any questions, concerns, suggestions, etc, about the quizzing program. Thanks very much for your support!

Karl Kirkman
Bible Quizzing Director