To the Bible Quizzing Family,

I apologize for the delay in getting this out.  I’m attaching the standings, but hopefully you’ve found them already on the website.  Following the quiz meet, we were swept up in our church’s missions conference and hosting the missionary.  It was an amazing missions conference, and now we’re trying get back to our normal lives and we’re still catching up.

And speaking of amazing, that’s a great way to describe our first day of quizzing this year.  It was terrific to see a bunch of new quizzers involved and to see the Novice League get started.  Having new quizzers was fun for everyone.  I was grateful to see our experienced quizzers encouraging the new ones.  Though we compete with each other, the whole thing is so much bigger than that.  We all  win by helping each other, and God is glorified, which is what we really want to see happen.  Keep up the great work!

I’m sure the whole experience may have been a bit overwhelming for the new quizzers, but hopefully you all came away with a much better idea of what this is all about and how to prepare for it.  Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t gotten it figured out yet.  Keep learning the material and with some time and practice you’ll start to get the hang of it.  Feel free to connect with more experienced quizzers and coaches and seek their help in establishing good techniques and study habits.

Devotions and Worship: Thanks to Abby Leonard for leading us in worship and to David Carrick for bringing the devotional, to get our quiz day started on the right foot.  I so much appreciate it when you are willing to use the gifts God has given you, and to share how God is working in your lives.  Everyone is blessed by it, and God is glorified.  We are covered for the next couple of months, but there are some openings starting in January, so please take advantage of the opportunity and sign up.

Setup & Cleanup: The Talmage family (and perhaps some of the other Iowans) took care of setup and clean up, and did a fantastic job.  Cleanup was done in what must be record time.  Thanks so much!  It is important that we get this done well and we want to spread out the work, so if you haven’t signed up for a month yet, please do so.

Olympic Memory Challenge: A good number of quizzers were involved in the Olympic Memory Challenge at some level, and I’d like to encourage more of you to get started with that.  We’d like to give you some recognition for all of the verses that you memorize, even if you’re not one of the faster jumpers.  Memorizing the verses will also help you do a better job of recognizing the questions and being able to jump quickly.  Everybody wins with this.  You can find more information about the Olympic Memory Challenge on the Bible Quizzing website at rochesterbiblequizzing.org.

Next Month:  Our next quiz meet will be on November 13.  The Novice League will quiz over John 3:1-21, the Little League over John 3:1-36 and 10:1-21, and the A/B League over John 4:1 - 6:40.  Points earned that day in the A/B and Little Leagues will be multiplied by 120% when accumulated for the year.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve added something new this year.  Each month has a special theme or fellowship opportunity, building on the traditional October campfire.  So following the November quiz, we’d like to have as many people as possible go to Godfather’s Pizza for supper and fellowship.  See if you can make plans to stick around for this after the quizzing is done.

Crown College Tournament: This is coming January 14-15 and is a very good tournament.  We’d like to encourage as many A/B League quizzers to go as possible.  We’ll need to sign up (commit) at our December quiz, so this will give you some time to think about it and start making team arrangements.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.  And, thank you for your support of Bible Quizzing.

Karl Kirkman, Bible Quizzing Director