To the Bible Quizzing Family,

I'm sorry me so long to get this letter out. I was waiting to get my hands on all of the statistics from the Crown Tournament, and that proved to be a much longer process than I thought. The standings from our January quiz are also attached, but hopefully you've found them on our website before now.

It was very unusual to have a quiz without Jim Benson there helping out in his innumerable ways. Thanks to all of you who "stepped it up a bit" to make the day a success. So we've confirmed that it is possible to have a quiz meet without Jim, but nobody really likes it to be that way. We'll be glad to have him back in February!

We still need volunteers to help with setting up and cleaning up in February, and for cleaning up in March. Please contact me to let me know you'll help. Thanks.

We had 28 of our quizzers participating in the tournament at Crown College, and they represented us very well. It took four quizzes before the A division finals were finished, and it made for some very exciting quizzing. Our team from Iowa eventually came out on top, defending their first-place finish from the previous year. Congratulations! Here are the final placements for all of our teams, all ending up in the "gold" halves of their respective divisions:

A Division
Gold 1st: Alan & Edward Talmage, Ben & Laura Weieneth, coached by Kathy Weieneth
Gold 3rd: David & Jessica Nichols, David Stoner, coached by Jeremy Marquez
Gold 9th: Ethan Adler, Micah Faas, Ben Raygor, Kristin Roberts, coached by Josiah Faas

B Division
Gold 2nd: Isaiah Faas, Bretta Grabau, Katie Roberts, Joshua Stoner, coached by Steve Faas
Gold 3rd: Emily, Eric, & Shannon Howington, Gabe Leonard, Daniel Weieneth, coached by Debbie Howington
Gold 4th: Seth Boyum, Brandon Golley, Chase Hanson, coached by Chris Hanson
Gold 6th: Taryn Golley, Myles & Tanner Hanson, Louisa Jobes, Stacy Platz, coached by Andrew Voigt

And the following quizzers placed among the top 20 individually:

A Division:
Jessica Nichols (5th), Alan Talmage (7th), Ben Raygor (9th)

B Division:
Joshua Stoner (3rd), Myles Hanson (4th), Daniel Weieneth (6th), Brandon Golley (8th), Chase Hanson (13th), Katie Roberts (14th), Taryn Golley (18th)

Congratulations to everyone, and a big thanks to all of the coaches and officials who went as well.

We would like to make a special effort to invite potential next year quizzers and families to join us during our March quiz, as spectators. They would be free to come and go throughout the afternoon, and would be especially welcome to join us for our pizza party at the end of the year. If you know of people whom you would like to see be involved in quizzing next year, start thinking now about how to include them in our March quiz. I am particularly interested in having more Little League quizzers next year.

The Chicago Tournament is on the horizon, the weekend of March 29. We will start making registration plans during our February quiz, and will plan on wrapping up all of the details in March. We can register at a lower rate ($65 per team) if we register before the March quiz, so I would like to register our teams after the February quiz, and make any necessary updates to the rosters after our March quiz. This tournament is for both leagues, and I would like to encourage as many of you to go as possible. The tournament will be at First Baptist Church in Geneva, Ill, in the Chicago suburbs, where it was last two years. Besides the opportunity to quiz against other teams, just going to a place like this as a group is a lot of fun. Please plan on paying your share of the team registration fee this month if at all possible.

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. Much like 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 expenses, and the rest would go to the benefit of the Quizzing Program.

Our next quiz is coming up on February 9, 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 be quizzing over Philippians 3:1 - Colossians 2:5, and the Little League over Philippians 1:12 - 2:30. We'll see you there!

Karl Kirkman