To the Bible Quizzing Family,

Thank you all for being part of a great start to the Bible Quizzing season. It was a wonderful day on Saturday. It was great to see all of you back and to meet some new friends too. There was a great spirit about the whole day. It was all very uplifting, and I just sense that it brought joy to God's heart. We topped it all off with a fantastic evening around our campfire. We're estimating that about 60 people were there at various times. I don't know how it could have been better, except if the rest of you had come. It was one of those nights where no one really wanted to go home, and that is something we enjoyed immensely.

Devotions and Worship: We really appreciated Jeremy Marquez leading us in worship and devotions. That is a great way to start the quiz meet. We want to do that every month, and we need people to step forward and do it. Can you or a group of you sing or play an instrument to lead worship? Can some of you share some of your walk with God with us for devotions? Devotions are covered next month, but worship is open, and both are open for the remaining months. Please contact me to volunteer. Thanks much!

Olympic Memory Challenge: We're off to a great start. It was amazing to see so many quizzers getting certificates. And there should have been two more. I apologize because we missed the fact that Joshua and Hannah Stoner should have received Gold certificates for the A/B league. So congratulations to them as well! Keep working on this. I challenged you to make us have to order more certificates, so I hope you'll take us up on that. And for those who want to go back and memorize more of October's material, you can get credit for it for your end-of-the-year total. If you want to do that, you will also have to re-quote the verses you've already quoted if you want to keep credit for them. Think of it as your new sheet simply replacing your old. What we are looking for here is for you to have mastery of the material, and pretty much have all of it in your head at one time.

Standings: The standings are attached. There were a couple of errors in the awards we gave out on Saturday, so I want to set the record straight here. In the A/B League, Jeremy Marquez earned 100 more points than we gave him credit for, so that moved him into a tie for first place. And in the Little League, Kohl Hanson answered more questions than we had given him credit for, putting him into first place. It was our mistake, and I apologize for not having it right. Thanks for bearing with us.

Upper Bracket Individual Round Quiz: At the Coaches Meeting, we talked about the fact that the upper bracket room in both leagues has way too many errors all the time, and Saturday was no exception. I think we could all agree that it is much more impressive to see quizzers hear a couple extra syllables and get the question right, rather than jumping too soon and being clueless (hey, even I can do that!). The suggestion was made, that for both leagues, in the upper bracket room only, quizzers will error out with only 2 errors. So we're going to try this and see if it will help to make that quiz a more uplifting event. I hope it works.

Lost and Found: We brought home a couple of sweatshirts, and we found a single glove around the campfire. If you're missing any of these things, let us know. We'll bring them to the next quiz, or we can make arrangements to get them to you earlier.

Bible Quizzing Videos: I mentioned that we are very interested in having video promotions for the program. We're encouraging you to get creative and make some. We'd like to have them on our website so people can get an idea of what quizzing is all about. Work individually, or work together in groups. If you need someone to help with video editing, I'm sure there's someone out there who would be willing to do that.

Bible Quizzing 25th Anniversary Celebration: Hey, it's a little less than a year away now, but we're wanting to plan a really special event. If you've got ideas, we'd like to hear them, and we'd love to have a few of you be part of the planning group to make this happen. Contact Martha to volunteer!

Next Month: We will continue with the new format of having individual round seating assignments ready for you immediately after round 5. This seemed like a huge improvement and was very well received. Because of the chapters that the Crown College tournament does not cover, we have a unique schedule in the A/B League this year, so next month we will quiz over Luke 2:41 - 3:23 and 9:1-10:24. Little League will quiz over all of chapter 4.

Help Needed: We need volunteers each month to help with setup and tear down. All months are open for the rest of the year. Please contact me to sign up. Thanks

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