The Bible Bee

As many of you know, our local Bible Bee was held last Saturday, Sept. 12th, in Holdrege, Ne. I was the chairman of the event, and so the final three weeks found me in front of the computer, photocopying and stapling papers, on the phone, and/or training people to judge the oral rounds.

If you haven't heard of the Bible Bee, it is the first ever bigtime scripture memory contest, with local competitions held all over the USA last Saturday. 100 finalists from 3 age categories have a chance to compete at the national level in Wash. DC in November for huge monetary prizes (think 5 figures...) For more detailed info, check out www.biblebee.org and you can read all about it.

In our local Bible Bee, we had 38 kids sign up to study the Bible memory verses all summer (200+ verses plus other stuff) but for the competition, only about 18 kids came to compete. We had a great day, though, and after the competition all the kids received a Christian book (mostly missionary biographies) and a certificate. Then we uploaded the scores to the national website and held out breath....

Now a week later, we are thrilled to announce that our own Laura (the tallish one in the photo!) and her friend, Mary, from the next town west, have both qualified to compete in Washington, DC at the national level! They are in the JR category, and the 3 top winners will receive $50,000, $20,000, and $10,000 prizes! Wow! We told Laura it's a win-win situation, because if she doesn't make it past the first day of the two-day competition, she and her dad can do some sight-seeing! The hotel where the National Bible Bee will be held is 2 blocks from the White House....that's a lot for a rural Nebraska girl!

The other kids did well in the competition, too....Josh got the top prize locally for the Sr. division (but his numbers weren't high enough to qualify for Wash. DC....) and Coretta and Isaac did fine, too. It was a lot of fun and we're glad that they took the effort to try and memorize some of God's word.