Bible Bee 2013

We're home from the 2013 National Bible Bee in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!  The pictures are a little out of order but I'll try my best to share with you some of what happened.

One of the things that Priscilla was really, really looking forward to was meeting Ray Comfort.  He spoke at a luncheon and so she got to visit with him a little. Ray Comfort is one of Priscilla's "heroes" and his books and materials have been really spiritually challenging for her.  (Sorry the pictures aren't very good.) Micheal Farris of HSLDA also gave a challenging message at the closing celebration.

Another things we really enjoyed was a showing of the movie "Alone, Yet Not Alone".  We've been waiting for this to come out for a long time!  It isn't out in theaters for a few months yet and then DVD's a few months after that so this was a really highlight of our trip.  It was a very good movie!  

During the opening ceremony they had all the contestants march up on stage one age group at a time.  Priscilla spent a lot of time with her group of about 100 so she made some good friends and had a lot of fun.  She thought she did okay on the written part of the test but not so good on the oral part which means she didn't make it to semi-finals. It was intense and an emotional time for the contestants. That's okay though, as we all know the real reward is the actual hiding of God's Word in your heart. For those that want to know, next years National Bible Bee is in Orlando, Florida.  

We didn't do a lot other than the Bible Bee but we did find time to do a little hiking with the M. family of the Mieczkowski Musings blog.  We've met them before at National Bible Bee and read their blog for years and when you meet fellow believers in Christ it's like you've always know each other.  The weather was really nice, at least compared to here, and some were even brave enough to go barefoot in the river.  That's Arthur in the black pants. Arthur enjoyed the hiking and climbing up and down the hills with the M. guys.

Hosanna came along to the Bible Bee as a volunteer and worked at the information booth and helped set things up for the family fair night.  There's a few things that my kids will always talk about as highlights of their school years and the Bible Bee will be one of them.  If you've never been a part of the Bible Bee, start with the local Bee's next summer!

Back to the hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains, here's the M. family, minus parents, and Priscilla and Hosanna.   There are more pictures on their blog if you want to see more.

A highlight of the trip for me was visiting the Titanic museum.  After doing the Titanic at last years maze, and studying all about the Titanic for the maze, I really wanted to see this.  (The other "half" of the Titanic is in Branson, MO.) This is really worth going to if you ever get a chance.  Probably the best part for us was Captain Smith.  He really looked like Captain Smith and had actually gone down and helped collect artifacts for the museum.  Anyway, the room was quite full and he told the story of the "Titanic's Last Hero".  For those of you that know of John Harper, it was so nice to hear his story told and the Captain made a point to share the verse "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved"  several times when telling about John Harper. The room got pretty quiet as he told the story of this pastor who was on his way to preach at Moody Bible Church.  He shared the gospel with passengers as they knew their lives were in danger and even gave his life jacket up to a man he knew wasn't saved.  He went to this man twice in the water encouraging him to be saved.  This man was saved and was one of the few that was picked up alive and so lived to tell the story of John Harper.

Other highlights:
The weather!  We went through rain, thunderstorms (Awesome display of God's power in those lighting bolts!), tornado warnings (we followed the bad Illinois tornadoes), wind storm (first time I've ever seen Arthur clenching the steering wheel to keep the van on the road), ice covered roads (saw three accidents), but beautiful weather while in Tennessee.  

We had a great visit with the Pecks and McCanne families on the way down. Such good fellowship!

We stayed with Aaron and Naomi and the girls for a couple of days!  We won't see them at Christmas so we were glad for the chance to visit.    We left Silas there during the Bible Bee and he took tons of pictures which will take another blog post.

We visited a nice little church down in Pigeon Forge and had great fellowship there as well as with many families we visited at the Bee.

We're glad to be home!  We're thankful for God's protection on the roads, for all the verses Priscilla has committed to memory, for the chance to see old friends and make new ones.  God is so good!