Saturday was a wonderful day. I had been looking forward to Feb. 21 for quite some time and it finally arrived. When it did, it turned out even better than I had hoped it would. What made that day so remarkable?

That's right! Saturday was the 2009 Topeka Awana Bible Quiz. So what, you ask? Topeka can have quizzes all it wants. Why would that make me so happy? Well, this was the very first year for our Awana Clubbers to participate and we were ALL quite excited. Rose Baker, Melody Carpenter, Rick Haigh and I set out at a ridiculously early hour to haul those kids to Topeka. And it was so worth it.

We had seven kids competing in two multiple choice rounds. They would answer 10 questions per round. If they correctly answered all 10 they would "quiz out." This means they received a beautiful purple rosette...and more points!

All of our kids did just great even though I think they were pretty nervous. They carefully listened to the question posed by the Quizmaster (I MUST figure out a way to make people start calling me by that name...or would it be Quizmistress?) then chose their answer. We had two kids "quiz out"! That was great news. Cendall and Brandyn both received ribbons for perfect scores!

Finally, after a long morning of quizzing the competition was complete and it was time for the award ceremony. To be quite frank, I didn't know how points were tabulated but I figured all the big prizes would go to the churches who had brought a whole bunch of kids. Well, lo and behold, guess whose name was called not once, not twice but THREE times??

Wellsville Baptist!! Indeed! We had a girls' and a boys' team that each took fourth place and...one of our boys' teams won first place!

I am so proud of these kids. They worked hard to prepare for the competition. They behaved so very well all day. And most important, they memorized lots of Bible verses that tell them how much God loves them! I know they will remember those verses for a long time.

Thank you so much to the kids who competed so well. And thank you to Rose, Melody and Rick for spending your Saturday with these wonderful boys and girls. Now we can't wait til next year!