I thought I should write up a little summary (as if any summary can be little with me) of my trip to D.C. so I could share it with you all, so here it is-Enjoy!
First of all, before I start, I should say this: I've had three dreams for as long as I can remember. First- To participate in a major Bible memorization competition. Second- To visit Washington D.C. Third- (This dream not for as long) To meet one of my online friends I met through the forums on the CBH Ministries website four years ago.
K, so anyways, that out of the way. Wednesday morning, November 4, my family woke up at 3:30 AM to leave our house at four. We all piled into our van (my friend Susanna got to come with us. I was SO excited!) which had luggage packed to the ceiling, under the seats, and on our laps. We’d had the brilliant idea of borrowing my sister's GPS for the trip, and after we'd traveled for a half hour (yes, we DO live in the middle of nowhere) the satellites finally started picking up reception.
So far so good...
Well, not really...my brother James came down with a bad cold (fever, headache, etc.) the day before we left, and my brother Matthew woke up that morning with it. But life must go on, and we still headed off to D.C.
As the day wore on, I began to start developing a headache. I had slept literally an hour or two the night before at best, so I felt exhausted, too, but I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to just study, study, study so I didn't do terribly in testing the next day! My headache kept getting worse, but I kept studying. I was almost to the end of the second category passages, and had just begun quoting I Peter 3:9-12 when things started getting crazy.
We were about 20 minutes from the J.W. Marriott hotel when we found another van headed to The National Bible Bee. When the highway split, they went one way, and we the other. Ahhh, the GPS found a shortcut for us, right?
Ummm…
Yeaaa….
We found ourselves in some woods. Interesting for just outside our nation's capital. Theeeeennnn we started nearing the city (somehow I doubt we took a "shortcut") and the GPS lost satellite completely.
IN D.C.
IT LOST SATELLITE!
Apparently it doesn't do too well around tall buildings. So now we're lost, and when it finally DOES get signal, it says, "Recalculating!" over and over again as it tries to get us back to where we need to be. When we finally DID get back on track, there was this whole roundabout thing where we kept getting off at the wrong exit and of course the GPS could be heard "Recalculating" again!
Finally, we arrived at our destination...or so the GPS told us. There was just one slight problem- there was NO hotel, especially not the J.W. Marriott, where we were. That’s when we figured out we were really lost. My dad was getting REALLY annoyed by the constant "recalculating" at this point, AND the heavy traffic was NOT helping things, especially all the crazy D.C. drivers!
So as we're stopped at a traffic light, my mom rolls down the window and tries to get directions from this random security guard which D.C. seems to have PLENTY of. He told her to call information and ask for the hotel number.
Meanwhile, two things are happening. One: My sister Alisha has called my sister-in-law Laura who happens to be at home near a computer that can easily access maps. Two- my brother Matthew starts shouting, I guess a little louder than he's been the last few hours, that he needs a bathroom NOW!
So taxis are honking their horns, the GPS is recalculating, Mom's on the phone with the hotel, Alisha's on the phone with Laura, Matthew's shouting that he NEEDS a bathroom, and I'm STILL trying to get through I Peter 3:9-12.
Dad decided to stop in the MIDDLE of the street to let Matthew out (and just decides to stay there as traffic maneuvers around us), Mom got a NEW address from the hotel (apparently, we somehow had the zip code where the address number was supposed to be?) and Laura finds a D.C. map.
Yay! Happy ending, right?
Uh, yea...sure...NOT!!!
NOW the GPS is saying, "Turn right here," and Laura with a map is saying, "Turn left here."
AHHHHH!
An hour and a half later (I'll spare u the rest of the details) we arrived at the hotel. Dad dropped my mom and I off so we could register, cuz if I wasn't registered by a certain time, I was automatically eliminated from the competition. We walk inside and, lol, I don’t know if I can describe the scene I met...The lobby was immaculate-the chandeliers were the size of our van. BUT it's not the chandeliers I noticed first. It was the HOMESCHOOLERS! How do I know they were all homeschooled?
Well, clue number one was the fact that all the girls were wearing floor-length dresses.
Clue number two was that their hair fell past their waist...
Clue number three...well, they were all knitting.
Clue four…they all had ten kids. Ok not all, but it seemed like it! I felt like it was attack of the homeschool conservatives on this ritzy upscale hotel! And now I was suddenly feeling intimidated by the fact that I’d had dreams about such homeschoolers putting me to terrible shame at the Bible Bee!
I will have to say, though, that while the atmosphere was entirely conservative, and while I was afraid most of the contestants would be forced into this by their parents, the group was amazing. Every contestant I talked to was entirely THRILLED to be there and infatuated with the Bible.
We registered then left to go back to the van cuz my dad and brothers were staying across the Potomac River in Virginia cuz of the price difference. We got them settled in, then they drove us back.
Remember the GPS?
We relied on it for directions again...
Bad, bad, bad idea...
Next thing we knew, we were lost AGAIN! Funny thing...poor Matthew needed the bathroom AGAIN! So after a thousand "recalculating"s and random stopping on street corners to try to find a bathroom we FINALLY made it to the hotel.
Now I need to explain something else. My mom HATES the thought of eating out, so whenever we go anywhere, we bring our own food. We had two LARGE coolers, and about 5? 6? totes full of food. PLUS all our suitcases. We overflowed two bellhop carts AND all our arms were full. We eventually managed to get our luggage upstairs.
Remember my headache? It never left, but steadily got worse. After seeing all those homeschoolers, I was now studying with urgency, but after a little while, I couldn't even think, my head hurt so badly. At eight I went to bed, setting my alarm for 5:15 AM, and praying for God to take away my headache, allow me to sleep, and give me peace.
I woke up at 5:15 the next morning and my headache was completely gone! Praise God! I studied for the next hour and half then got ready for our first session that began (or was supposed to) at 7:45 PROMPTLY (with risk of elimination for late people).
The session was really cool, and included many of the sponsors of the National Bible Bee including the president of HSLDA, Patrick Henry College, founder of World Magazine, etc. Then they showed an awesome movie about the Bible Bee which u can actually watch...http://www.biblebee.org/nationals2009/videos.php
After that, during final instructions, they told us to be sure we wore our huge placard (picture the signs hung around National Spelling Bee competitors' necks) all day.
Ok...that was NEVER mentioned at registration. I knew there was NO way I was getting back up that elevator. There were a couple thousand people in the hotel. ALL of them LOVED the elevators. Sooo, wonderful Susanna came to the rescue and braved the looooooong lines to bring me my placard.
K...this is where the homeschoolers' traits started coming out. Soooo...there are 300 contestants, right? Now each of those 300 contestants had a registered parent who was to sign them in and out of testing rooms, then leave.
LEAVE!!
Did u get that? LEAVE!
300 contestants...2 parents and 10 siblings each...
I looked at the line waiting to get into the room and thought; "You know, we're never gonna make it into this room." I happened to find a way to squeeze into the room (they actually opened another door so two contestants at a time, not one, could sign in.) The room was full after fifteen minutes, and the crowd outside looked like no one had even entered. It was insane.
The Bible Bee staff kept calling out on their microphones, "Parents, please leave your children and exit the room. Say your goodbyes, and leave! Please! We CANNOT fit you all in this room!" SOME parents (and their ten children minus the one contestant) left.
Then the Bible Bee people realized the groups they had assigned us to for testing rooms were all screwed up. They had Seniors testing with Primaries and vice versa. We were NOT given the same study material, so that wouldn't have worked so well! They tried to rearrange the groups. Did I mention testing was SUPPOSED to have begun an hour and a half before this point?
Yea...then there was the whole problem of having all thee age groups scattered across this room. They finally got us semi-divided into groups, and began randomly taking people into testing rooms.
Theeeen...someone realized, "Oh, silly us, we have kids testing just above this room where these 300 contestants (and the random parents now disguised as contestants) are waiting, and naturally, they’re all talking."
OH! side note- The groups of people talking? Boy groups and girl groups. They were COMPLETELY separated. There was ONE group of a mixture of guys and girls, and they didn't even LOOK homeschooled! *gasp*
Anyways, for the next three hours, over and over and over again we heard "SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" randomly repeated over the loudspeakers.
BUT... Bright side-I met two cool girls who BOTH memorized from NKJV and it was amazing to be able to quote chapters in unison with them. ABSOLUTELY amazing! I can't explain how it felt to know we'd all worked hard at those verses and they'd encouraged all of us so now we could speak them to others.
I waited awhile, avoiding the eyes of the runners taking us to testing rooms and enjoying my time meeting the contestants and quoting with them, then realized God was giving me HIS perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3-4) and I needed to just go and get tested and not put it off. As I volunteered to be taken up for testing, I felt like I was signing my life over to meet my final fate, but oddly I wasn't really that nervous. I made it up to the testing room and the FIRST passage I was asked to quote, I HONESTLY thought the lady asked me to recite "2 Timothy 3:15-17" I was soooo excited cuz I knew that passage sooo well! I jumped right into it and finished with a loud, "2 Timothy 3:15-17".
The judges looked at each other with sick looks and I knew something was wrong. "I think u misheard her," one judge told me. All I could think was "What? No...that's what she said!" The judge repeated the reference for me.
"1 Timothy 1:15-17."
AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
I couldn't believe it, but they let me redo the passage. I was so grateful cuz a guy came in after me and did the same thing (although he repeated the 1 Timothy reference) and they didn't let him repeat it. I knew all four passages they asked me, and I also knew all four Bible knowledge questions. I felt great!
That afternoon the Bible Bee staff improved things from the chaos that had ensued all morning. After it had taken an hour and a half to get contestants into the testing room that morning, they decided to move us to the downstairs ballroom and tape off the sections so we were easily divided. OH! And parents were asked not to enter the room.
The first part of the afternoon was a written test. I felt confident cuz the one at locals was soooo easy. This is the part where God decided to teach me who to place my confidence in. The test was the hardest thing I'd ever encountered. I knew hardly ANYthing. I mean, seriously, who knows who drilled an underground well or something in the old Testament that was named after him and what other name Solomon was called by?
I made it through the test, thoroughly reminded that it is GOD who arms me with strength (Psalm 18:30). After the written test we went back to the ballroom and found a seat. I sat in the back row next to one of the girls I had quoted with that morning. I found out that the chair I was sitting in meant I would be the 300th contestant tested... Yay me! It was actually a fun afternoon. I'll admit. I even met a girl who knew my youth pastor's wife's cousin...weird...
Finally, after four hours of waiting, I was led up to the testing room and I sat in a chair outside the room, waiting to be called. A middle-aged African American man came to the door with a HUGE grin on his face and called me into the room. "What's your name?" He asked me. "Hannah? Hannah is a beautiful name. Hannah, do you know what your name means? Hannah means grace of God and comes from the Hebrew word _____. The origin of the word ____________. It was interesting that Hannah named her son Samuel which derived from the word ________ meaning__________. But anyways, Hannah, what is your favorite Bible passage?" He made me feel so comfortable and “at home”.
I named Philippians 3:7-10 in which Paul pleads to know God more.
Then the man said, "Well, Hannah, may I pray for u before we begin?" He began his prayer, and I have never heard a prayer so filled with Scripture. The first Bible passage he prayed for me was Philippians 3:7-10. I jerked my head up, astonished that he'd known those verses word perfect, but then, he proceeded to pray a dozen or so more various verses for me. It was amazing.
That oral round didn't go so well, and I had to pass two of my passages cuz I didn't know them at all. But that judge...wow...I'll never forget him. Especially after what happened next. After I had finished, the others in the room told me he had done the same thing for every one of them. He knew every passage they had named and prayed over 100 verses throughout the afternoon for different contestants.
When he talked, it was Scripture. He knew His Bible, and literally everything he said was the Bible. Someone asked him how he knew so much and he asked us to quote Malachi something or other that talks about giving God a tithe of everything we have. He told us that included our time, he believed, and since he became a Christian at age 18, he had spent at least 2 hours and 40 minutes every day reading the Bible. He reads the ENTIRE Bible through every 17 days.
EVERY 17 DAYS!
He has never sat down and tried to memorize, yet he knows most of the Bible by heart. I got his autograph! I'll never forget him and his challenge to us to do the same.
After dinner, we had "evening entertainment" which consisted of two VERY GOOD sermons by Alex and Brett Harris first about "Learning It!" then "Speaking it"! and "Living it!" which is the Bible Bee's motto (“it”, obviously being the Bible.) Brett's sermon was an incredible challenge to not just know what we know in our head, but know it in our hearts. It is possible to win the National Bible Bee and still go straight to hell. It is so possible. And sooo scary. Brett was crying by the time he finished his messgae and so was I, for that is what I've been so afraid of about this Bible Bee and AWANA at our chuch; that we fill kids' heads with knowledge about God and all the right answers, but in their hearts, they would never know the Savior.
Brett told us, "In fifteen minutes from now, you will know who is advancing to compete tomorrow. In fifteen hours from now, you will know who won the Bible Bee. In fifteen days from now, you will just be recovering from this event, and in fifteen years from now, no one will remember you were here." It scares me and makes my heart ache when I realize how much knowledge I am feeding my little kids at Awana every week, but how easy it is to skip right over to what it means to their heart.
After Alex and Brett’s messages, Joel Belz stood up to anounce the finalists, but instead of reading a list of names, he told us that like so many elections, there was a “precint in the left wing of the hotel” that had not sent in their test results. Apparently their scan tron machines were down for awhile, slowing down the grading process. To fill the time, Mr. Belz put Alex and Brett on the spot, allowing anyone in the room to ask them any question to which they must give an answer. That was pretty exciting!
I didn’t make it into the semi finals, but I felt like I’d won. Only 20 people advanced. The ones who advanced knew every passage mostly word perfect, which is saying a lot when nearly 2000 verses are involved. They were under intense pressure. I slept sooooo well that night! Friday, I listened to the Bible be recited from 8 AM to 6 PM.
The little kids reciting were ADORABLE! They spoke with such passion and knew their verses so well. I definitely recommend watching the video!
http://www.biblebee.org/nationals2009/webcast.php
K, so another little side note; I read one of the boy's (Truman Falkner) favorite Bible verse and why he loved the Bible Bee before going to D.C. and I was immediately amazed by what I could tell was an intense love for and devotion to God. I really wanted him to win.
Thursday, I tried to find him and eventually did. He was sitting in a chair with a Bible on his lap. A group of guys sat around him as he instructed them from the Bible. Then I really, really wanted him to win.
THEN I ended up in his testing group for the first oral round. He recited all the verses word perfect and answered all the knowledge questions correctly, so he was given a bonus question, which he also answered correctly. Then I really, really, really wanted him to win. Then I noticed that as we sat in the testing room as others were tested, instead of aimlessly looking around the room, his head was bowed (nearly hidden behind another chair) and his lips were moving in silent prayer the entire time.
He advanced to the second day! Then to the final round! His voice was completely gone, and all he could do was whisper. He didn’t win first place, but he took second.
The guy who took first place was the guy I dreamed about 6 months before the Bible Bee-the conservative homeschooler…Yes, I literally DID have a dream about him and my entire family recognized him from my dream description as he kept advancing throughout the competition.
The banquet was delayed for two hours, because tiebreaker rounds had to keep being held cuz the contestants knew all the verses word perfect!
Each contestant was given a certificate and "The Word of Promise" Audio dramatized Bible on CD at the banquet, which is proving to be a pretty amazing help! I got to meet the AWANA president and the former president of HSLDA at the banquet. However, I doubt they knew as much of the Bible as Truman did. Those winners are my new heroes, especially the little kids.
I stayed up until past 12:30 meeting other contestants and talking with them.
It was truly amazing. I met MANY godly young men and women who are already doing amazing things for God. One boy I met preaches every week at a church in Africa! He said they didn’t have a teacher and new converts were trying to teach the Bible which they did not know. Although he may be young, he knew the Bible, so he was asked to preach. I could see his passions for Africa as he told us of the beliefs they had and how mighty Jesus is to save them. He explained their entire belief system and how to combat it with the Bible.
Then my mom made me go to bed. I doubt I'll ever see any of the contestants again, but this has definitely had a big impact on my life.
The next three days as we toured the city and visited places I’d only dreamed of seeing like Ford’s Theater, the Washington Monument, the White House, The Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson’s Memorial, Theodore Roosevelt Island, Arlington Cemetery, and many Smithsonian museums, I couldn’t help but think how useless the touring was. Compared to learning, speaking, and living the Bible, touring seemed tasteless now.
We were looking at dead people’s statues, dead people’s tombstones, and hearing dead people’s stories. All those were huge reminders to me that the other tourists we came into contact with would soon be dead. I would soon be dead. What am I doing here on earth that will last? Am I building on the true foundation, Jesus Christ, and what am I building on it? Gold, silver and precious stones or wood, hay and straw? When my works are tested by fire in the day of judgment, will they stand? God really challenged me with those thoughts.
There were actually two more neat things that happened in D.C. One- I was interviewed by someone from the Washington D.C. Public Library about the National Bible Bee and Martin Luther King Jr. (pretty sure those have hardly any connection), and I got to share the gospel on a DVD that will be played in that library!
Two-Remember my third dream? Randomly, a week before we left, Hosanna, one of my good online friends, mentioned that I'd only be two hours from her. I randomly (jokingly) mentioned that it'd be nice to meet. She randomly (seriously) replied back that her mom thought she should. Ok...so background info; we actually haven't talked much in the last year, but before that we talked a LOT. Anyways, the people she had plans with that day which hindered her from immediately jumping at it, cancelled on her, and she ended up making the drive and spending the afternoon with my family! It wasn't even awkward as I'd imagined!
So, yea...one week...three dreams...one AMAZING God! Isn’t it cool that of all the vastness of the universe and the intricacies of creation God would take time to write in my story an amazing week including the fulfilling of my three dreams? God is so amazing and good!
Now how’s that for a short summary?
