If you're in Pathfinders, you may have participated in Bible Bowl or Bible Achievement, where club members test their knowledge of the Bible. If so, you know it takes a lot of work to do a good job!

Recently I read about an interdenominational Bible competition called the Bible Bee. Last fall a Seventh-day Adventist, Rhonda Grakov, took second place in the Primary age group in this national competition.

Maybe you'd like to become a Bible champion like Rhonda. It will be a challenge--contestants in the 11-14 age division have to memorize 500 Bible verses and recite up to 30 of them in front of judges at the local level, plus take a 200-question written test over those texts and a particular book of the Bible. There's also a oral round of questions. If you score well enough at the local level, you can move on to the national level and do it all again! The 2010 national competition will take place November 11-13 in Illinois.

To do well in the Bible Bee, you'll obviously need to devote many hours to studying. Of course, the same is true of doing well in a geography bee or spelling bee. Learning a lot about geography or spelling is a good thing, but I think if you're going to put that much time and effort into something, studying the Bible is the best choice of all! 

If you're interested, check out www.biblebee.org with your family. And if you participate, let me know!