A weekend to remember!

I took Western's Bible Quiz team to Russell, Manitoba this past weekend for a tournament. It was a hectic weekend. We left Friday immediately after school, arriving in Russell around 6:30 pm. After registration and the official welcome, the tournament began. We quizzed until 10 pm, then met our billets. The boys were billetted north of town about a half hour away, while the girls and I were billetted east of town, about half an hour away.

Saturday things started bright and early at about 8:30 am - which meant that we had to leave our billets before 8 am and were up much earlier than that. We quizzed until 3 pm, then got organized to pick up supper and take buses out to Asessippi to ski. We skied until after 8 pm, then bussed back to Russell for a worship service. Things finally wrapped up at around 10:30 or 11 pm.

Although I had the van for the girls, my billet met us at the church. It had been snowing steadily all day and he wanted to make sure that I could follow him out to the farm. Visibility was poor, but I didn't have to worry, because he told me to just follow his truck out of the parking lot. So I did.

Unfortunately, another truck pulled out in front of me and I followed that truck! It wasn't going in the right direction, but by the time we figured that out, we were several miles in the wrong direction and had totally lost our host. I am thankful for the power of prayer and that my memory of driving out there the previous night held. Although there was lots of snow (no wind, thankfully), and it was pitch black out, I was able to find my way back to their farm - where we got stuck in the yard.

Sunday morning our host pulled both our van and his wife's car out with the tractor (we were both stuck in the yard) and we went to service. I had thought to leave earlier because the snow was still fairly heavy and the wind was picking up, but eventually we decided to spend the night in Russell and return to Regina Monday. The good people at Russell found us new billets in town and we were able to relax and catch up on our sleep.

We finally left Monday around 10:30 am. We travelled with two vehicles from the Milestone quiz team in convoy. The roads weren't bad at all - there was blowing snow across the highway between Ft. Qu'appelle and Regina, but it's a rare day when there isn't blowing snow for that stretch. We did see two vehicles in the ditch, but it was a totally uneventful trip. We arrived back at the school at about 2:30 pm.

There was sure a lot of snow in Regina! I still haven't got my van shovelled out, so I missed my piano lessons this morning. I'm very thankful that we had such a good tournament and that all the news was good news.