Challenge Day is here!

It's been a month, and that means today is the day of the memory verse challenge! My passage was 2 Corinthians 10:7-10, and to be honest, if I had set aside a little time I probably could have knocked it out in an hour. But that wasn't the point.  What I really wanted to do was make a conscious effort to focus on a passage that was significant to me and memorize it.  Long or short, it's something I want to be doing—and hopefully this will give me that little motiviational push that will keep me actively trying to memorize.  

My mom is an inspiration when it comes to memorization.  She has books memorized.  Literally.  And not just the one pagers.  I'm talking about Romans, Daniel, Revelation, James, Phillipians, Colossians... the list doesn't end there, I just can't remember everything she has memorized! No surprise, but she has a passion for memorizing the Bible.  Growing up I can  remember the projects she worked on well, but even more than that, I remember the projects that she worked on with us.  To help my sister and I memorize,  Mom would take long passages–or at least passages longer than an eight year old would be interested in learning—and put them to music.  And as many of you know, once you learn something to music, it's with you for life.  

That is the case with Hebrews 11.  One of the greatest chapters in the entire Bible, the chapter entirely about faith, and I'm so grateful that mom taught it to me all to song because it's with me today, word for word, just as it was when she taught it to me 15 years ago.  And since this was memory challenge month, I decided to see if Marianna would be interested in learning some of it. I was hoping she would enjoy some of the songs, but I knew there were some big words, many quite out of her three year old's grasp of vocabulary. So I  thought we'd give it a go and see what happened.  I don't mind telling you she knocked my socks off with how quickly she was able to pick it up, and it has thrilled me to my toes to see how much she's enjoying learning it.  

Of course we wanted to share it with you, but the tricky part was getting it on tape. As soon as I pulled the video camera out and told Marianna I was going to tape her singing her verses, she pulled out all of her favorite camera manuevers, including but not limited to, singing while dancing, singing while examining her feet, singing while spinning wildly on the swing set, and singing exclusively to a rose.  What I chose here was a middle ground between the wild and the weird, but unfortunately my camera skills were a little under par on this take, and I missed the first few words of the verse.  What you miss is: "Now faith is the assurance," and she picks it up from there. So here it is, straight from our back yard to you, Hebrews 11:1-6.

Now, just 34 more verses to go =)

p.s. in case you were wondering, Adrienne was not fending for herself in the backyard while I taped!  Nathan had her.  She wasn't happy, but she was safe =)