The Amazing Race - Koinonia Style

Okay, I know the following will sound a bit rushed, but I'm a bit behind on where I'd like to be, as far as blogging goes, so this might go a bit quick, just to catch up with the amount of time I have.

Sunday, I was great to be back at Koinonia once again.  I loved seeing friends, classmates and other people again.   I went to second service (Daniel, Julia and Clara rode with me - Oh, yeah, most of you probably haven't met Clara.  She is Julia's foreign Exchange partner from France.  She will be here till November, 3 months, then in February, Julia will go live with Clara in France for 3 months.) Anyways, we all stayed after church for the Impact (high school group) and Twenty20 (college-age group) Fussion Car Rally.  It cost $5 (thankfully Jim signed me up - I still owe him $5), and they fed us a delicious Burger/chicken patty lunch.  Then they split us up into 11 teams of 5-7 people each.   This whole thing was kind of like a version of The Amazing Race, but with other things added in as bonus points.   Our first challenge was our group had to write out all the books of the bible, in order without using our phones or anything to look them up.   Once a team got that, they received their next challenge.  Well, I sadly don't know the order of the books of the bible, nor do I think I could name them all off the top of my head.   Our group teamed with another group, who was also struggling, to get it done quicker.  One team got their list done pretty quickly and was off on the next challenge.    We were likely one of the later groups to finally get the next challenge.  It gave a general area with in the Kitchener Waterloo area/region that we had to find to receive more information on what has to be done for the next challenge.  Each group had a preassigned leader/driver.  

Now there were a few more rules, each challenge completed was worth 1,000 points.  Two times during the day, Bryce posted on the Twenty20 Facebook page a picture of him somewhere in the Region.  If you got to him in the 15 minutes allotted for this, your team received 500 bonus points. (He did a surprise 3rd time for 250 points at the end).  We also had a list of things that we could do for and extra 100 points (listed below), and a list of things we could do for an extra 300 points (listed below).  We also had to be back at Koinonia at by 5:30 (I think we left around 2:30 or 3:00) and your team lost 100 points per minute you were late.   Also, your team had to stay together at all times (you can't split up to get things done quicker).

Bonus Point Challenges (100 Points each)
- Collect - a crayfish
- Collect - bird feather
- Collect - penny from 1974 (this one is harder than you would think because Canada hasn't made pennies since 2012 - their basically out of circulation)
- Collect - a house fly (bonus 200 points if it's still alive upon return)
- Collect - a size 1 diaper
- Collect - wildflower bouquet with 4 colors of flowers
- Collect - a GRT Bus route pamphlet
- Collect -  the takeout menu from a Chinese food restaurant
- Photo - group pyramid
- Photo - group "Tebowing"
- Photo - group standing under the "aisle 3" sign in a grocery store
- Photo - group with LRT sign
- Photo - someone teeing off at a golf course
- Purchase - one chocolate Timbit with receipt from today
- Purchase - 12 red grapes with receipt form today
- Purchase - gas for $2.37 with receipt from today
- Video - wash a stranger's car windows
- Video - feeding an animal
- Video - One of your team members playing Rock Paper Scissors with a stranger

Bonus Point Challenges (300 Points each)
- Collect - a new Waterloo Public Library Card for one of the team members
- Collect - a napkin from 4 different fast food places
- Collect - a balloon animal
- Photo - Group up in a tree
- Photo - 1 member of your group reading book about a monkey
- Photo - group with a police officer
- Video - milk a cow
- Video - swim in public water fountain
- Video - test drive a car

And thus was the game.  Our team did many of the little things before getting to some of the main Challenges, which resulted in us mission out on two of the challenges due to time sake.  However it was a TON of fun, a total Blast!!!  I don't remember all the challenges in order, but some included changing a tire, a 4x1 race, and remembering someone's tattoo and then running to  another end of the park to draw it from memory.  One I really enjoyed was a swimming one - which I did.  The challenge was to dive into Pastor Steve's pool and retrieve 13 cents from the bottom (which was full of coins).  The catch was you had to retrieve the 13 cents, once coin at a time.   (I also got to do the other water thing, which was one of the 300 pint challenges (above) of swimming in a public fountain).   At the end (we were second to last (which we were all still thrilled about since we had fun) we had Ice cream sandwiches before heading home.   (the winners got gift cards).   My team members were two girls I had never met before, Jeff Stevens (out leader/driver) and Matthew Champion.

This is something we need to do more often!!!