The Challenge

Neil Sandford doesn't hold the corner on conning students into thinking they're having fun while working harder. If the old FBI Decathlons aren't the granddaddy of the LIT Department Challenges, they are at least a distant cousin. Matt Stewart's brainchild, the Challenges are less inter-student competitive and slightly more serious minded that the old Decathlons, but they achieve the same end.

The LIT office offers Challenges three or four times a year. Typical events include room inspections, Bible memory, exercise, work projects, and book reports. Each room of two or three leaders and Leaders-in-Training is a team. Each team accumulates points, aiming for a total point count the LIT office ogres set. Everyone who reaches the goal in a given time earns a reward, rather than just the top point accumulators.

We display the point totals in the LIT office window for all the (ITC) world to see. The last couple of Challenges, we've waxed creative with themes, reflected in the window displays. The winter challenge was the "Winter Blitz," and each team was a lightning bolt, descending on the point goal. The spring challenge had a military theme, and the teams were green plastic army-men-turned-paratroopers parachuting down the window toward safety.

It's such fun to see the teams pull together toward a common goal. You'll catch them busy at work around the training center--washing vans, attacking carpet spots, painting restroom stalls. Yes, it's in their free time, but you know they're having fun! Watching Patrick teach Josh W. and David how to harness themselves in preparation to wash outside windows on our 13-story building caused me great mirth. Hearing that two-year-old John Michael helped the girls wash the vans was also great. Actually, I think he helped them wash themselves, which added to the fun on a hot day.

Of course this is the participative LIT administration, which means that we don't ask the leaders and LITs to do what we supervisors aren't willing to do ourselves. So the Challenge is a busy time for us, too. I had to re-memorize Exodus 20:1-20 (KJV) and keep my room clean and read books. We don't have to do all the service projects, perhaps because the 10-, 12-, 14 or--ahem--20-hour days some of us regularly pull counts as service time. And this Challenge, Matt released us from book reports, which was because the only time he had to do his was between 2:00 and 5:00 AM. (He's slowing down in his old age.)

The reward at the end of a Challenge makes all the sweat worth it. Last summer we took them on an all-day canoe trip. This past winter we went toboganning at a run in northern Indiana. One of our standby outings is to go to a place out in the woods and rough it overnight. Every kid needs to see a snake, tromp through the underbrush, roast marshmallows, go snipe hunting, and be bitten by mosquitoes.

I really had it easy this past Challenge because I spent half of it in Norway. So I collected points merely by leaving my room clean when I left. I memorized my Scripture and exercised before going, and I read books as we traveled (which was harder than it sounds because many of the Norway roads are winding, and I am more prone to carsickness when I read the older I get). The ease of this Challenge makes up for the traumas of past Challenges . . . Being woken up at 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning to be given a "fair" room check by the Gestapo . . . spending hours on a book report, only to earn less points than a Leader-in-Training . . . exercising late at night because I hadn't had time earlier in the day.

Ah well--no pain, no gain. Hardships are very memorable afterward. (And yes, I have forgiven the Gestapo.)