Heart of America LTC Blog

The Heart of America LTC will be studying the books Romans and James for the 2011 Bible Bowl / Bible Quiz. The theme will be "More Than Conquerors" referencing Romans 8:37. This set of books will be a deviation from North Texas LTC and others that will be studying Revelation.

Here is some background on our decision: As a board we communicated with other church coordinators and others in our LTC groups (including our study guide authors) concerning this decision. As you can imagine, we had some supporters and some that were adamantly opposed. As a collective group, many recognized that this would be a difficult book to teach to all ages served by LTC. There is value in such a book but even adults have a difficult time really grasping the symbolism and meaning. How can we teach kids when we ourselves struggle with this part of the Bible? With this, we chose to study other NT books, specifically Romans/James, this next year and then proceed with the 10-year rotation (beginning again with Genesis next year).

The 2010 LTC shirt design is now announced. Many of you have always waited in suspense in the past. Now we have received the design before the ordering deadlines. Here it is:



Please share this with your congregations to let them know what the shirts will look like before they arrive at convention. We will still not order many extras and thus you will want to get all pre-orders in before the event correction deadline.

Karl McDonald, the EC for PowerPoint and Web Design, has relayed a message that those interested may submit their events via email to the computerevents@hoaltc.org email inbox, in lieu of mailing them to his home address. If you want to take advantage of this cost free (no postage) option, please submit 1 entry per email and be sure to include the team sheet in the email. This will ensure Karl is properly awarding all participants on the team for the entry submitted. For any questions on this, email Karl at computerevents@hoaltc.org.

I hope your new year has started off well and your LTC practices are now in full swing. Remember that the Registration Deadline is Friday, February 5. Please have all information entered into the Registration Portal and your check mailed by this date. All participants and volunteers need to be entered so we can assess the numbers for LTC 2010.

For volunteers, they MUST be assigned to an event. It is NOT good enough to just add the names. YOU must assign the names to one or more events because I don't see them otherwise in my reports. Every congregation must provide volunteer names for event or else we cannot have the judges and ambassadors necessary to have a successful LTC convention.

If you have been in the Registration Portal, you have probably been wondering how you could register your hotel rooms. Well...I forgot to add the hotel and room types within the Portal. HOALTC is organizing the hotel rooms again within the Portal. You can now go in and submit your hotel room reservations.

Remember that date of payment (earlier the better) will solidify your guarantee for a hotel suite, in case of a conflict with the hotel. Also, please specify which double or king rooms should be attached to the suite parlors within the room notes. If you do not specify this, I will chose for you.

The year is quickly coming to an end and I know that for many of you LTC is speeding up. Hope all goes well and let me know if you have any questions.

Are you already started for 2010? If so, you have probably already found the 2010 Manual. If not, you can go to the website and find it (http://www.hoaltc.org/manual.html).

For those that may have downloaded version 1.0, there are a few modifications that have been made to 1.1. You can find those changes on the change log page within the entire manual. They are mainly focused around use of the special consideration form now found on the website and required by the Registration Deadline. You can find the question that prompted the change on the blog (http://blog.hoaltc.org).

Also, this email is announcing the 2 Samuel Study Guides are now available online as well. We apologize for the delay this year. You can find the Study Guides for Bible Bowl and Bible quiz on the website at http://www.hoaltc.org/studyguides.html.

Last, but not least, you should be aware that we have modified email addresses to reduce the increased spam over the last few months. Please note the changes and start to use the new addresses for any communication with myself or other LTC individuals.

This was a topic with which we prayerfully struggled when we launched HOALTC. Most of us had participated in another LTC convention that did not permit males in the room when females were involved in several events. While we appreciated the rationale behind this, we also knew that often the fathers, youth ministers, and others who had trained those young women had a legitimate desire and/or need to support them through the judging process. It seemed to put our young women at a disadvantage when our boys were provided that full opportunity for support from their coaches and family members, while the girls were not.

That, coupled with the difficulty we face in finding women who feel qualified to judge this event, led us to have a more open stance for these events. We are ever mindful that these experiences are intended to be training opportunities and are not actual worship services.

If you do have some young women who would opt not to participate in any of these events because of this issue, please let us know by submitting a Special Consideration Form at the time of registration and we will see what can be done to accommodate them.

Hope all is well and you are getting ready for convention. I wanted to take a minute to remind you of 2 upcoming deadlines.

The Hotel Correction Deadline is this Friday, March 13, another dreaded Friday the 13th. Please have all your hotel rooms ordered and names of occupants assigned. After this date, no refunds for hotel rooms can be granted. I will be providing the list to the hotel next week based on the data you have entered.

The Event Correction Deadline is the following Friday, March 20. After this date, the convention schedule will be finalized and the events organized and communicated. You will not be allowed to add additional teams or participants to invidividual events. You may add individuals to team events by contacting me. Please also have all volunteers scheduled for events. The event schedules (volunteers and partipants) will be posted to the website before the convention for sharing with your congregations.

We still have the need for additional volunteers. Here is the current list of open positions. Without your support, your kids may not get the proper feedback they deserve.

Friday Christian Art Drawing 3 - 12
Saturday 08:00 - 09:30 Puppets 10 - 12
Saturday 08:00 - 09:30 Signing 7 - 9
Saturday 08:00 - 09:30 Song Leading 7 - 9
Saturday 11:00 - 12:30 Signing 3 - 6
Saturday 11:00 - 12:30 Song Leading 3 - 6
Saturday 02:30 - 04:00 Live Christian Drama 3 - 6
Saturday 02:30 - 04:00 Small Chorus 10 - 12
Saturday 04:00 - 05:30 Large Chorus 3 - 6
Saturday 04:00 - 05:30 Live Christian Drama 10 - 12
Saturday 04:00 - 05:30 Small Chorus 7 - 9

The Hyatt shall be offering cash concessions (similar to previous years at the Marriott) on the second floor near the escalators. You can find the pricing on this sheet.

The Hyatt shall also be offering the pre-paid meal options. Church coordinators can order these on the Registration Portal for Friday and/or Saturday. These options include:

Hot Dog, Chips and Soda - $5
Hamburger, Chips and Soda - $6
Turkey Croissant, Chips and Soda - $6

It is now less than 1 month until the registration deadline. Remember that is you have not submitted your Church Coordinator Covenant that is the first step. You can find a copy on the website or Registration Portal (http://www.hoaltc.org/2009/2009HOALTCChurchCoordinatorCovenant.doc). If you are having trouble with the form, try to save it to your computer and then open it in Microsoft Word. . Fill it out, save it and then attach it to an email message to registration@hoaltc.org.

At the Registration Deadline, you need your participants registered, shirts entered, hotel request submitted, judges/ambassadors registered and payment mailed. Hotel priority is based on all this being completed. Don't be left out. Get it in early.