How big do you think this German wind machine is?

A lovely walk on a quilted road in farm country yesterday.

This was an amazing museum with four originals of the Gutenberg Bibles from the 13th century.

The large cathedral (Kaiserdom) in the town of Mainz.

This is big. That is Elder Karn standing at the base.















We are back in full swing! For those who tune in to the blog for a weekly update you either thought we had a long week or that our calendar showed a week that was two weeks long. And while it may be true that some weeks are longer than others (a scientific fact - I'm sure of it because I've experienced some of them) the real answer is that we were aware that a week went by and we didn't write but our laptop was in the hands of one of the Young Single Adults getting its brains blown out. It had gotten to the point where the fan would roar like a jet on takeoff and we didn't want it to take off so we had one of the YSA who works on computers blow the New York, Asuncion Paraguay, Ogden Utah, Baumholder Germany, and Landstuhl Germany dust out of it. Our laptop is about five years old and that equates to about seventy in human years. It has been with us for a while and it was at the point where it was time for a visit to the doctor in order to keep its youthful vigor. The laptop survived the rehab, is back in action as evidenced by this entry.

You also may wonder what has happened while "Tabi Toshiba" has been down - well let me tell you! In the last entry we told you the weather was cold. How cold? Colder than it has been here in twenty-one years. On the 12th of January when we went to the Institute Outreach Center we didn't have any water. It had been down to five degrees for a couple of nights so my guess was that the water was frozen. Sure enough it was frozen and it took all that week for the new water pipes to be installed. New water pipes had to be installed because the old steel ones burst. So we had a week of short meetings - no bathroom facilities will shorten meetings.

Then on Saturday the sixteenth we went to visit Gutenberg in Mainz. Well, he wasn't there but we did go to see his press and learn about him. The museum was really interesting with lots of books and presses. Many of the books were from before Christopher Columbus sailed to America! Now that is a while back in case you haven't stayed up on your history. In book years that is not last weeks news - it is way old! Older than our laptop! The day was rainy and cold and it was good to be inside the museum. We would include many, many pictures of the museum and all we saw except for the fact that we didn't take very many pictures. I can tell you that we carried two cameras and it was so interesting that kept reading about the things and not taking pictures. Sorry, you should have been there!!

This past week the temperatures have picked back up and we have made it up to forty plus degrees and things were not quite as pushed as they have been for a few weeks. It was good to have a little break but it seemed almost like we didn't know what to do because we weren't as rushed as we had become used to. So we got some things done that have been waiting and went for a walk. How cool is that!

We drove to an area where we walked in the country a while back and walked on the paved path through the fields. When that ran out we drove to a small village that we drove through a little while ago that looked interesting so we went back to walk through town and really see the sights. There were many neat old buildings and some very interesting old dairy buildings. There were cows, tractors, farm equipment, fields, and all of the other neat things in life! It was a real recharge to the batteries of life! At least my "fun meter" was pegged to the max!

The travel section of the missionary department has made travel arrangements for our trip home. We are scheduled to fly out of Frankfurt on the 30th of April and arrive in Salt Lake City at 6:30PM. It will be long day and we will be tired but I am sure it will be really good to see home. There is still much for us to do here and for now we will concentrate on that but we do know when we will be home!

So, don't let your water pipes freeze, keep your laptop humming along and we'll be home soon.

Much love to all!

The Karns from Landstuhl

(Landstuhl means - Land stool - because there is some land nearby - a small hill actually that looked like a stool to the guy that is charge of naming towns. At least I think that towns are named by the official that has a stamp and goes around naming them. All officials have stamps with which to stamp their paperwork.)