January on a sunny Sunday - a good day to catch some rays - from inside! The current temperature with the sun shining and a clear blue sky is about 20 degrees F - which doesn't seem so bad - it is just the humidity that makes it seem much colder. This morning as we drove to our church meetings we saw a heavy frost on everything - tree branches - bushes and grass. It reminded me of the scenes in Dr. Zhivago when they were in Siberia. Of course it is colder in Siberia than here!

This week was not too rushed but it was eventful. We had a call on Monday from a fellow LDS member at the hospital who had come with her family from Stuttgart (about a 2 hour drive) with very sick children. Some how the process opens up when an LDS member needs to find someone to represent the leadership in the area. (We get some interesting calls and most say they found us on the Internet - ?)The two year old was very ill and they had to bring the rest of the family so here they were with no food, etc. The 2 year old was admitted to the hospital and the family was set up in a temporary residence near the hospital. We took them food and gave them some encouragement. The biggest trial for them was their being in a different environment with their 6 year old autistic boy. We saw the woman today in church and she said they are doing better and should be going home soon. The 2 year old should be released tomorrow. They have had a very rough week. It is hard to be in a foreign country even in the military when you need urgent medical care. Sometimes a long drive and a long wait are the problems.

And then the head chaplain for the Ramstein Air Force Base called us. How did he get our number? (from the Internet) He said an LDS lady had called urgently wanting to speak with the LDS chaplain. He told her there isn't currently an LDS chaplain in the Kaiserslautern military community. So he ploughed through files and notebooks looking for any contact information on the LDS Church. (We have given stacks of brochures with all contact information to the previous chaplain who is now deployed - don't know what happened to those brochures). Anyway after talking with Bruce he now has the phone numbers of the local bishops and a promise that we will soon drop by with information brochures for his reference. We hope the woman received the help she was looking for. And we are glad that our number can be found on the Internet.

One couple we met up with at church last year said they knew they were moving to Germany on assignment and they wanted to find out more about the area. Somehow they found this blog "Karn Kronicles". They told us they really appreciated being able to read about what it was like here. Go figure. We still don't know how they found the blog or how one can locate our phone number via the Internet - but it is a good thing.

Several months ago we received a phone call from a very distressed young woman needing to talk. I, Sister Karn, spoke with her for about an hour. She was very discouraged. She only gave me her first name and told me she lived quite a distance away, outside our mission. She had been investigating the Church but felt that she was a bad person and that she didn't feel confident on what to do next. I basically listened and encouraged her. She said she knew I was a missionary and that she found our number on the Internet! It was one of those experiences that just leaves you wondering if that little conversation was helpful and/or did that just really happen?

Since we still have our Utah phone number we still get some sales/solicitation calls at times and we used to get calls for substitutes at the Ogden Temple where we used to work. It was fun to tell them where they had called. It is nice to be able to receive and make calls from Europe with low costs via the Internet.

So, since there is some good on the Internet here again is another advertisement for the basic information about the church: http://mormon.org
Look it up. Maybe you will learn something.

Have a super week! We have a busy one starting tomorrow with lots of events. It will be fun for us.

Elder and Sister Karn