Hey everyone! It has been a long time since Ive posted and I have very exciting news.... I got my call to Ukraine Donetsk, Russian speaking! Everyone knows this already, but I had to officially post it. I couldnt ask for a more perfect place for me, I am ready for the challenge of the language, and Im ready to fight the cold weather as well. At the same time the people are in a state where they are ready for the gospel. My Mission President emailed me and he said that Ukraine has been prepared for the gospel. I know there are people that I have been fore-ordained to find and teach to. I hear that the mission includes a lot of community service opportunities. I look forward to serving in the orphanages, those poor babies never get held. I cant believe how fast time is flying I received my call over a month ago, before I know I will be saying goodbye to everyone entering in to the MTC.
Im still working full time at Itok, Seth is starting here in about a week, it will be fun to work with him again. He'll be replacing me on this team, I love my co-workers.
And of course right before the mission, I all of a sudden have a lot of dating opportunities, but this doesnt hold me back, just makes life more fun.
I plan on using this blog on my mission, it will be a happening site once Im out in the field. love you all.........Kerns
Helloo!! Its been quite a while! Im sure you are all having a Karen famine. :) Life is just too crazy to keep up with this blog, but my sister has convinced me to post my missionary pics so here I am.
Hello fans...
So hello again everyone.. now that Im home and well traveled its about time I updated this blog. Im sure you all wondered what the in the world I have been up to. Well as most of you know, I decided to go out to Georgia to sell pest control. This is something that I had been planning on for months, but strangely a few days before I was going to fly out I had all of these doubts. I pushed those aside and went out anyways thinking if I forced myself it would feel right eventually. But you cant do summer sales on that kind of an attitude. You have to give your all, or you cant do it at all. I was seeing an end coming quickly after the first day, so I figured its better to back out now before I get invested in the team. Anyways Im home now, but I had a really really nice week with Coleen, Seth and Ethan. They are such a happy, loving family. I have a greater respect for both of them and what they do. Seth is an extremely hard worker, and Coleen is a loving selfless mother. I was able to expereince both of their roles out there. Coleen and I hit the pool a lot, we all played back alley, ( I told ya'll DONT mess with me :) ) and I babysat Ethan while Coleen sold (she still hasn't lost her mad sales skills) , and enjoyed catching up with Coleen and Seth, Im going to miss them.
So here I am, jobless.......... I have applied at Ruthanne and Coleen's old job, Im waiting to hear back. I really need to get employed asap. Because of my decision to stay home I accepted that I will have to delay my mish a bit to earn enough money, thats ok, Ill suffer the consequences.
Its really good to be back with family and friends. I have a nice summer ahead of me. Unfortunately this blog wont be as interesting, so Im sorry about those lowlife stalkers out there that thrive off of my posts... Maybe you are now forced to go get your own life. Ill keep you up to date on the job search.. love you all!
Hey internet is back up, thanks for all your comments and emails! I think I have a better idea of what missionaries are talking about when they say they live for mail and contact from their family. So the other day was capri, here are a couple pics.
Hey, I havent been able to post very easily the last week or so because my wireless internet is unpredictable, so Im using the hotels computer now. Ill try and post tomorrow some pics of what Ive been up to.
Yesterday we went to the Island of Capri off the coast of Napols. This is a really tiny island, that is lush green with steeping cliffs. I heard there was some great cliff jumping and hikes but we didnt realize how much traveling time it would take to get there and back so we didnt have much time on the island. We took a two hour train ride to Napels, then a hour and a half boat ride. The train ride was nice because we met some nice Italians, and it was nice to get out of the city and see some pretty green scenery, lots of beautiful vineyards. Then the boat ride was relaxing as we coasted across the Mediteranean. The Island was absolutely beautiful, even better than Hawaii!! We lounged on a really nice beach, and layed out while the water washed up on our feet.
All last year when I was working at that phone job, I had a picture of gorgeous beach in my cubicle that I would daydream about, it was my motivation. And yesterday there I was inside that picture Ive been dreaming about!
Today we are getting some last minute shopping done, and also seeing the Mouth of Truth, (supposedly bites your hand off if you lie)... then we are going to an Italian opera tonight! wahoo Im very excited. then tomorrow we are going to Pompeii and Naples.. Cant wait to see all of you. There has been some drama with one of the girls, and she is just flipping out at everyone, Im very ready to ecsape the drama, but I know these last few days will be great.
Love,Karen
Ciao. Yesterday only Emily and I made it out of the hotel because Shell is in Germany and Meg is sick, so I didn't want to see anything major or else the other girls would feel left out. So Emily and I started navigating around, and it actually ended up being one of my favorite days. First I thought it would be neat to go see the Jewish ghetto. This is where the pope banished the Jews to a 3 block radius, and they were forced to live there for 300 years in this walled ghetto. Because the Jews couldn't expand horizontally they built vertical additions to their houses which created dark and narrow streets full of filth. The Roman ghetto was poverty stricken. The pope banished them to this undesirable part of the city because it was next to the Tiber river which flooded regularly.
A view from Capitoline hill overlooking the arch of Titus, and the ruins.
Legendary She-wolf statue feeding the future founders of Rome.
Original Marcus Aurelius statue
Bon apetit!
This statue must have bee huge at one point. It is of Constantine
Hey Fam, I know I have so many faithful readers that have been dying for my next post, so Im sorry about the delay. :) jk.. We have hit a few ruff patches the last couple of days, but I still have been enjoying myself.
Yesterday we went to Vatican City!! I was saving this fun day for later and I've been so excited. We saw the Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums. We crossed over into the smallest country in the world ( Vatican ) and had a tour guide take us through the heart of the Catholic Church. I had read a book about Michelangelo on the metro towards Vatican so I was so excited to see his finest pieces of art and sculpture. I was able to see the beautiful ceiling of Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo painted 500 years ago. It took him 4 years to complete, and it was really beautiful. It shows scenes from the creation, (most famous one is The Creation of Adam, where God touches Adams finger), and then it leads you through scenes in the bible towards his famous Last Judgment which takes up the entire back wall of the chapel. In this scene there is Christ in the center judging, while angels are pulling people up to heaven, and demons pulling people down to hell. Michelangelo drew himself into the painting, (and those who he hated he drew them burning in hell).
Then we saw my all time favorite work of art: The Pieta by Michelangelo. This is the sculpture that shows Mary holding Christ after he was taken off the cross. It almost brought me to tears, because there is so much emotion expressed. Christ's limp body in Mary's arms.
There are no words to express how breathtaking and gigantic St Peter's basilica was. My camera can't come close to capturing the immense beauty. We entered at perfect timing because there was some religious service going on and the organs were bellowing through the basilica. It was an amazing experience. Tomorrow we are going back to the Vatican to get a better look at the museums because our tour guide was a blundering idiot. He didn't teach us anything. He would go up to a large sculpture and all he would say was "now here we have a significant piece of artwork". and thats it. He was trying to talk about a bronze sculpture of caesar and he said" you can note the bronzy.. bronze sculpture here". We were ticked, I could have given that tour better than he did, but it was still entertaining seeing him awkwardly try to pretend he knew what he was talking about. Ill post more of Vatican tomorrow.
Before the tour started the other day I was filling up my water bottle at a fountain and I slipped and landed on my back. My friends said within a split second I was suddenly on the ground. Somehow I banged my shin on the way down and the bone was showing. No blood was coming out just a white bone, it started swelling badly, the picture above shows how much it was sticking out. I think Ill only show the profile shot of the leg. My other foot got a bad cut, but I didn't think anyone would appreciate looking at that. Not only did I fall, but I fell in muddy water. I was pretty ticked, but I tried not to let it effect our day, although I was limping around the tour.
Shelley and I bowing in front of where the emperor's throne used to sit in the throne room. 
This was an open courtyard in the middle of Domitian's palace. the ring at the end of the courtyard was his personal mini arena where he would watch gladiators fight. The semi circle structure in the left of the picture was his personal booth where only he and his wife would sit to watch the game. The rest of the spectators would sit around the back of the courtyard. 
This was Augustus' personal room. The mosaics on the walls are still preserved! Only a few tourists could come in this room at a time, it was just recently opened up to the public last year.
Another view of palatine hill. This entire picture is still not as big as the mansion was, it literally covered acres.
This tree on the hill was actually a man made island that was surrounded by water. Domitian wanted to have a island in the middle of his house to bask on.
Here is a statue of Hermes which was found in Mussolini's house. Mussolini had a summer house built on palatine hill in the 20th century, and now it is used as a museum.
The palatine hill is where Rome has it's origins. According to Roman mythology this is where Romulus and Remus the twin brothers were found by the she-wolf and taken care of by it. Romulus and Remus end of getting into a fight, and Romulus slays Remus and that's how Rome got it's name from Romulus.
I want to tell my Mom how much I love her. She is an amazing woman. When I think of the perfect woman that I aspire to be I look to her as my example. My mom has a heart of gold, she would give up anything to see others happy. She lives her life as a true christian, she is very Christlike. Her life is a complete act of service, she is a wonder woman to have sacrificed and given so much to raise eight of us into who we are. After being away and moved out more this year I have realized just how lucky I am to have her, and I know that I will continue to be awed at how much she did when I start my own family. She carries herself like a loving, woman of God. Her testimony is expressed by the way she lives her life.
Yesterday we got a 2 hour tour through the Colosseum and it was awesome. We had just watched Gladiator the night before to get us excited for it, so when we were inside we could just imagine the throngs of people shouting "maximus". The Colosseum was built by the emperor Vespasion for the people to enjoy, he died before it was built in 80 AD. It has been standing for almost 20 centuries, but it was only used for the first 4 centuries for the games. The Colosseum is so idolized, but it was really used for horrible purposes. Over 3,000 gladiators died in that arena, and 6000 animals. But that is what the crowd loved to see. It had a wooden floor, with sand over it. The purpose of the sand was to soak up the blood. (thats where we get the name 'arena' from, it means sand on the floor). The women would sit on the very top level for two reasons: they were lower class, and because the blood would spray on them if they were any lower!
Mamertime prison was really neat because this one celled prison was where the apostles Peter and Paul were imprisoned while in Rome preaching. We were in the cell where they had to sit and rot for who knows how long. My camera ran out of batteries once I got in there so I will have to post more later from my friends cameras, but you can see in the pic above of the front of the prison where it says apostoli paulo.. While down there shelley discovered a huge spider as big as her hand down a crack, thats when we booked it out of there.
Hey family, yesterday we went to see Circus Maximus which was a huge oval shaped stadium that Julius Caesar had built to hold games like chariot racing around 50 AD. In comparison to the colosseum which held 85,000 spectators, Circus Maximus held 300,000. Not much remains of it, except for the the ringed shaped arena, the steep hills where the spectators sat, and the starting gates where the chariots lined up (in the pic above). The ruins in the background of the ring was a imperial hill where caesar and other elite people sat to watch.
We saw a lot of underground Rome today, what it was really like 2000 years ago. At San Clemente there are three layers of churches. San Clemente is the best place in Rome to understand the city's archaeological evolution. You descend 60 feet through medieval and paleo-christian layers to the lowest level where followers of the ancient cult of Mithras met and performed rituals. The top level is of the pictures I took above, this church was built in the 12 century, the second level was built in the fourth century, and bottom level was a 1st century chruch. The early christians were persecuted in Rome because the dominating religion was Paganism. So the early christians had to meet in church houses(which is the bottom level) to hide from their persecutors. Then when Christianity overcame paganism thanks to the emperor who converted Rome to christianity the churches slowly evolved into what it was today. You can see the picture of the Christ and the lambs in the apse, I studied this picture in class, the 12 lambs represent the 12 apostles, and at the top is a hand representing the hand of God. Early christian churches had flat ceilings because they didn't have the archaeogical advancements back then to make domed ceilings. It's too bad we can't take any pictures down there, there is still artwork of frescoes, and the old chapel where the first christians met.