(This is the last Karen's Korner for a week as I will be away from my computer.)

Our community is saddened at the loss of life of Bailey Devries, 22, who was killed on Tuesday afternoon in a car accident.

To know Bailey, was to love her. She came from a less-than-the best background. But something special happened to her in her middle years. She became part of CHICKS, a Christian support group of local gals in their teens. Her leaders helped her to hear about the love of Jesus for her and her friends. She latched on to Jesus and His Love and Saving Grace.

It was more than a passing fad. She lived it in every part of her life. College looked like an impossibility financially for her. So at the end of her junior year of high school, she joined the Iowa National Guard; spent six months in training, with a break between, before she was deployed to Afghanistan - serving there for a year!

Her military service help to sponsor her college quest at Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque. Any spare time, she invested in others:  Bible studies, support of younger gals in their youth groups, volunteering or working at summer church camps, and just talking to others about her excitement in being one of His Kids!

When her college posted on Wednesday that she had been killed, they also posted her words of what Jesus meant to her. Plus they posted a Bible verse that tells what Bailey and all of us are possessors of what it means to have Him in our lives:

"And now, dear brothers (and sisters!), I want you to know what happens to a Christian

when he (she) dies so that when it happens,

you will not be full of sorrow,

as those are who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and then came back to life again,

we can also believe that when Jesus returns,

God will bring back with Him all the Christians who have died."

~ 1 Thessalonians 4:13: 14 LAB

**