Spiritual Development

Originally educated as a music teacher, Karen has used her talents as a singer and songwriter. Even as she and her husband traveled extensively through his career and also raised a family, she continued enjoying music through volunteering and entertaining.

In 1976, five years after marriage, Dr. Taylor and her husband sailed, their own 32′ sailboat from Los Angeles to Hilo, Hawaii. Such love for radical adventures was also exercised when the couple, in 2004, embarked on a mission trip to the isiXhosa tribes who reside in the Transkei of South Africa. Karen has also done mission projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Jericho, Palestine.

As a Precepts Bible study leader, Karen became fascinated with ancient history and the Scriptural languages of Hebrew and Greek. At the age of 58, she entered seminary and earned both a Masters in Biblical Studies and a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formational Counseling. Karen has also interned as a Hospice Chaplain and is a licensed minister.

Dr. Taylor’s experiential background has allowed her to glean from the trials of life that qualify her as an astute mentor. The most pragmatic challenge has been caring for her 68-year-old husband (to whom she’s been married for 42 years), who became symptomatic in 1998 and was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2005. He is now placed in a nursing home and is in the last stages of AD.

“For many years I was a caregiver to my husband who was diagnosed with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.  The last five years of his (and our) enduring the illness required that he be placed in a nursing home. Even then, though, the care of visiting, being anxious as to when the end would or would not come, and grieving in an anticipatory sense, didn’t end. 
 
During the 17 years my Dear was suffering, I chose, as my drug of choice, academia. Through it all I earned a Master’s in Science in New Testament Biblical Studies, a Doctor of Ministry in Formational Counseling, and then a Master’s in Counseling. When Mick did die, December of 2014, I found myself a highly educated woman who was totally dependent upon the Lord but still very broken physically and emotionally from the years of stress and grief on top of the new bereavement of what is known as “gone.”  How can someone I have loved so dearly be just gone—no more on earth? Oh, I knew Mick was in heaven, eternally, and that I would see him again, but the gone-ness was something my heart could not wrap itself around. It took me a good long year to recover past the ulcer I developed and the depression, which was actually the process of grief.
 
Prayer, mindfulness, and walking day by day—sometimes moment by moment—with the Lord brought about slow recovery.  I knew it was all in the Lord’s timing.  On the other hand, I was anxious to get on with my new life.  Since I’m only 69, there is still, Lord willing, decades in my future.  But healing takes time and I learned more patience and forbearance, especially for myself.
 
Another “drug of choice” that I consumed during those long years, and one that also adds to the colors that will be set on the blank canvas of life before me, was short- term missions. Meeting Anastasia Hansel in the midst of my husband’s and my Alzheimer’s journey, became a new gem set into our story.  She too, at the time, was walking the path of a caregiver to her husband, Tim Hansel, who was very ill.  And, like me, she too was weary from the trek and was using academia as her sanity filler. We connected.  Having just earned my D.Min. I was able to help Anastasia with the mechanics of writing academic papers while she, in turn, introduced me to missions. After one trip to the Congo with Anastasia, I was hooked and became a Global Woman in Leadership—even though I had no idea what I was doing.
 
Ah, as I found out, therein lies the key and Anastasia and I had already been primed. In caregiving there is not much “know how.” The Lord calls us to this job and “there it is.” This is also true with short-term missions—the call and then the going and then the doing of whatever is set before one.
 
The first journey, for me, was to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The words Democratic and Republic conjure up images of freedom and justice.  Ha! The Congo brings new meaning of turmoil, torture, and tedium to those concepts.
 
My most memorable experience in the Congo was meeting a woman who had suffered rape warfare—but only after seeing her husband and sons murdered before her eyes and then having her legs broken. After the rape, the gang left her with their particular signature farewell; a rifle jammed up into her innards. How this woman lived through this is a wonder.  But she did and was brought to Heal Africa for surgeries to repair the fistulas that were a result of her ordeal.
 
I met this large dark skinned beauty-of-soul, lady in her tiny home within a city of refuge where other women who had suffered some of the same wounds and experiences via rape warfare. She sat and told us her story, through a translator. Having just completed my D. Min, I thought I could bring her some relief from her mental suffering by merely applying some of the techniques I had learned that help persons to become present before the Lord. 
 
I asked her to close her eyes and picture, in her sanctified imagination, a safe place, a place of beauty, and a place where she could be quiet and never be touched by evil.  Oh, she tried and tried. Then tears made streams below the eyes of her dusty, dark face. She opened her eyes and said, “There is nowhere safe.” And I prayed, “OK, Holy Spirit, now what do I do.” And I heard, “Just embrace her with the arms of Jesus. “And so I did.  Like a mother I held her in my arms as she wept torrents of torment onto my shoulder. I whispered in her ear, “Jesus loves you so much and He is here with you.” She cried even more.
 
Finally, after a long period of time, the weeping subsided. She wiped her eyes and an enormous smile appeared—and then laughter.  Getting up, with lightness in her spirit, she said, “Take a picture of me now.” The Lord had healed her soul.

 
My second mission trip was to Jericho, in West Palestine.  I felt no fear.  I had planned to merely go see Tass Saada, author of “Once an Arafat Man,” in order to inquire about what we, Global Women in Leadership, could bring to the people of his city. So happens (Ha Ha! – nothing “so happens with the Lord”) that a team was coming from America at the same time I was going to visit.  They were bringing with them wheelchairs donated by Joni Erickson Tada’s organization “Wheelchair for the World.” Their goal was to set up a clinic for the disabled in Jericho and supply simple medical treatment and, most importantly, customized devices to help the crippled become mobile.
 
There were nurses for triage, persons to entertain the children during the long wait times, another group putting together “care packages” for the adults and the kiddos, yet another team that put together wooden tricycles that could be controlled by hand and a most important team of Occupational and physical therapist that took apart and customized wheelchairs and walkers for the variety of disablements that came to the clinic.
 
Of course, Jericho is a mostly Muslim town. Particularly the children came in with frightened looks on their faces.  It was not blatantly expressed but it was known that we were followers of Christ.  (By the way, if ever asked, we were to say that we were “Followers of Christ” rather than Christians. This is much more respected than the word “Christian” — the ones who attacked Muslims in the Name of Christ – a la the Crusades of old.  Yes, that is still remembered with horror in the Holy Land.) By the time our clients left, which was often several hours after they arrived, they walked and/or rode out with smiles of joy and hearts of gratitude.
 
Tass’ goal is towards the reconciliation of Christians, Muslims, and Jews.  Our mission trip spoke volumes into that goal.
 

 
Through Bear Valley Church in Lakewood, Colorado, I have also gone to Puerto Rico with Vision Puerto Rico, led by Howard and Connie Waller.  Leading women conferences became an outreach that fed the hearts of the Latinos of that country—not only on the mainland but also on the island of Vieques. Who we are “in Christ” from Ephesians 1 and the freedom that has been set before us was highlighted by the lightness and joy we all enjoyed under and around the parachute. Laughter abounded along with special time for anointing our attendees and praying blessings over them.
 
Most recently I had the opportunity to return to the Philippines where I also served as a short-term missionary in 2014.  Primarily and again through Bear Valley Church, our assignment was to minister to the Aeta tribe known as the Mountain people. These small, dark skinned, and curly haired treasures are indigenes to the Philippines being of Aboriginal descent connected to the Aborigines of Australia and from the time when Australia and the Philippines were one land mass. They live up in the mountains of Luzon, the Philippines largest of over 7000 islands, about 4 hours above Manila. 
 
In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted and covered the surrounding area with several feet of ash and lava. This mountain was in the area where the Aeta live and many were sickened or killed from the eruption, plus their major crop of bananas was wiped out. 
 
We, at Bear Valley Church, were informed about the Aeta through Dante and Zanaida deGuzman and their daughter, Danzana. Dante’s sister had established a school for the Aeta in a town near Pinatubo.  When the volcano exploded the school was blanketed with 12’ of ash.  And there it lay until Danzena had a vision of it being dug out and established as Immanuel Bible School for the training of Aeta Pastors. 
 
This school has been in operation for several years and over 50 pastors have been trained and sent back to the Aeta villages spread over the hills below Mount Pinatubo.  Bear Valley and other supporters give $15 a month to each pastor to help them with incidentals.  We have sent money to build churches and also bought goats with which the people can establish businesses and bought Caribou and carts to help the natives so they don’t have to walk for hours in order to bring their bananas to villages to trade for rice. 
 
Once a year we have a Pastor’s Conference for the pastors and their families.  After the conference, the BVC team rides jeeps for hours, through the ash and dust covered lands and river beds, in order to visit the villages, dedicate churches that have been newly built, and bless the families with care packages and special goodies for the children.  This year we also brought to the people a medical clinic.
 
I have been to the Philippines once before and knew that the jet-lag wipes me out.  Therefore, this year, I decided to go a couple of weeks early in order to recover.  I was sent to a small island called Cameguin where a Christian resort, Sea and Sun, was established 15 years ago for retreats and such.  Cameguin is a beautiful and tropical island. Staying at Sea and Sun was not much of the typical missionary suffering that one could think about when one thinks of missions.  Besides resting, I was also put to work speaking at a Sunday Service and also counseling several people connected with Sea and Sun.
 
One of Sea and Sun’s missions is to the young people of the island.  Most of them have been raised in extremely dysfunctional families and have no model for good mothering, fathering, and walking as Disciples of Christ.  The owner’s of Sea and Sun, Wenche and Edith, have taken many of these teens under their wings and given them not only jobs at the resort but also trained them in worship, prayer, the Word of God, discipleship, leadership, and continually pay for education through college for these blessed children.  Wenche and Edith do insist upon “no “boyfriends or girlfriends”” until after college” in order to be in the program (hence eliminating pregnancy before marriage or the finishing of school). Counseling some of these children and some of the adults seeking guidance was my joy.
 
In Manila, before the Bear Valley team arrived, I also had the honor of speaking to some church groups.  One night, after speaking, the Pastor asked if I would pray for those who wanted prayer.  “Of course,” I said. As dozens of individuals came forward the Lord spoke to me and said, “Pray for the Pastor first.”  So I did, anointing him and praying blessings over him.  As I prayed the power of the Holy Spirit came upon the pastor and he went down to the floor under the Presence. Such was the intensity of the Holy Spirit’s involvement.  Then I anointed and blessed each individual with specific words that seemed dropped into my own mind. Again many went down in the Spirit, others cried and were release from emotional and physical pain.  It was a monumental moment for me. 
 
Having come to the Lord through the Charismatic Movement (Jesus Movement) of the 70’s and having attended many Full Gospel Churches, I had been exposed to such Holy Spirit power but have seen little of it in our most recent Church history.  What a joy to see and experience the exquisiteness of God’s power of again.  It was this power that so attracted the Romans to the Christians in the first century.  And it can still be a part of our Christian life today.  But more and more we only see it in Third World, or what are known as “majority countries.” I know it will return to America when revival burns, once again, through our nation.
 
Now in my days of a blank canvas before the rest of my life, I will live in the Denver area, near my daughter and her husband and oldest son and his wife and our two grandchildren, in the late spring and summer when the snow and ice and sold temperatures are gone.  In the summer I winter-bird to Southern California and live near the beach in the beauty of the Pacific Ocean and sand an sun and near our son and his wife and three children. I suspect I will continue short-term missions but that is God’s call, I’m listening”

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In 2011 Karen was crowned Ms. Colorado Senior America 2011 and was first runner up at National Ms. Senior America. Clearly, Dr. Taylor is sadly, and yet excitedly, on the verge of a new life backed by years of unique proficiencies. As indicated by authoring a book, Astonishing Treasure in a Dark Forest, written for caregivers, Karen’s heart goes out to the ones who lift up the wings of those who are terminally ill. She longs to embolden them and listen to their stories of their journey as carers.

Dr. Taylor, who lives in Denver, Colorado, values spending time with her 3 wonderful children and 5 exquisite grandchildren. A contemplative, she most enjoys sitting in the middle of a forest savoring the quiet, the beauty, and the Presence of God or, as happened most recently, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee soaking up the sights that Jesus also saw over 2000 years ago.