Carol Jean Berger Atkins Kerns.  She was proud of all of her names and her heritage. Carol was born to kind, wise, and hardworking Kermit Berger and creative, jovial Esther E. Berger in Minneapolis, MN, on May 1, 1942.  She had a fun childhood with older brother David and sisters Mary and Joni. She has been a quintessential sanguine since birth, desiring to make people feel seen and loved, which included inviting them to her pretty home, serving yummy food, and playing happy music. She wanted to throw a party for every event.

Carol was smart, creative and resourceful, an excellent seamstress, an award-winning public speaker and she excelled in sales in her early years.  Her eye for color and design was quite impressive: she differentiated between all the shades and hues of blue, green, pink, etc., and had names for them.  For instance, if you said navy blue when it was royal blue, she would educate you on the correct name.

Carol gave her life to Jesus at age 7 at a Billy Graham Crusade and grew to become "the perfect example of what a Christian woman should be," as a lifelong friend said recently.  As a child, she and her family began to attend the fledgling Bethany Church in Bloomington, MN, which went on to start Bethany Fellowship and Bethany Global University (BGU) that has sent 3000 missionaries out into the world.  She graduated from BGU in 1963 and married Pastor Kenneth Atkins, whom she met there. They had three children - Paul (wife Valbona), Catherine (husband Luis), and Daniel - who all loved Jesus and became missionaries.

After 25 years of marriage, sadly, Ken died at age 46 of a rare heart disease.  A few years later, Carol married Desmond Dean Kerns, a pastor and co-founder of Day Spring Greeting Cards. They had so much fun serving day in and day out together for the next 25 years before Dean went on to Glory in 2018.  Carol gained two more children through that marriage, Darren (wife Lori) and Karen (husband Andy).  Carol has 11 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren with one more arriving in Oct. 2024.

Carol was incapable of being negative or critical of others.  Although she went through much sorrow and loss (Paul and Dan also died young), she handled it with much grace and faith in God. One of her mantras was, "Choose peace and joy."  It was a conscious choice to let God handle the heavy parts of this life.

Heaven was one of her favorite subjects because she has so many loved ones there.  Her first husband, Ken, died and went to Heaven and came back to tell her about it and she never forgot that, even with her memory problems in the last decade. She would buy a box of ice cream cones at the grocery store and randomly pass them out to strangers and tell them,  "Heaven is really, really, really real.  I want to be sure you get there!"  Then, on Sept. 12, 2024, in her sleep, due to heart failure, Carol peacefully moved to that Heaven.  Oh, the colors she is seeing now and the cartwheels she is turning!

Memorial Service:  Anyone who spent more than 5 minutes with Carol would soon know that her three favorite things are "God, People and Color,"... and her artistic eye loved to count stripes, checks and polka dots. To honor her, feel free to wear bright colors, stripes, checks and dots to the memorial service which will be at Outreach Center Church (21181 Oak Ridge Rd., Siloam Springs, AR 72761) on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024.  We will have fellowship with an assortment of appetizers and snacks at 5:30 p.m. and the service will begin at 6:30 pm.  (In lieu of flowers one may give towards the Outreach Center Church Mission Fund.