jan blog

As our family prepares to move to South Asia in a few weeks, we have so much to look back on and be reminded just how faithful our Lord is. Friends and family have blessed us with jobs, cars, a home, meals, and countless other things. Our time back in the states has been productive and we’ve made some sweet memories. Our girls had been begging to see snow for about a year and we were able to take a road trip up the East Coast and go snow tubing. We also got to visit our nephew in Annapolis so the girls could see where there cousin is in school. We had a blast!

Jacob has made countless trips to and from Atlanta working on visa’s for the family.   By God’s grace, we received Jacob’s business visa this week, and hopefully by the end of today, the rest of the families visas will be in hand. We are looking forward to working within the 10/40 window.  If you are not familiar with the 10/40 window, it is an area between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude.  Many of the worlds unreached people groups lie within this geographical area.

We are headed to an area that is below 5% Christian.  In November, we travelled to this area and visited several cities and met with local pastors.  One thing that is exciting to us is that we, or anyone going to do ministry, are not starting from scratch, but we are all following God into something that He has already started.  We had a great experience seeing what God is already doing through some of His pastors over there, local people following God and doing what they can through His power to make a difference in the lives of orphans and widows and the disadvantaged.

We also were able to meet up with another American family doing some pretty cool things with the people in need there and we look forward to helping them out also, in the future.  As of right now, Americans are not allowed to legally open an orphanage.  We are excited about working alongside some existing orphanages run by locals, and helping however we can by assisting them in any capacity possible.

Through our training in the past, it was constantly pushed that we, as foreigners, should do everything we can to empower the locals.  To encourage and assist them to be everything God desires them to be.  Our vision and desire is to aid and assist locals, through education, discipleship, encouragement, meeting physical needs, and helping people learn how to make a living.  Throughout all of this,  sharing the hope and love of a Savior who loves them, who desires to forgive them and restore them into an intimate relationship with Himself.

During our visit we were introduced to a few individuals in the medical and dental professions who we will potentially  partner with to do medical/dental camps.  These camps will be held in unreached villages as a way to share the Gospel and plant churches.  The area which we will be going has many needs, and we know we are not the solution.  People cannot change a country, but we have an almighty Creator God who can change a lives, communities, and nations.

As we prepare to move to the other side of the world we ask that you keep our family and 1 Path in your prayers.  Pray specifically for our health, wisdom as we begin to immerse ourselves into a new culture, and that our hearts will be prepared as we take this next step in obedience to where God is leading. Without your prayers and support, none of this would be possible.

Maddie and Myra enjoying the snow!

Josh and the girls and the Naval Academy.

A widow and her 2 daughters who lived in one of the villages we hope to work with.

A widow who was grateful to have visitors. She is a grandmother raising her 7 grandchildren.

A local pastor and his wife who run a children’s home. We are excited about partnering with them.

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A quick recap of the past 5 months

     So it’s been a little while since our last blog and we want to apologize.  We wrote our last blog one month in to our move down here to Honduras, but now,  at the end of our fifth month, we write our follow up.  There’s been lots of reasons why we haven’t updated our blog, but only updated our facebook page, www.facebook.com/1step1day1mission, recently.  Internet goes out here a lot, I mean a lot!, our computer crashed, we get busy, we get tired, and yes, sometimes we even get lazy.  So we apologize to all of our supporters and prayer partners out there for not updating more often than we have. 

 

     We want to give you a recap of the last couple of months, but will do that over this week and next on 2 different blogs.  We have had lots a good things happen over that time, some struggles also, some prayers answered and some that haven’t been,…yet.  We have learned a lot, and still need to learn a lot more.

 

      We have had periods of health, and some of injuries and sickness.  But we are doing great, resting in God’s promises and His protection each day.  We stand amazed most days at the beauty of God’s creation here and how fortunate and humbled we are to be able to take part of what He is doing here.

      At last we wrote, we were staying at the Furrow’s house, who run the orphanage.  We were there for the first two months or so living on the side of their house where their parents stay when they are in country.  Once their parents came to visit, it was time for us to head out, and since our place was not finished yet, we made a quick move down to the volunteer house where short-term teams usually stay.  We were there for about 2 weeks with our kids and with Cynthia’s parent there for a couple of days. 

Once we got the floors poured in our place and metal bars on our windows, we quickly made the move up to our casa.  Our first night, we didn’t even have a toilet functional yet, but we were that excited to get in, that we went ahead and jumped on the opportunity.  Over the next month we were able to finish all the water, doors, screens over the windows, etc.  It was a challenging, but fun process that definitely made our family closer, as we weren’t used to living together in such small areas.  It was a lot of fun to be able to help the Honduran’s here with the construction and hand-mixing all the concrete for the floors and the porch. 

 

       The kids started going to the village school 2 mornings a week, which they love, and that has given me a unique opportunity to meet and hang out with all the kids form the village.  When they are not at the village school, Cynthia has been busy leading them through homeschool.  She would probably say it is still a work in progress, but I think she is doing awesome.  The kids are learning, and most of the time there aren’t any tears or fighting. 

    

 

 Cynthia has also been helping lead Kinder, which is a preschool class on Tuesday and Thursday morning for all the preschool age kids here on the property.  We have three orphan preschoolers, but a total of 7 preschool age kids here including all the volunteer families.  She has been having a lot of fun using her work and college experiences over the past couple of years with the kids.  Several of the orphaned have some delays, which of course is expected from their backgrounds, but already she is seeing improvements in their communication and behavior. 

 

     We started an afternoon “school” here at the orphanage for all the neighboring village elementary aged kids on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.  That has been real exciting have 50-55 kids here on our property that we get to teach and share with.  One of the most exciting things for me is getting to lead the bible class on Tuesday afternoons.  We mix in some worship music, some discussion together, of course I have a lot of help from my translator Doris, and read scripture about our amazing Savior, Jesus!

 

     Cynthia’s sister, brother, and parents have all made it down at different times and they have all helped us in our transition a lot.  Our kids have loved seeing people from the states come down to visit! 

 

     We have also been able as a family to go down to the mission hospital in Rio Viejo on Mondays to assist locals with their dental needs, mainly taking teeth out so far, but hopefully soon after getting some more supplies, we will be able to do fillings also.

 

     We have also learned a lot from God through living here, through prayer time and reading His Word daily.  I had started working through the New testament this year and its amazing how often through Paul’s, Peter’s, and John’s letters how they continually encourage us to love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, to be gracious towards each other, to desire to serve each other, to be forgiving towards each other.  At first when I’m reading it’s like alright I get it, lets move on to something else, but once you try to live it out, you realize it is a lot more difficult than you think.  And when you are living in a community with different people from different backgrounds and different ages, you start to realize how important it is to be reminded about how we treat each other.  Sharing each others burdens, forgiving, working so that you don’t become a burden to others, LOVING each other are very important not just for your relationships, but for bringing God glory in the way we live when outsiders look at us. 

 

      The one thing that we keep hearing over and over is keeping our eyes fixed upon Jesus.  In the good times, praising Him and thanking Him, and in the sickness, the struggles and the frustrations, seeking Him and His guidance.  Because if our eyes aren’t focused on Him, than it is easy to get off course, easier for those frustrations to grow and make us bitter, make us angry, but if our eyes are always on Him, than no matter good or bad, it helps us to stay on the course, on the path He has led us to. 

 

     We look forward to updating ya’ll some more next week with some of the things going on. 

Thanks so much for your support and your prayers!
God bless

-Bakers

Three weeks in!

   

     It has been a blessed 21 days so far in the mountains of Honduras with our family. There have been a lot of surprises so far, some great ones, and some not so good ones. We discovered that evidently scorpions really like Maddie, as she has been stung twice so far. Fortunately the scorpions here aren’t deadly, just carry a painful sting. Funny though is that after the first hysterical fit, and rightly so, the second bite happened and she walked into our room, woke us up and said I think I got stung again by a scorpion, will you come kill it. So we marched in at 3 in the morning, found the scorpion in the sheets next to Myra, and squashed it.

    We miss our friends and our families very much. We also miss a/c a lot :). I miss 5 guys burgers and fries, Panini Pete’s, and hash browns from waffle house. Our kids miss their friends, candy, and chik-fil-a. But saying all that, we are so grateful to God that the transition has gone amazingly well. All these things didn’t catch us by surprise. Of course our friends and family would be missed, it happened when we moved from Birmingham to Columbus, and from Columbus to Fairhope, but through each move, God always provided for us through enduring friendships and with new friendships. Friends are never replaced, but God adds new friends to the fold which we have always been grateful for. Of course, if you are friends with me on Facebook, you would know I love to eat good food and some of my favorites I definitely miss.  That is not to say food here isn’t delicious, it definitely has been and we are surrounded with some great Honduran cooks!

     As we have begun this journey, the biggest thing we have held onto is Gods promises. He doesn’t promise us that change is going to be easy, that everything will be successful and there will never be any hiccups along the road. –(James 1:2, 3 HCSB) Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials,  knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. —  Just ask John the Baptist how his life turned out after leading the way for Jesus. Or ask Peter, Paul, and Stephen and many others how following God worked out for them. But they continued to hold tight to His promises, and they knew that God would not turn from them, and He would carry them through everything. They knew that the glory of Jesus was worth everything!–(Isaiah 43:2 HCSB) I will be with you when you pass through the waters, and [when you pass] through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. You will not be scorched when you walk through the fire, and the flame will not burn you. –(Deuteronomy 31:6, 8 HCSB) Be strong and courageous; don’t be terrified or afraid of them. For it is the Lord your God who goes with you; He will not leave you or forsake you.”… The Lord is the One who will go before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.” –Now, we aren’t implying that what we are doing is anything compared to them, just using their example of trusting in Christ through hardships. We have felt God’s love through everything, through fun times and through the challenging times. We have felt His presence and have not doubted Gods plan for us.

     The kids have had fun seeing us more often than when we were back in the states. They have enjoyed the kids here at the orphanage and the local kids in the village.

There are two other volunteer families here that 3 young children ages 2,2,and 1 and they have loved playing with them. If you know my Maddieboo, you know that the first thing she wants to do is pick up every young child and carry them around, and she has gotten plenty of that.

     It’s been great being accepted by everyone here from the Americans to the Honduran families. The Honduran workers try their best to communicate with us, but usually it ends with everyone laughing at each other. They try their best to teach us the language, but we must try harder to learn their language, after all, we are here on their turf, it’s our duty to learn their language and culture as best as we can. They have already taught us so much, how to take care of their farm animals, (sheep, cows, pigs, chickens) how to use the cow milk to make yogurt and cheese, how to make peanut butter etc. we will try to do a self-sustainability blog in the future to show some of the things we at GiveHope2Kids orphanage are doing to try and not rely on money from the US and try to do everything we can here to produce food and materials here. Also learning how to do quickbooks and PayPal has gone well. As we have said before, our main goal is to be here for 2 years and help out wherever we can, show the love of Christ everyday, and learn everything we can about running an orphanage. Don’t know  how much help we have been, or if we have truly shown the love of Christ to those we meet everyday, but we have definitely learned a lot in these 3 quick weeks.

     The coolest thing of all though, is at several different times we have been able to stand back and just watch the kids interact with each other and with the volunteers and see the joy they have, a joy that probably wasn’t there 2 years ago before they came. They now they are loved, they are provided for with clothes, education, food, and fun things to do, but most importantly they have been taught about our Savior Jesus, the only true hope there is. 

     –(Romans 15:13 HCSB) Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We are looking forward to having 5 more kids in the next week or two and we are excited to see how God works in there lives and produces an everlasting HOPE. 

It’s finally time!

The Day is Finally here,

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last update, and boy has it been busy.  With nine months to plan the move, you would have thought the final days would have been a little easier.  Difficult and challenging as it has been, we have been overwhelmed with our friends, our families, and our Church, COTES.TV, supporting us, walking through everything with us.  The support we have received has been amazing, something we would have never thought we would have gotten, and definitely don’t deserve.

Through everything, it has been very easy to see God walking with us through it all, maybe even sometimes carrying us through it, but never leaving us alone.  We have sold just about everything, our cars, our toys, clothes, furniture, my beloved grills and smoker!  And through it all, it hasn’t been as challenging as we thought it would be, it has actually been quite freeing.  Now, I’m not here telling everyone they should sell all the fun stuff, heck, we would love to borrow it when we come back on our return trips.  But for us at this time, it was the right thing to do.  Hopefully in the next month or so, we will be selling our house also, God willing.

One of the most amazing things over the past 9 months has been seeing our kids hearts fall in love with Honduras and the kids at GiveHope2Kids.  At first, they both weren’t too excited about the move, and understandably so, but since they were able to go and experience and see the orphanage, they have been pumped about getting back.  As we were boarding the plane in Atlanta, my daughter found out Jason at the orphanage was going to go and get them 2 chicks, and a huge smile broke out over her beautiful face.

The most difficult thing over the past couple of weeks is the relationships.  So often we take for granted our friends and families, but its been incredibly hard saying goodbye, even though its not a goodbye forever.  Though we know they are with us, join us on the team as we follow God to Honduras, it is still hard knowing we cant just pop in and say hello, or go to hang out whenever.  Thankfully with technology, we will still be able to stay in touch.  Feel free to join us on skype at audent2001, or download viber app on your smart phone and we can still talk and text for free over wifi.

Another hard thing is not being able to join our local church family at COTES.TV.  we will miss serving alongside so many.  We will miss  the awesome worship through music, teaching, serving, etc we have experienced over the past 5 years.

However, through all that, we are all incredibly excited to begin this new adventure, following alongside God in His mission in a new place for us.  Overwhelmed that we would get to work alongside such an amazing Savior, filled with a powerful Holy Spirit and comforted by Our ABBA Father, we head out, knowing we are not alone!  We think we know what this next year may look like, however, God truthfully only knows how everything will play out.  Looking forward to learning, following, serving, ministering, giving and worshipping an amazing almighty God.  Join our team and we serve in Honduras!

Thanks for all the support.  We love ya’ll and God bless

The Bakers

An update on whats been going on in the past month

We have had Many great things happen since we posted our last blog.   We were able to enjoy Christmas and New Years in Columbus with our families and even had a chance to go on an anniversary trip! Thank you for your interest in what God is doing in our life’s. As always we are grateful for your support and your prayers, without which, this whole transition and move would be much more difficult.

Here are some of what’s been going on in our life:

We celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! *Jacob and I are attending a missions class (Perspectives on the world Christian movement) at Globe international in Pensacola,to learn more about sharing the gospel to All people groups across all nations. * We continue trying to figure out the best materials to take to Honduras for homeschooling our girls. * AIM (assistance in missions) http://www.aimconnects.org has taken us on to help us raise support. * We have learned that deodorant costs around 8.00 in Honduras and there is no such thing as contact lens solution. * We have started collecting toiletries to take over to Honduras with us 🙂 * We have attempted to make Honduran food (tres leche cake, balleadas, puposas, and fresh salsa).  We think we were successful! * The girls have started taking guitar and piano lessons. * Missionary friends in Honduras have helped us figure out how to ship things over by way of a cargo ship out of New Orleans. *  Learned that we need a rice cooker.  I didn’t know rice cookers existed. *  Researched how to line dry clothes. * All of us now have rain boots and Keens, which are nice to have in the Jungle. * Bought plane tickets to go down to Honduras at the end of February and take the kids with us for the first time. I’m sure I will think of many more things I could have written, but that’s all for now.

Please join us in prayer for the following needs:

*Selling our home in Fairhope. *Financial Support *Our family will quickly learn Spanish and adapt peacefully to the culture. *Educating our own children. *Pray that God will use us in a mighty way to show His love as we serve the people of Urraco and the children of Give Hope 2 Kids. *Pray that we always keep God’s glory and prase first and forefront in our ministry and that everything thing we would do for others comes from that. * Blessings, Cynthia and Jacob