This is just to let everyone know we are moving our blog to Blogspot. Here is the link: http://bakersfamilyblog.blogspot.com/ Have a good week! :-) [View Full Entry]

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I know it has been several months since I have updated the blog. My excuses: We have been very busy and we seem to be in an internet dead zone. We have internet for 5-10 minutes and then no internet for 5-10 minutes. Which, of course, makes updating the blog extremely slow. We have had a good couple of months. John's mother, brother (Andy), and his wife (Kathryn) came in December and were here for 2 and a half weeks. We took them to Arusha National Park, Lake Manyara National Park, The Snake Park, and Peponi Beach. We all had a [View Full Entry]

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I think one of the things people from home ask me the most is, "What is it like living in Africa?" So, I thought I would devote this blog article to trying to give everyone a glimpse into a day in Africa. Usually, my day here is very similar to a day in America. I get up, get dressed, rock the babies, and make some breakfast. John heads off to work and I spend the rest of the day cleaning, playing, and teaching Daniel and Abby. We live in a small "housing complex" with four other houses. We have a road [View Full Entry]

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Since moving to Arusha, Daniel has become fascinated with volcanoes. This is probably because, on a clear day, we can see two of them from our front yard. The closest one is Mt. Meru, which we see everywhere we go in town. In fact one of our favorite games to play while in the car is watching Mt. Meru. Mt. Kilimanjaro is the other volcano and is actually north of Moshi on the Tanzanian/Kenyan border. On a clear day we can see the tip of the mountain just to the side of Mt. Meru. We found out that if we went [View Full Entry]

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This morning we took Pat McIntosh to Kikatiti for worship. Pat has been in Arusha for two weeks teaching at the Andrew Connally School of Preaching. He is returning home and the end of this week. Kikatit is a small congregation that rents a classroom to use for worship. There were two children there this morning. I was able to use another classroom at the school to teach a children's Bible lesson. I am going to include some pictures of the congregation and the children's class. Daniel and Abby took their first trip to the market last week. John and I [View Full Entry]

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This last week we welcomed Mike Reese and his mother, Nita to Arusha. They are from West Virginia and Mike is here to teach one of the graduate short courses at the Andrew Connally School of Preaching. This Sunday our family took Mike and Nita to Monduli for worship. The church in Monduli is worshipping in a small rented room, but are in the process of building a new church building. This is the same building I wrote about in our blog "Digging in Monduli". Well, the building is now almost completely finished. It still needs the roof, windows, and a [View Full Entry]

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This last week, we took a small, family vacation to Peponi Beach. John had a week off in between the campaigns and starting a new quarter at the school, so we took advantage of the opportunity to have some family time. The beach is absolutely beautiful. Even better, there were only two other families at the beach, so we basically had the whole place to ourselves. We stayed in what they called a "family banda". It was a small, two room thatched hut. The floors were cement and the walls were half cement/half thatch. Daniel loved it and kept calling it [View Full Entry]

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One thing I have learned from our short time in Africa is not to take anything we have in America for granted--especially when it comes to worshipping!! Some things I took for granted are lights, sound systems, padded pews, classrooms, and a roof. Of course, none of these are necessary for worship, but certainly make sitting in a building a little more comforable. I thought I would take a few minutes and try to describe what the church buildings are like here and show some pictures. Most Sundays, we worship at the Arusha building, but have visited three other smaller congregations. [View Full Entry]

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Monduli is a small town about a 30 minute drive from Arusha. Anothy and Shasta have been working with the congregation there, strengthening the brethren and conducting Bible studies. Last week, they broke ground on a church building. Up to this point, the Christians in Monduli have been worshipping in a member's house. John, the kids, and I went today to see how the building is coming along. When we got there, the men were working on finishing up the foundation. We all pitched in to help level out the piles of dirt. Daniel loved helping to move the dirt around. [View Full Entry]

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As many of you know, we finally got our container about a month ago. We have been so busy putting things away that I have forgotten to update our blog. Things seem to be settling down a little, so hopefully I will have more time for updating!! We are still waiting on our car. Hopefully by next week we will have it. I am just going to post the pictures of us unloading our container. Mostly, because everyone has been emailing for pictures of the kids. :) I'll get busy on posting a "real" blog entry very soon. Love you all!!! [View Full Entry]

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