02.18.10 - hey

hey everyone... sorry for no update yesterday, I'm still not feeling good, I went to the dr today... keep praying for me I've been laying pretty low, I'll keep everyone posted as to the lab results I had taken today.

I'm also going to be using twitter and facebook a lot LESS during lent.

JIM baker

02.16.10 - from Nairobi to Migori

We woke up on Friday morning and I took a quick walk around the premises to see it in daylight. The warm morning reminded me of Hawaii. This is when I tweeted this video.

The team ate a breakfast of pancakes, with a room full of other missionaries, Jess said it reminded her of a YWAM base.

Brian led us in a quick devotional before we left for the airstrip.

This was our pilot Amanda. I took the picture mainly because I thought it was funny that she was using a Garmin GPS.

Why is Devo looking so smug? Well he just saved all of our lives. As our pilot was speeding down the runway ready to take off she suddenly aborted the take off. She thought the "door ajar" light was malfunctioning. It was not, when we started for take off the back door flung open and Devo closed and latched it.

A view of Nairobi from the air.

When we landed in Migori, which was an airstrip not even on the GPS, we were met by Bishop John Okinda, his wife Pamela, almost 300 elementary and middle school students, the high school students, the teachers college and local pastors and congergants. We had over 500 people waiting for us when we hit the ground.

Many of the kids had never seen a plane before. So the Amanda the pilot allowed Bishop John to choose some kids to sit in the plane.

There was a ton of pushing and shoving as kids wanted to get on the plane.

We were welcomed with various songs and skits by the different groups. Click here to see a short video of this performance. This performance brought me to tears, and made me feel like I was actually in Africa.

JIM baker

02.15.10 - Okay finally a BIT more about Africa and some pictures

The Africa team and some of the staff gathers at Praise Fellowship on Wednesday Jan 27th to pray and say goodbye to family.

A shot from the window of one of our 3 flights. Which I don't remember.

Brian Adelgren getting his Kenyan phone set up in the Nairobi Airport.

Jess, Arielle, and Heather waiting patiently as our driver pulls up to take us to the AIM Mayfield Guest House.

The guys room complete with mosquito nets. Make sure you use those!

The dinner they served us at the guest house. It tasted more Mexican than African.

I'm going to try to go through the trip day by day with pictures and captions so you can get a feel for the trip a little better. We had 3 flights. Buffalo to Newark. Newark to London/Heathrow. And then London Heathrow to Nairobi.

The Newark to London flight was on a newer 777 and had individual touch screen tvs in the back of the headrests. Jess loves movies and long flights so she stayed up the whole flight and watched movies. I snoozed a bit and watched one movie. On this flight they served us chicken tikka massalla. I was pretty stokked about that.

The travel wasn't bad at all. Rick told me to avoid caffeine on the flights and drink tons of water and get up from time to time and move around and sleep when I could. Staying hydrated on the flights made them a lot more enjoyable. We arrived at the Mayfield Guest House in the dark. A few of us ate some dinner and showered and went to bed.

I'll write more about the day after this one tomorrow!

JIM baker

02.12.10 - quick post

Hey everyone...

Jess and I are in Columbia Maryland visiting my parents. Its been a great time of rest. My mom and dad have looked through all 4,427 photos from Africa. Only my parents and grandparents get the privilege of seeing EVERY picture. I try to be good about only putting my best work out there.

The trip here was crazy. Maryland is getting a ton of snow fall and they aren't used to it. While I was on RT 70 and had just passed the Maryland line a semi passed me on my left and my car spun out and I hit a snow bank. I was stuck facing the wrong direction and had to be towed out. It was pretty scary. Minimal damage to the car.

I've tried to sit down and write a blog about Africa a couple of times and just haven't been able to do it. I was going to on Wednesday but the internet cut out and yesterday I just could not conjur up a blog. I'm going to try my best to do things chronologically and take you day by day through Africa.

I got my facebook account back.

And Jess and I are headed out in a few to go meet up with Cory Pampalone.

My first pictureless blog.

JIM baker

02.09.10 - another early morning and some side notes

saw this in a gift store, shot with my iphone

After talking to some people back here, I'm not convinced that I really had malaria... I've heard that there is an incubation period and the doctor there diagnosed me with malaria only after being in Africa for a few days. I do know however I felt like I was the sickest I've ever been, I think it was just the food.

fried tilapia - taken with iphone

While I was in Kenya my facebook got hacked. Someone logged in as me and used chat to tell people I had been mugged in London and needed money transfered immediately. The sad thing is that it seemed a bit more believable because I had just been through the London Heathrow Airport to get to Nairobi. I've heard from a few people that were contacted by this hacker and luckily they realized it wasn't me and didn't wire him the $1,500 he was asking for.

So facebook deactivated my account and I'm now in the process of starting a new one. I've got about a tenth of my friends back. It stinks to be starting over from scratch but whatever. If you've got facebook and we're not friends I THINK this link should take you to my profile.

You can read more about this scam here. I'm still trying to figure out how I got hacked or phished or whatever it's called. I haven't figured it out. I am however glad that my password for the e-mail account I use with facebook is different than my password for facebook otherwise the cyber criminal could have taken over my e-mail account as well.

In other news... Robert Park has been released... you can read that article here.

Anyway... no one ever told me if you like the changes that I made to the blog layout... Are you enjoying the twitter feed on the blog? Is it okay to only see the most recent post and have to navigate from there? Leave me comments and let me know what you think.

Sorry if you were waiting for a more detailed Africa post... patience :)

JIM baker

02.08.10 - 3:47am

Jess and me right before we left Masai Mara

Its 3:47am right now, jet lag. At least I'm not up with a stomach ache like I was last night.

Africa was awesome. We were so blessed to be able to go. John and Pamela Okinda are doing AMAZING things for the kingdom of God. Our team was so honored to come alongside them and provide any help we could.

It was a quick ten day trip, but I feel like we accomplished a ton and learned a lot.

While we were there John and Pamela invited another 4 orphans into their own personal home. They now have a total of 12 orphans living with them.

I'll write more about the things we did in future posts. Consider this an introduction.


* * * * *

From a photography standpoint...

I took 4,427 photos while we were there. Most of them, portraits for sponsorship of the nearly 300 students that John has.

I set out to take 10,000 pictures, or 1,000 a day, but wound up getting diagnosed with malaria last monday and spent quite a bit of time in bed.

The 5dm2 and the 24-105 treated me real well, I'm VERY glad I was able to get the new camera before I went.

Masai Mara is AMAZING. I seriously highly recommend going if you ever have the chance to go. It was a great way to end our trip. I had no clue that you actually got THAT close to the animals.

I'll post soon about more photography thoughts I had while in Africa.

JIM baker