Couple Takes Mission
Trips All Over Globe
STILL MINISTERING
IN THEIR 80s

By PENNY FLETCHER

When Josephine Baker realized her husband, Hank, couldn’t go with her on their planned mission trip to Germany, Hungary and the Ukraine, she hesitated.
But only for a moment.
Although it was her first such trip without Hank, the 85-year-old Sun City Center woman decided it was important to their life’s ministry, and went anyway.
The two have been traveling the globe together, teaching with the Mission of the Holy Spirit, since their first experience with the Catholic charismatic ministry in the 1970s.
The charismatic ministry teaches that God interacts with people now the same way as in the books of the New and Old Testament Bible.
“I had many doubts about going on such a strenuous mission at my age, but the (missionary) team assured me they would make everything as easy as possible for me,” Josephine Baker said in an interview following her recent return. “They said I would be a sign to others, showing them they could still serve God when they were old.”
Hank, 88, had a crushed vertebrae or he would have taken the trip with her.
“We’ve been making these trips our whole lives, it seems,” he said.
The couple met in college and married before he left to fight in World War II. They have six children – all of whom are somehow involved in ministry.
“One daughter is a pastor, another is married to a pastor. Another works with the poor. Another with school children. They all help others and live to serve God,” she said.
The couple has spent 27 years in their ministry, which teaches that events such as those related in the Bible’s New Testament still happen today.
“People are healed and filled with the Holy Spirit,” she said. “In Poland, one young man, who had problems for years after his father committed suicide, became a priest (later in life.) We have lots of stories like that.”
The couple moved to Sun City Center in 1993 from Washington, D.C. where Hank was a government safety engineer.
The headquarters for the Mission of the Holy Spirit, is in D.C., and their daughter, Margaret Gibson, is now its executive director. Gibson was also one of the team of 10 from the United States to make the recent trip; four from Hillsborough County and six from the Ralph Martin Ministries in Michigan.
While the Baker’s itinerary varies, their message doesn’t.
“We go wherever God leads us and tell about the Holy Spirit,” Hank Baker said.
In Christianity, the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of God that came to earth following the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and enables followers to do works – considered miracles – like the followers of Jesus did in the New Testament book, Acts of the Apostles.
For 10 years they went every six months to work with the Hustaken Indians in Mexico, raising money for food, clothing and shelter.
Their most recent trip took them to Budapest, Hungary, parts of southern Germany and the Ukraine, to minister, but they also made short sightseeing stops in Vienna and Salzburg.
In Germany, the team worked at the Catholic Retreat Center in Freiburg, with the Rev. Eryk Kapala, a minister with The Divine Mercy as their guide.
They slept on mattresses on the floor at a monastery in Krasilov, Ukraine; huddled under blankets to keep warm on a freezing plane; had trouble at customs because a wrong ticket was pulled in New York, and ministered on land poisoned by the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl.
Now they’re planning to go to the high desert in California to minister to poor Mexicans, American Indians and Caucasians who live near Joshua Tree (California), she said.
Leaving Nov. 24, the day after Thanksgiving, they plan to be gone for several weeks, so they put up their Christmas tree Nov. 7.
“We’ll be coming back the day before Christmas and our grandsons will be here,” she said. “So we’re putting it up while we get ready to go.”
Between trips, the couple speaks at South Shore events, including churches and at groups. The Bakers will talk about their experiences overseas Nov. 18 at 5 p.m. at the meeting of the Full Gospel Business Men and Ladies‘Association at Denny’s Restaurant, at the intersection of State Road 674 at Cypress Boulevard in Sun City Center.