‘What prevents me from being baptized?’ Certainly not the loss of a leg

DESOTO—A long journey brought Richard Baker to the baptismal waters at Windsor Park Baptist Church , and he wasn't going to let three flights of stairs stop him—even if he had only one leg.

A few months before, Baker faced a couple of hard decisions.

“I was deciding whether to have a leg amputated and also whether to jump ship on the church I knew and become a Baptist. Believe it or not, jumping ship was the hardest decision,” he said with a look that made it obvious that he was speaking in all seriousness.

His family is deeply embedded in the Community of Christ, known until 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His father is a preacher and evangelist in the church, and his family is deeply committed to their faith.

“They are good, earnest, Christ-loving folks,” Baker said. “But for me, I felt like I was missing something there.”

So, for years, Baker lived apart from any church, except for what he sometimes saw on television.

Baker, an engineer who lives about a half hour away in Alvarado, was drawn to Windsor Park—but not on Sundays. He was part of an amateur radio group that used the church’s facilities for their weekly meetings.

As payment for the using the space, the group helps the church with special projects, such as staffing the parking lots for the church’s annual Jerusalem Marketplace, a dramatized depiction the recreates the streets of Jerusalem in the hours of Jesus’ crucifixion.

While he was on parking lot duty, God began to move in Baker’s heart.

“After the program, a girl probably about 5 years old and in shorts was walking out with her grandfather and she kept saying: ‘Jesus is alive. He’s alive.’ I could see the enthusiasm in her eyes, and I could tell that something was going on in me,” he recalled.

That incident began what he now recognizes as God working in his life, convicting him of his sin and drawing him to faith in Christ.

“I was in turmoil, and I knew I needed to line myself up with Christ. I could tell I was suffering for separating myself from the body of Christ,” Baker said.

Since some of the men in his radio group went to Windsor Park, he and his wife began to attend as well.

“One of the things I found here that I’d been missing was the presence of the Holy Spirit,” Baker said. “I’m touched to the core by every altar call, and one morning I hopped to the altar with my walker. I hopped to it, I guess you could say.”

But Baker still faced a significant obstacle regarding his baptism.

“It was becoming an apparent issue of how I was going to get up the stairs. The chair or the walker wasn’t going to cut it. But I wasn’t going to let it stop me,” he said.

So, one Wednesday night, Baker went to the bottom of the stairwell and began dragging himself up the stairs one by one. After he had conquered the climb, he dragged himself back down.

The Sunday morning of his baptism, he repeated the process.

“Tears were streaming down our faces. It meant something to us,” Pastor Chris Seidlitz said of himself and his congregation.

Baker recalled how Seidlitz and a friend help him stand in the water.

“With three of in there, we might have miscalculated the water displacement,” he said with a chuckle.

In spite of the hurdles he had to overcome, Baker recognized the importance of being baptized.

“I’m a little like a light switch—if it’s flipped, it’s all the way on. Baptism is symbolic that you’ve been renewed, but also it’s a physical demonstration of commitment,” he said.

Baker has not received a prosthesis for his leg yet, and admits that it still presents obstacles for him.

“There’s a lot of changes I’m still going through, but my concern is my walk with Christ,” he said. As a part of that growth, he meets with Seidlitz and a group of other men in the church each week to learn Greek, so that he can read the Bible in the original language.

He also makes sure he’s in church Sunday evenings.

“On Sunday evenings, when I get home, I’m busted doggone tired, but I’m so enthused about what God is doing,” he said.

In spite of his physical disability, Baker refuses to allow anything to stand in the way of his doing what God calls him to do. He set up the church’s telephone lines for its call center for a community outreach project, and he has revamped the church’s computer system.

“I do not consider myself an infirm man. I do now have a new life challenge. That’s all it is a challenge,” Baker said.

“It’s the attitude of how you look at it. I’ve had my moments, but they haven’t lasted long. But you have to focus forward, that’s part of the reason I’m learning Greek.

“My favorite phrase has always been, ‘I don’t let little white picket fences stop me. I step over them.’ But now sometimes they do, or at least slow me down.”

But not if the waters to the baptistry are on the other side.