Points High Trip – A to Z in pictures

Posted by Caleb | August 9, 2016

I am not a photographer, heck I just went on a trip around the world without even carrying a camera.  However, as I get more connected to digital devices and social networks, my initial reaction to seeing something cool on this trip was to take a picture.  This felt a bit weird to me, even more awkward to have to come up with a new pose for every picture.  Thus from the beginning I tried to take pictures of letters in the different areas we found ourselves in.  My aunt makes these crazy cool framed words made from pictures of letters, thus my idea was to do something similar with the alphabet.  Below is an A to Z set of photos, taken almost primarily with an iPhone 4.  Some of them work, some of them require a bit of imagination, all of them are heavy on the iPhoto edits…

Uganda Recap

Posted by Beth | April 25, 2016

Yesterday marked one month from us leaving Uganda. Though we’ve been having a great time traveling through New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia, we miss our time in Uganda and the relationships we had there fiercely.

In the past few weeks we’ve posted several blogs on Uganda, and today will be the final recap post before we backtrack to cover South Africa, then move on to our current countries. In case you missed it, you can read more about our thoughts on our experience volunteering near Kampala for two months in the posts below.

Beth’s thoughts on moving on

Mizungus in Church

Best and worst of daily life in Uganda

Meet our Ugandan friends

How to use miles to fly to Uganda

Rafting the Nile River 

As Caleb mentioned in one of his posts, one of the goals of Come Let’s Dance is “people over projects,” and while that was a bit challenging for our personalities at first, in the end it was truly the people we will remember most about Uganda. While we learned to love (or at least appreciate) the Ugandan culture and all the Ugandans we had a chance to serve and come alongside, we were also deeply impacted by the relationships we formed with the other Americans. To Aaron, Jaymie, Nick, the Jenkins family, Brian and Roger, thanks for loving us well and teaching us more about Jesus. We miss you all!

How you can get involved with Come Let’s Dance, Uganda

GO: If you’ve ever wanted to do a mission trip to Africa, we would highly recommend the organization Come Let’s Dance. While certainly not for everyone, we’d love to talk it through with you if you’re considering it even in the slightest.

The trip fees are currently $1,000 for two weeks, or $1,500 per month, which are essentially considered a donation to the organization and therefore tax deductible. Caleb and I made the decision to pay our own way as part of our overall trip budget, but you could certainly support raise for your trip. In addition to the trip fees you can expect to pay very little since everything in Uganda is crazy cheap! Meals are about $.30 on the street. Our grand total spent for the two months, including $200 on our visas and $280 on rafting the Nile, was $1,076.

To our family and friends, since Caleb and I did not hit you up for money give you the opportunity to support what we were doing before we went, we invite you now to consider making a gift to the organization directly.

GIVE: If you are unable to visit yourself but still want to be a part of what’s happening, we encourage you to prayerfully consider giving to CLD. One great way to get involved is to give through the Child Scholarship Fund. Your monthly gift of $45 will give a child the opportunity to attend Wakiso Christian International Academy. It’s super simple to set up a recurring credit card gift and is of course tax deductible. There are other projects you can directly support, and I’m happy to talk to anyone who is interested in making an impact. I’m committed to helping CLD with their fundraising efforts, and would greatly appreciate your support!

Uganda Tourism

The only true “touristy” thing we did in Uganda was rafting the Nile in Jinja, but there are plenty of nature and adventure activities for travelers passing through Uganda. This is a great read about how Uganda is re-emerging as a top African tourist destination. Perhaps the most popular activity is gorilla trekking in Bwindi Forest, where roughly half of the world’s mountain gorillas reside. If that’s on your bucket list, be aware that the price is quite steep (over $500/person) and that you need to book months in advance. There are also places to see chimpanzees, both in the wild and in the chimp sanctuary in nearby Entebbe, which some of our volunteers recently saw. Another group that came through CLD while we were there did a safari in Murchison Falls National Park and really enjoyed it, even seeing lions up close.

We skipped on the safari since we had recently done a safari in Kruger National Park in South Africa, which is the next blog post in the queue!

How to earn enough miles to fly free to Uganda (or anywhere, really!)

Posted by Beth | April 19, 2016

Thanks to airline miles the cost of our mission trip to Uganda was significantly reduced because we did not have to pay for our flight. I wrote up this (pretty lengthy) explanation of the step-by-step process that can be used to enough free airline miles to fly to Africa to share with current and future volunteers of Come Let’s Dance, but I thought I’d share it here because really the basic process can be applied to fly anywhere you want to go. Once you’ve selected your destination, you’ll just need to figure out how many points it will cost you to get there on the various airlines.  

Note: The United Mileage Plus Explorer card this strategy centers around is currently only available at the 30,000 point level, so I highly recommend getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred instead if you can’t find the 50,000 mile offer for United. 

By signing up for one or two new rewards-earning credit cards, you can use the sign-up bonus and additional miles accumulated to earn enough frequent flier miles to book an award ticket to Entebbe. This can drastically reduce the cost of your flight, as all you’ll have to pay is the taxes and fees. This is by no means an all-inclusive guide to travel hacking or credit card churning, but a few steps you can follow to save money on your trip to Uganda. We are not financial planners so make sure you understand the risks to your credit and commit to managing your finances responsibly. It takes a little bit of planning and organization, but it is worth it for a free flight!

You can redeem miles to fly to Peru and wander the city streets and alleys of Arequipa, one of our favorite places in South America

Timing: We recommend you start this process 12-15 months prior to your preferred departure date. Of course that’s not always possible, but the more time you have the better your award options will be. The very minimum from start to finish would be two or three months but that would require quick spending and a bit of luck in flight availability.

Please read all the way through before signing up for a card. Note that you’ll need 80,000 United miles for a round-trip ticket to Uganda, so you may need to sign up for more than one card at a time.

Recent applications: Chase Bank, which we will use in this example, recently announced a “5/24” rule, meaning if you have opened more than five new credit cards in the past 24 months, you will be unable to be approved for a Chase card. You will need to find options from another bank (more info below).

Miles helped us fly to New Zealand free to experience black water tubing in a glowworm cave in Waitomo

Steps for Earning the Miles:

1. Check your credit score (free resources: Credit Karma or Credit Sesame, annualcreditreport.com). A general rule of thumb is your credit should be over 700 to have the best chances of getting approved for a new credit card.
2. Sign up for a United Mileage Plus account at https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/account/enroll/default. Though United does not fly into Entebbe, several of its Star Alliance partners do, so these are great miles to have.
3. Search for the highest available offer for the United Mileage Plus Explorer Card from Chase Bank. Note that the typical public offer is usually only 30,000 miles for signing up, but you can almost always find a better offer for 50,000 or 55,000 miles. To find a higher offer here are 3 different approaches:
   1. Try logging in to your Mileage Plus account at United.com. Search for a flight, then a banner should appear advertising the 50,000 mile offer.
   2. Try a Google search for “United Mileage Plus Explorer credit card 50,000 bonus miles offer.” You can typically find an offer on travel hacking blogs.
   3. If you cannot find one, try waiting a few months and searching again, as the public offer periodically increases to 50,000 miles on chase.com.
4. Once you’ve found the best offer, click through and fill out the online application. Be sure to include your United number. These offers also frequently include a bonus 5,000 miles for adding an authorized user card to your account, which you should be sure to do. You can add a spouse, parent, friend, etc. with their permission. Their credit will not be affected.
5. If your application is denied or you receive a pending status, try calling Chase Bank’s reconsideration line at 888-245-0625. Be nice to the agent and explain why you want this card and why you are credit worthy. Our go-to line is that we have a lot of business/personal travel coming up on which we want to fly United.
6. Once approved for the card, you will need to spend $3,000 on the card in the next 90 days in order to receive your 50,000 miles. Ways to hit the minimum spending limit:
   1. Switch all of your “everyday” spend to your new credit card. Use it to pay your gas, groceries, meals, etc.
   2. Pay your bills with your credit card. Pay your electricity, cable, phone, etc. bill with your card. Often times you can also pay your mortgage or rent, but there may be a fee associated with it, so weigh your options when deciding whether or not the fee is worth it.
   3. Time any big purchases you’ve been planning on making during these 90 days.
   4. Buy gift cards you know you will use later. For example, at most grocery stores, office supply stores or gas stations, you can buy Visa gift cards or retail-store specific cards as gifts or to use for yourself for basic expenses in the future.
   5. Pay a friend (or maybe even yourself!) through Paypal or a similar service, but know there will be at least a 3% fee. This is a last resort option as the fees are often not worth it.
7. Pay off your bill in full every month. The free miles are not worth racking up credit card debt and interest fees! Manage your account easily by using your online account at chase.com (should be an option to set one up right after approval or you can always visit chase.com to create a new account).
8. Once you have spent $3,000 on the card, your miles should appear in your United account. This can take awhile, as miles won’t post until your statement cycle closes. If you had an offer for 5,000 bonus miles for an authorized user, make sure you use that person’s card at least once to trigger the bonus. It can be any small purchase, it just needs to be used once.
9. In order to book a round-trip award ticket with United miles from the USA to Africa, you will need at least 80,000 miles. At this point you hopefully have at least 58,000 miles (50,000 sign up bonus + 5,000 authorized user bonus + 3,000 points for the $3,000 you have already spent on your card). Here are your options to make up the remaining miles:
   1. Book a one-way ticket with your miles (40,000 miles) and pay for your return trip (or vice versa, whichever is cheaper).
   2. Use this same process to sign for another credit card that earns United miles or points that can be transferred into United miles, such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or Starwood Preferred Guest points. See this post for a full run-down: http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/07/10/earn-united-miles/. I’ve also added my thoughts on which cards work the best on the bottom of this post, titled “Second Card Options”.
   3. Credit any actual flights flown on United or Star Alliance partners, in the past 12 months or future flights, to your United account. So if you just returned from Uganda and you flew Ethiopian Air, you can retroactively earn miles for that flight by visiting https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contact/mileageplus/RequestMileageCredit.aspx.
   4. Spend $22,000 more on your United card (earns 1 mile per every dollar spent). So even if you can only spend $5,000 more (does not have to be in first 90 days), you’re another 5,000 miles closer.
   5. Earn extra miles through various MileagePlus partners, https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/mileageplus/earn/default.aspx
10. There is an annual fee on your card of $95. It is waived the first year as a bonus for signing up, but on your card-member anniversary expect it to show up on your statement. If you do not want to keep the card open, feel free to cancel it once the miles have posted to your United account.
    1. For minimal impact on your credit score, we recommend waiting at least 10 months before cancelling the card.
    2. If you forget and the annual fee gets charged, you typically have at least 30 days after it appears on your statement to call and cancel the card for a full refund. You can always use the phone number on the back of your card.
    3. You can also try calling the number on the back of your card and asking for any retention offers that may be available. Sometimes banks may waive the annual fee if they want to keep your business. Just ask for the retention department.
    4. You do not have to have the card open at the time of your award flight, but if you do you may receive priority access and boarding (but only when flying on United, likely not its partners, so not a great reason to keep card open usually).

(Side Note: Repeatedly opening and canceling credit cards will damage your credit score a bit, but if spaced out over several years it will have little impact. There is also risk in showing the credit card companies this open/close pattern as it may hinder them from approving you for a new card down the road.)

Europe is a great option for redeeming airline miles. We loved our time in Brussels.

Redeeming Your Miles:

1. Visit united.com and search for award flights on the ‘Book Travel’ feature on the home page. Be sure to click the box labeled “Search for award travel.” United opens their award schedule exactly 11 months prior, and typically the earlier you book the more availability you can find.
2. Do not give up if you don’t see availability right away! Here are ways to keep trying:
   1. If your dates are flexible try searching different dates. The website usually shows a calendar with availability. You want to look for SAVER AWARD level flights only, as these are the only ones that cost 80,000 miles, the standard awards will be much more.
   2. Call United to speak with a reservation agent to help you search at 1-800-864-8331. If they are able to find a flight for you, ask them to waive the phone booking fee, since you were unable to make the booking online.
   3. As a last resort, you may need to do research on your own to be able to piece together your ticket online or feed the information for the flight you prefer to the phone agent. Star Alliance (United) partners that fly to EBB include: Turkish Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, South African Airways, and Egypt Air. You can use Wikipedia’s airline and airport pages to find out which airports these airlines fly through to search for your flight step-by-step. For example, if you know Brussels Airlines flies from Brussels into Entebbe, you can first search United’s website for that flight, and then search separately for a flight from your home city in the USA to Brussels. If you are flying out of a smaller airport, try searching from your home airport to a United hub (Denver, Chicago, Newark), then from that airport to Brussels, then Brussels to Entebbe. You may need to try this with several partner airlines/cities. You can then book the flight by using the ‘Multiple Destinations’ search tool on United’s ‘Book Travel’ page. Or you can call United again and give them the specific flight numbers you’d like. This can be very time consuming, thus having flexible dates and booking early makes things easier.
3. Purchase your award flight by redeeming your miles and paying the necessary taxes and fees. These range anywhere from $12 to several hundred dollars total. 

Headed to Africa on miles? Consider a side trip to the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania to visit The Rock bar and restaurant.

Other things to consider:

• You can usually get a free “stopover” as a part of your award flight for no extra cost or miles. A stopover is exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to stop in a city for as many days as you want (booked ahead of time of course) and then return to the airport to finish your flight to your final destination. When flying from the US to Uganda, Europe is typically the easiest stopover. In our example above, if you are flying through Brussels anyway, you could spread out your flights a few days apart to give yourself time to explore Belgium. If you’d prefer to see Paris instead, you can book a flight from US to Paris, spend time there, then fly to Brussels and on to Entebbe. You can basically add a “free” vacation stop in most European cities before or after your Uganda trip at no extra flight cost. With South African Airways you could also stopover in South Africa (there is a nonstop form New York to Johannesburg). More information here: http://travelisfree.com/2015/05/05/how-to-book-stopovers-with-miles-online/
• If you fly on Turkish Airlines through Istanbul and have a long layover (six hours or longer), the airline will pay for your hotel for the night or send you on a free tour of the city during the day. The tour includes nice meals, professional guides and a high end tour bus. More info here: http://www.istanbulinhours.com
• Your United Mileage Plus Explorer card will include two free United Club Lounge passes. If you’re flying through one of these cities be sure to get to the airport early or swing in during a layover for free food, drinks and wifi. https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/airport/lounge/locations/default.aspx
• All the examples above are focused on Star-Alliance flight options, which can be booked with United miles. In my opinion that’s the easiest way because there are the most options, but there are a few other choices.
  • KLM and Kenya Airways are a part of the Sky Team member alliance, which can be booked using Delta miles. You can earn Delta miles by signing up for the Delta-branded cards from American Express, or by transferring your American Express Membership Rewards points into Delta miles.
  • Qatar Airways is part of the One World Alliance, so flights can be booked using American Airlines miles. You can earn AAdvantage miles by signing up for the plethora of American Airlines-branded cards from Citi Bank or Barclaycard, or by transferring your Citi Thank You points or SPG points into AAdavntage miles. More info: http://thepointsguy.com/2015/04/choosing-the-best-card-for-american-airlines-flyers/

Of course you can even use miles to fly domestically. We used Southwest Air miles to fly to Lake Tahoe to ski last year.

Second Card Options

If you are looking to sign up for a second card to get to the 80,000 miles and nab the full free flight, here are what we consider the best picks.

1. If you have a small business (or you do anything that could count as a small business—mowing lawns, selling jewelry, etc)., sign up for the United Mileage Plus Explorer Business card from Chase Bank for at least 50,000 more miles. You can sign up for a personal and a business card from Chase on the SAME day.
2. The Chase Sapphire card sign-up bonus is 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points, which can be transferred directly to United miles. But since this is also a personal card, you likely won’t be approved on the same day, and will need to wait at least 91 days to complete this application. This card earns 2x points on ALL purchases, so you will rack up miles quicker.

• Sign up for the Barclaycard Arrival Plus, or the Capital One Venture card, both should have a sign-up bonus of at least 40,000 points. Since these are from different banks than Chase, it is fine to sign up for one of these on the SAME day as your initial United Mileage Plus Explorer card. Both cards also earn 2x miles on all purchases. These points are redeemed differently, so would pair nicely with option (a) above. If you use this credit card to pay for part of your flight, then you can reimburse yourself using your Arrival or Venture points (40,000 points = $400).

Learn More:

• Check out our blog’s “Getting Started” section at gettingmypointshigh.com
• Feel free to email Caleb and Bethany Tegtmeier at gettingmypointshigh@gmail.com if you have any specific questions.
• The more travel hacking blogs you read, the more you’ll understand the “hobby” and the more tips and tricks you’ll pick up. Some of our favorites are Boardingarea.com, The Points Guy, Million Mile Secrets, Travel is Free and Doctor of Credit.

Rafting the Nile River in Jinja, Uganda

Posted by Beth | April 17, 2016

Whitewater rafting is one of our favorite adventure activities and rafting the Nile River in particular has been at the top of our adventure bucket list since my visit to Uganda on The World Race. Thus when we confirmed we’d be spending time in Uganda, we knew a trip to the launching pad city of Jinja was in order. We’ve rafted some crazy rapids in Colorado and even in Peru, but African rafting was the best yet.

One of the highlights of our stay was the gorgeous sunset over the Nile.

A bit of background on the experience first.  The Nile river is the longest in the world and snakes through northeastern Africa, widening into lakes and slimming down into rushing rapids.  There is a bit of debate around the topic, but the locals we talked to and the general internet seems to believe that the Nile starts in Uganda where Lake Victoria flows into the “White Nile”, leading northward all the way to Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.  The section we rafted was extremely deep, thus even though we rafted giant waterfalls and massive swells sure to tip your boat, the depth of the river makes it relatively safe as you are unlikely to be trapped underwater

There a few operators you can use to raft in Jinja. Volunteers with CLD typically go with Nile River Explorers, which we thought was a great deal. The price included transportation to and from Kampala, free lodging if you’re camping or staying in the dorms, food (breakfast before, snacks and water on the boat, and a buffet lunch with soda or beer after), and of course all of your equipment, guide and the rafting itself. The price for the full-day rafting trip is US$140.

The Rafting:
For the full-day tour we spent about four hours on the river. There were eight different rapids, so if you are familiar with rafting that long of a time period and only eight rapids means lots of long stretches of paddling. But the eight rapids we rafted were crazy. The very first one was a 12-foot waterfall drop straight down and they only got more intense from there.

Caleb and I got to ride in the front the whole time as we had some fairly timid raft mates, and Caleb fell out of the boat on more than half of the rapids. The photographer actually got an epic shot of him mid-air flying out of the raft, but we were too cheap to pay US$60 for a copy of the photos.

This is pre-flying out of the boat five times for the Big Guy.

On one of the rapids we both ended up in the river after our guides attempt to “surf” an 8 foot swell landed all the passengers (and himself) in the water. Caleb and I initially were floating in the same general vicinity, but were quickly separated when a massive wave hit us and sucked us both under again, eventually spitting us out on opposite sides of the river. He was rescued by the safety boat and I was rescued by the safety kayaker, after several minutes of floating up and down, in and out of giant rapids.  This tipping scenario seems to be common of most boats as the current of the river makes an extreme white water crash, safer than normal. Of course we were fine in the end and were wishing we could do it again the next day, or better yet try our hand at boogie boarding through the rapids, which is also an option offered by Nile River Explorers for a bit more.  If you are interested in the how to’s of making this experience happen, check the details below.

Photo from asherworldturns.com. Not our boat.  We were too cheap to buy the photos.

Accommodation:
There are two separate lodging areas you can choose from, but we’d highly recommend to stay at the Explorers River Camp, versus the Backpackers lodge which is in Jinja town. The River Camp was set in a beautiful location right on the water. There’s a restaurant and bar on site, the ‘Fork ‘n Paddle,’ that served decent western food and had satellite TV and free Internet (though only really worked near the office).

Comfy lounge area and outdoor patio with epic views.

The bathrooms were clean and plenty big. There were even partial outdoor showers with a view over the Nile, but after finding myself in one with a frog, cold water and a family of four in the stall next to me, I’d recommend sticking to the hot, clean showers in the main bath houses. As I mentioned, if you’re rafting, one night lodging is free if you’re willing to stay in a dorm room or camp, with your own equipment. For a small fee you can choose to upgrade to an ensuite room or a safari tent as well.

Cabins available for about US$20 extra per night.

Or you can go the safari tent route for the same price. Little more rustic but better views.

 

Transportation:
If staying at the river camp, a free shuttle will take you into town to the main office in the morning where the rafting buses leave from. Transportation to and from Jinja from Kampala is also complimentary. We can’t comment on the ride there, as we were dropped off by Pastor Ben, but for the ride home it wasn’t really a bus as advertised, but a semi-private taxi van. It typically drops off in the center of Kampala but we were able to negotiate with the driver to take us all the way to our base camp for an extra fee.

Our ride from the campsite to the main office inside, where we geared up, grabbed breakfast and loaded onto another bus that dropped us at the start of the rafting on the river.

Activities:
We only spent one night at the river camp and rafted the next day, but if you have more time it’s a lovely place to hang out for a few days. Other affordable activities offered on site included nightly yoga classes ($5), kayak or stand up paddle boards (from US$20), sunset cruises ($20), horseback riding (from US$30), fishing safaris (from US $80) or quad biking (US $49). We never actually made it down to the waterfront but I believe there was a short zip line as well as some form of water trampoline/bounce pillow. There’s also a spa with a stunning view that seemed to offer affordable treatments.

Plenty of options to keep you busy for a few days!

You can rent mountain bikes, or you could just hang out in this sweet tree house.

Kayak rentals available by the hour or you could join guided cruises.

 

Points High is BACK on the road (plus Beth’s thoughts on moving on from Uganda)

Posted by Beth | April 4, 2016

After our two and a half month blogging hiatus, we’re set to get back up and running this week. Here’s a little overview of where we’ve been and where we’re headed next. We’re 146 days into our travel break, and still have 98 days to go.

In mid-January we spent a few months in South Africa, which still sits at the top of our list of favorite destinations so far! We had an incredible few days doing safaris in Kruger National Park and then spent the rest of the time exploring Cape Town and driving the Garden Route. The biggest surprise was how affordable everything in South Africa is right now. Put Cape Town on your must-visit soon list!

We then spent two months serving outside Kampala, Uganda with the organization Come Let’s Dance. We had very little wifi in Uganda and wanted to be fully engaged, so took a complete break from blogging. Caleb has a few great posts in progress about our experience living in Africa coming up in the next few days, and I share a few of my thoughts at the bottom of this post.

At the end of January we celebrated Caleb’s 30^th birthday up in the air. We splurged on points for business class (my first time after three years of travel hacking) and it was well worth it to fly Qatar and Qantas up in the front of the plane, though we did have an unfortunate downgrade situation for the first leg and are still waiting to see how we’ll be reimbursed.

Bros in our Airline PJ’s

The past nine days we’ve been on the North Island of New Zealand ‘vacationing’ with our good friends Adam and Ellen, who flew over from North Carolina to join us. We’ve enjoyed the beautiful scenery by hiking, wine tasting, biking, boating and driving around the North Island. After saying goodbye to them in Hawke’s Bay we headed to Wellington to enjoy the artsy capital for a few days before flying south to Queenstown tomorrow for another week on the South Island.

New Zealand thermal geyser

After New Zealand we’ll spend nine days in Australia between Melbourne and Sydney, then spend two and a half months in Southeast Asia. Prior to this trip we would have both said that this part of the world was our favorite so we’re eager to get back and looking forward to a few months of “unplanned” travel, seeing where we end up. We’ll wrap up our trip in Portugal and Spain before hopping the pond to see my sister Jenna and Justin get hitched in mid-July.

We’re excited to be getting back into our “travel groove” though leaving Uganda was harder than we might have expected. Our first month was a little rough, but by the end God confirmed a lot of things for us and we learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and how to love and serve well. Saying goodbye to our new Ugandan (and some new American) friends at the Kampala airport was definitely the hardest part of our trip so far.

Farmer Emma and Caleb at the Come Let’s Dance Farm

I wrote and rewrote my thoughts about Uganda several times, but decided to stick with the words I journaled fairly early into the trip…

We’ve battled worms in our bellies, live rats eating any food accidentally left out and dead lizards found under our bags. We’ve taken cold showers, shucked corn kernels off the cob by hand for two straight days and vomited out the side of public taxis. We’ve ate pork with hair still on it and woken up in the middle of the night to watch the Super Bowl. We’ve sat through five-hour church services and had the power go out plenty of times. We’ve fallen down in the rain, been pickpocketed in a public taxi and pretty much always have dirty feet. We’ve been sun burnt and learned how to operate on Africa time and crammed 20 people into a van and practiced the arts of not rolling our eyes and holding back tears. We carried pumpkins to the altar as an offering during a church service and we sleep under a mosquito net that doesn’t quite cover our bed and we’ve used plenty of “toilets” that are just a hole in the ground. You could say we’ve been out of our comfort zone.

“We fear that if we admit we’re struggling it may mean we’re not grateful.” –Leeana Tankersley

We’ve taught Kindergarten and made countless bowls of guacamole out of giant avocados and went swimming with a group of scantily clad pregnant women. We were invited to a 30^th birthday party (and asked to bless the food at said party), assisted with school registration, witnessed a presidential election and squeezed over 20 people in to a women’s home in the slum where she was hosting a savings circle. We have a staff of five people who cook us two meals a day, wash our dishes, scrub our floors and change our sheets. We’ve swung in our hammock in the big shady yard and held babies for an impromptu semi-professional photo shoot. We’ve taught “gymming” classes and fallen in love with running again on these dusty roads. We’ve befriended the “jaja” (grandma) down the street and embraced my Ugandan name, Betty. We’ve spent lazy mornings drinking coffee reading the Word and books we pull off the giant bookshelf and evenings playing cards or board games. Our little community here has taught us so much about loving hard and service and living into your calling. You could say we’ve been pretty blessed.

We’ve taken time for soul care and had many honest conversations about our marriage and how we can best communicate with each other and love well. Through our individual and shared struggles we’ve learned how the other person needs us to respond, how we naturally respond and how to reconcile that difference (thanks to our leader Aaron for those wise words!)  

“Being in over our heads has made us reach up to God, and like the sides of a triangle, as we move upward we can’t help but draw closer together.” –From Reckless Faith by Beth Guckenberger

We admit that our experience was harder than we expected, or at least different than we expected. But we are still so grateful. Our God is a God of redemption and He’s clearly moving in us here. The more that we give up control, agree to hold the things of this life with a “grip of grace,” choose to enter in, and learn the “unforced rhythms of grace” (Matthew 11:29, MSG), the closer God draws near to us and reveals little glimpses of His glory.

This is our prayer for how we want to live, in Uganda and beyond:

Be present. Live in the moment. Enter into the awkwardness. Engage with people. Be unselfish with our time. Learn people’s stories. Seek God’s voice. Embrace the silence. Prioritize what matters. Let go of small things. Take the focus off of productivity. Choose joy.

Mizungus in Ugandan Church

Posted by Caleb | Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Church in Uganda was for the most part, enjoyable mixed with uncomfortable.  It is long and generally confusing and in an environment where we should be small specks of white, we stand out like blots of bleach.  Nearly every service we attended we were welcomed to come to the front and introduce ourselves as the Mizungu (white wanderer) visitors.  Across the board, going to church meant awkward dancing, a bit of confusion of messages lost in translation and at least 2-3 hours.

We attended everything from a massive mega church to a shanty structure in one of the poorest slums in Kampala.  However, the majority of our church experiences came at the Come Let’s Dance primary school.  It was held on school grounds and was led by the students.  Meaning on any random Sunday you could find a 4th grader giving a 20-30 minute sermon, calling on his/her classmates to read scripture, all without a flinch.  This however, was one of several sermons that would be delivered, leaving kids and adults alike to lose attention relatively easily.

This was in the middle of the service…

On the note of sermons, my wife also delivered a piece for the people.  We were luckily enough to accompany the director of the organization, Pastor Ben back to his home village one weekend.  Prepping us beforehand he mentioned that the people would expect one of us to speak, as they love to hear from the foreigners.  All 3 of us guys ducked the question, but Beth took it to heart and prepared a full on 30 minute sermon.  Thus after our initial introduction, Pastor Betty took the makeshift pulpit to preach.  She interacted with the crowd, lifted her hand in the air one time and told some jokes. Pastor Ben acted as her translator, and she killed it.  There were several folks in the congregation who got the whole sermon on their cell phone video (which seemed crazy as we were in a very rural village), I unfortunately only snapped this picture.

Maybe the most interesting of all experiences came at the Katiti farm church.  Having stayed over night at our organizations country farm project, our crew awoke to Farmer Emmanuel chopping and hoisting the first yield of a local pumpkin patch into our hands.  He told us to take it to church with us as the first harvest is always God’s.  Thus, about halfway through the 3 hour service, Betty, myself and the farmer each carried one pumpkin up to the altar to lay before the maker, it felt like it should – it was always God’s pumpkin, I just happened to be in Uganda to walk it up the hill.

Another memorable church experience came to be on a Sunday night, special service.  For weeks we had heard rumblings and jeers for an upcoming event at a church associated with our organization.  The service was labeled “Deeper” for the deeper praising, deeper praying and our course deeper giving that was going to go on.  Upon arrival (30 minutes late as is custom for the whites) they were just finishing up the intro acts that included our friend rapping the gospel.  Then upon the stage came about the church choir and dance team of 40-50 folks, adorned in full camouflage and escorted by a cloud of smoke from the rented smoke machine.  With this entrance 100 minutes of non stop raucous worship began for the leaders on stage and the other 3000 of us under this giant tin roof.  There was dancing, flailing of limbs, punching of the air, and even some thrusting of the hips.  The best moment of the night was on the 3^rd power outage that happened to fall right in the middle of a short chorus in which was only the word ‘Jesus’ over and over again.  For 5 minutes straight in the complete darkness, these 3000 people chanted Jesus’ name louder and louder as if the Lord and Savior was going to come out of the dressing room and deliver an encore performance of ‘Here I am Lord’.    To be honest with you, I actually thought he (or more likely an impersonator of him) may just make an appearance.

Kind of blurry, but you get the idea

As we separate ourselves from the time we spent in Uganda.  It is these services that stick out as the most enjoyable and uncomfortable times.

Meet a few of our Ugandan friends

Posted by Caleb | April 16, 2016

For the majority of our trip Beth and I have been relatively isolated from others.  Though we are constantly surrounded either in the cities we’re visiting or the trails we are hiking, neither of us are usually acting too chipper or outgoing. If you find us reaching out to a stranger it is most probable that we are either lost, or that person is handing out a taste of something free.

This is not a great habit and certainly not something that we are purposefully doing or proud of.  Thus when arriving in Uganda we were pumped to make some friends and have conversations about new things.  Below are just a few of the people that we had a chance to get to know.

Giddy

Our compound where we lived was an old Ugandan witch doctors house, turned Christian school dormitory, turned bro-house for foreign volunteers.  We had cooks and house staff that doubled as our friends and culture guides at nearly every turn as we struggled to figure out the daily tricks to live in Africa.  The basecamp staff manager, Aunt Christine, has two children one of which stayed with us at the house.  His named was Giddy, short for Gideon and while he mostly spoke Lugandan, he was learning English at school and selectively understood what we were saying.  He was constantly wet for some reason, he peed freely wherever he wanted (maybe explaining why he was always wet) and was always looking to lock people in the bathroom.

Beth and Giddy walking home from school

The JaJa next door

When we arrived in Uganda we were told we were heading towards the new basecamp in an up and coming suburban neighborhood.  When I heard neighborhood, I pictured rows of homes, yellow street signs and folks out on their driveways waving at us.  This was not the case, but what we had was much better.  Small mud and brick homes, spread out throughout the Ugandan jungle.  There were some larger more American  looking homes but for the most part it was small shelters often surrounded by fruit trees.  Lucky for us, just down the dirt road from our place lived a grandmother, mother and two young daughters who attended our school.  Each day as we would walk by one of them would come out to say hello or something in Lugandan.  Eventually we struck up a trading deal with the grandmother (JaJa in Lugandan) that mostly included us overpaying for her avocados.  She would always greet us with a smile and also tell us something in Lugandan that I guessed to be about her vegetables or whatever she was selling.  She was perfect at giving off that “grandmother” wise person vibe…

Vivian and her JaJa

Emma the Cook

Maybe my favorite person among the tons of people we were lucky enough to come into contact with was the school cook.  His name was Emma, short for Emmanuel he is 18 years old and from a village some distance away.  His story is not that uncommon for young folks in Uganda.  Growing up from a giant family, his parents couldn’t afford for him to finish high school so he started working early.  He began as a shepherd, then a construction worker, then a cook for construction workers and now he is employed as the school chef.  He makes the same meal every single day for the students, a corn meal and beans duo that requires a ton of “mingling” or stirring and heavy use of a the four-foot ladle.  He is also required to chop up and split his own wood to fuel the fire for the stove.  Thus every day, twice a day he walks down to a pile of dug up trees and starts swinging.  With a blunt axe he splits the log in half and then bruises till breaking it into four pieces. For the first five weeks I knew him I thought he was 30 years old as he acts 10-12 times more mature than me and looks like he could be an NFL player.

Emma, in the pink shirt, with Lucky, Scott and myself

I think the best story I have of Emma is walking back from the school one evening.  The group of U.S. volunteers had tried to put on a movie night at the school, and after much deliberation (multiple hours that included a voting tournament) as to what movie we would show, we landed on Drumline.  This was a VERY ignorant decision as none of us had seen Drumline in 10 years, nor did we bother to look up its’ PG13 rating.  We made the connection between the drumming at Ugandan church and the drumming in the states and thought it would be a hit.  In the end, it had a lot of kissing, several bits of cussing and girls wearing shorts not appropriate for the local culture.  We were luckily saved by Ugandas’ terrible power grid as the electricity went out halfway through and we fastforwarded over about 40 minutes of the movie to get to the more inspirational last scene.  Walking back to the house that evening we were all feeling a bit guilty, thinking we had just tainted these pure childrens minds when cook Emma asked what we learned from the movie.  What I wanted to say was that showing American movies here is a terrible idea but he began to talk about how he learned perseverance, hard work and trust.  This brought about several thoughts from me.  First, if he got that much out of that terrible movie, imagine the conversation that would occur after watch “Forrest Gump”.  Secondly, it made me feel like I was walking next to the nicest, most God-fearing, most mature 18 year olds on the planet.

Parvin

Pronounced ‘Pavin’, she is a primary student at the CLD school.  Her family lives in Katunga, the city slum neighborhood where several of our volunteers spend a lot of time.  We were introduced to Parvin one of the first days in Uganda and within one hour she had most of the ladies in a circle listening to her deliver a sermon.  She once pulled me aside into a conversation about breastfeeding and birthday cake.  Every picture you take of her she rolls her eyes into the back of her head.  She is also one of the smartest, most successful students at the school.  I have no clue what Parvin will be when she grows up but I imagine that any American TV station would sign her up immediately for reality T.V.

Again these are just a few of the many people that we met.  There are so many more that we could write and talk about, maybe down the line.

The Best and Worst of Daily Life in Uganda

Posted by Caleb | April 7th, 2016

Spending two months living a routine type of life in any country is going to provide a glimpse into the culture, challenges and perks.  We had the chance to meet some pretty incredible Ugandan people along with some gut punching stories and challenges.  I’ve jotted down my thoughts in a halfway organized manner here and in a couple other blogs.  Starting with my favorite and least favorite pieces of short term life in Uganda.

The Best

Betty

Not sure why I love it so much, but the fact that nearly all Ugandans default to calling Beth, “Betty” really tickles my fancy.  In our daily walks to and from the school we have stopped and chatted with several local children and parents.  Word spreads in the community fast and by the end of our time here, a random Betty call from the deep woods or a mud hut was not only common, it was expected.  Of all the habits that I will carry on from this trip, Betty is near the top.

“Betty Picked Last”  – While she was loved by the younger children, Betty was consistently the last pick for all high school soccer games.

People over projects

This is a Come Let’s Dance motto, putting time into the people we come into contact with instead of a sole focus on checking off the to-do’s at the projects.  This was tough to deal with at first as small talk always took precedence over the physical “missionary” work I had expected.  My vision of missionary trip was right or wrong defined by the one/two week house building efforts that I grew up hearing about during spring break.  Thus when we arrived to a neighborhood of fully sheltered and thriving folks, I was confused as to where all my “HGTV Treehouse Masters” knowledge was going to be put to use.  The needs of the organization and people that we served were rarely the “emergency” requirements that I expected and that I had associated with Africa.  It took a month for us to grasp it, but our job being in Uganda was to sit and listen and give encouragement, hope and a hand to lift something if we could.  Listen to the people first, worry about the project later.  You can imagine a scenario in which I, (middle class white preachers son, whose hobbies include basketball, reading books about big data and researching hotels across the world) am sitting on the front porch with a 25-year-old Ugandan (mother of three who enjoys playing with her children and making fire to boil tea).  This scenario happened many times and the small talk that ensued was choppy but extremely enjoyable.

Different people, same shirt

The Running of the Goats

I know very little about farming or life on a farm.  I have a ton of expert farmers in my family, even some close friends who I would classify as ranchers.  None of this has rubbed off on me in skills or interest, yet my favorite activity in our two months was shepherding the goat herd at the  farm.  In general this meant untying the goats from the barn, chasing them into the African bush and tying them back up to a tree to graze for the remainder of the day.  For me it involved many different types of yelling, a few foot taps on goat rears and even some more innovative pinching strategies.  The workers and students at the farm were some pretty great folks.  No matter how terrible of job I would do, there would always be a host of “well done” remarks to greet me at the finish.

Here is a baby goat we saw born the first day at the farm. Later it lost its’ hoof in a monkey trap.

Double Double    

Double double was the customary right of passage to access the food line a second time.  It was a welcome sight when Aunt Christine would come over and look me square in the eye and whisper, “Caleb, it’s ok, Double Double.” The organizations’ farm was also named Double Portion Farm, and we even sang a song and dance about everything being double double.

The Worst

Taxis

No surprise but public taxis are rough.  They are 14 passenger vans filled with 20 grown adults.  The roads here are bumpy and overcrowded.  The driver and the ‘conductor’ work as a team to swipe people up, push people out and consistently over charge us white folks for our rides.  My height is one cause of contortion poses for me and those around me, the lack of deodorant used by the general population being another.  Accompanied by one of our leaders, we were recently the subjects of a ramblin band of misfits, lowballing folks into their taxi only to put us through a series of in-ride activities that center around them pickpocketing our things.  We luckily were able to bail just a few minutes after realizing what was going on, but even then lost several dollars to their scandalous ways.  In general, having to take these taxis nearly every day for a minimum of 40 minutes was one of the worst things.

This van was our “luxury vehicle” we sometimes rode in. The taxis looked similar just older and smellier.  In the background you can see the CLD basecamp house.

Sickness

“I got worms,” that’s what we called it.  For a 10 day period there were four or five of us that were eating for two.  It seems to be pretty common here to eat something bad and end up with a worm in your stomach.  For me symptoms topped out at post dinner stomach aches and lack of appetite.  For Betty the culmination was barfing once on a Ugandan storefront, later in another Ugandans front yard with the grand finale being a trifecta of barfs out a taxi window.  We eventually were ‘de-wormed’ with some meds but it was a rough stretch of digging for answers….

Money

Years and years of foreign aid have been focused on improving quality of life in Africa and for the most part the strategy has been to throw money at the challenge.  It is estimated the 50 billion dollars have been donated to causes in Africa, yet there are still incredible challenges of sickness, poverty and infrastructure failures.  One of the minor side effects of this history is the expectation and perception of white foreigners.  For the most part we are seen as ATM machines, handing out money to the person who can deliver the most heart wrenching story.  Though it is changing now (and certainly different in and around the folks connected with CLD), there traditionally has not been a measure of accountability attached to the giving that westerners have historically led.  Thus it is not uncommon for folks to approach you with a simple, “give me money” or “you buy me….insert food, clothing, luxury item”.  It is not that big of a deal, just takes some getting used to as navigating around that awkward question and into a more fruitful conversation takes some time and practice.

Overall our daily lives were made so much easier because of the basecamp staff.  When I thought of “missions in Africa” before this trip I would have thought of tons of bugs, eating nasty food and always being dirty.  Now I think of a house of Ugandan friends that hang around to make sure I do not cut my hand off slicing fruit, wear clothes that are still covered in red dirt or randomly wander off into the woods in the wrong direction.

Some of our amazing Base Camp staff members in the house kitchen