- You get an email from your mom with the subject line reading: “Please Don’t”. She doesn’t want you to bungee jump over the Nile and it shows: “Please don't. You know it's crazy. You might have a heart attack. You can be the photographer and still bond without jumping.” Love you, Mom 😉
- There are some monkeys hanging out to watch you bungee jump.
- There’s a frog in your teammate’s shower and she doesn’t bother to get out. She even has a conversation with it.
- You are terrified to go to the toilet at night due to the moving creatures and sounds of the forest. AKA huge killer cockroaches and lots of bullfrogs.
- A woman is hand-washing an umbrella with her bucket wash and laundry.
- You find several children wearing skirts made of paper bags, with zippers intact.
- Your squad leader tells your teammate: “Seriously though, don’t play with the caterpillars. They’re dangerous.” (Africa has some poisonous caterpillars).
- Your teammates have introduced yourselves so many times that you do it mindlessly on occasion. One Sunday morning your squad leader says, “I’m from the state of Charlotte… uh, I mean, North Carolina.”
- Your morning jog takes you past a group of inmates dressed in bright yellow. On the return route they have made a dirt speed bump in the road. You brighten their day by yelling “Hurdle!” and jumping exaggeratedly over it. Lots of laughs and comments.
- Some ministry days begin by watching the men push the school van down the hill to get it to start.
- The same van has a horn that works when you jiggle the wires hanging from the steering column! (More details soon on how you can help Champions School get a new van!)
- You get to try Jackfruit for the first time. Surprisingly it tastes like a fruit salad with a weird texture. These fruits are huge!
- Your teammate gets attacked by a bird in the shower. This is normal since it is an open-air shower. Later, the turkey tries to attack you in the shower!
- You see signs for “Theophilus Technology”, “Alpha and Omega Hostel”, and “God Cares Beauty Salon”.
- You receive your very own chicken as a gift and you name her Helen.
- While doing house-to-house visits someone offers you a cold glass of water and you hesitate to say a quick prayer before drinking it. Let this water be clean! I’m covered by the blood of Jesus… And let me not visit the squatty potty later this afternoon…
- Your teammate leads a Bible study on sin and asks for examples of sins. The first response: witchdoctor.
- You can buy a small box of chocolate milk for 50 cents, or a Coke (glass bottle) and 2 chapatti for about 65 cents.
- One of the challenges in your new game is to see who can catch a chicken fastest. The prize is a Twix bar!
- After church your team heads to a funeral service of someone you don’t know. The choir joins you in the van and after two failed attempts to make it up the hill, your pastor tells you to “reduce the number” so you can successfully leave the driveway.
- You take your teammate out for lunch for her birthday and the restaurant is out of nearly half of everything on the menu. Banana? No. Fruit salad? No. Sausage? No. This happens quite regularly abroad, but once you get your meal of whatever’s left it is good and hot.
- You turn down a street vendor when she wants 1,000 Ugandan shillings for three bananas. This translates to 60 cents. After you realize what you’ve done you keep walking and find one closer to home that’s only 600 shillings! About 24 cents.
- When you see another mzungu that doesn’t belong to your group you feel obligated to speak or at least make awkward eye contact. It’s like an unwritten rule.
- French fries or “chips” are a common main dish.
- Mosquito nets freak you out when you wake up and they’re in your face.
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You see 2 cute baby goats sleeping in a basket.
- You enter a home to find a Backstreet Boys music video playing… “As long as you love me.”
- You hang out in the personal ATM box longer than necessary simply because it’s air-conditioned.
- You hear a shrill, horrible tune coming from a boda boda (small moto-bike) and want to plug your ears. There is an orange cylindrical cooler on the back and the pastor says, “Oh, the ice cream bike!” Awesome!
- You pet a pig that is bigger than a cow. Possibly the fattest pig you’ve ever seen. The owners think you’re weird.
- Your feedback session includes the phrase, “Nice job casting out that demon!”
- You attend a church that has a tin roof, uneven wood beams and about 4-5 feet of black plastic around the edges. A chicken and rooster also wander in as there are no doors, only open passages.
- When your teammate’s birthday cake reads, “Happy Birtday.”
- You meet your younger brother at a home in Kampala with sketchy electricity, banana trees, jackfruit, a squatty potty and a naked African child.
- Kids don’t have many toys so they like to use their imagination to make their own…
- Church instruments look like this…wood, nails and bottle caps.
- Roll eggs, more commonly known as “Rolex” are one of your favorite foods. It’s like a breakfast burrito!
- You find a Siamese twin banana. A double double!
- Your teammate is late to Bible study because her translator was late. He apologized and went on to say that he’d been to the doctor to be circumcised 30 minutes earlier. Yep, this really happened.
- Your team receives t-shirts with the church logo as a gift. When you thank the church you tell them you are sincerely grateful as most of your other shirts have holes in them!
- It only rains one day of the entire month.
We don’t leave Uganda until Saturday night, but I thought I’d go ahead and post these for a laugh. There are quite a lot this month. Looks like we just had a good time!
Please pray that the last few days of our ministry are very fruitful and fun. So far we have received enough support from back home to sponsor 49 children to go to school for one year at Champions Christian Primary School! Praise the Lord! This is huge. A big thank you to all who helped out! I’ll be posting another blog soon with more info about the church and school here and ways you can support their ministry in the future.
Also, pray for the transition to Thailand. We’ll be flying to a new continent, a new culture and a new ministry. Next month the women from our team will join two other teams to go to the red-light district in Chiang Mai. More details to come. All the men from our squad will be together next month for “manistry”. Please pray for them as well.
