Ambassador

A new US Ambassador arrived in Uganda early in 2024.  Since his arrival, I have been receiving more email from the embassy.  Occasionally it is a security notice.  Most of the time it is the announcement that the ambassador is traveling to a certain city or municipality in Uganda and would like to hold a town hall with the US citizens in that area.  The most recent email is for a town hall coming up in Arua, a city an hour to the south.  Finally, something in my area.  I have submitted a copy of my passport for review.  The embassy should respond in a few days with the meeting location and time.

I do not know the agenda for the town hall; however, when I was in the US Peace Corp the ambassador to the Gambia wanted to know the volunteers in country and to answer any questions we had.

PC

One of the blessings of working with a sending agency is pastoral support.  (A sending church is not always able to send their pastor halfway around the planet to visit their missionary and then return in time to care for the home parish.)  The pastoral care (pc) team that has been assigned to all the CTEN missionaries in Uganda has also been asked to support a great many missionaries serving in other countries.  Now that their work has grown so big, part of their service area (Uganda) is being given to a new pastoral care team. 

The pastoral care couple try to keep regular contact with their missionaries.  The frequency varies depending upon the missionary and the need.  This has been helpful!  It also helps that they visit their missionaries in the field.  Due to CoVid lockdowns it took 3 ½ years for my original pastoral care couple to visit me (a few months ago).  This month I am being transferred to a new pastoral care couple and I just had my first meeting (via WhatsApp) with them.

Sales Tax

I have been buying supplies in preparation for my return to Uganda.  Items that I will need in the ministry but find it difficult to obtain in Koboko.  In Uganda, the price that the seller mentions may be set, or it may be negotiable.  If negotiation is involved, once a price is agreed upon it is the price that is paid.  No taxes are added after everything is added up.  I need to remember it is not that way here in the US.  In the US, the buyer pays the taxes as an add-on fee after all the purchases are added up.  In Uganda, the supplier pays the tax and builds it into the price. 

Costco

I visited Costco recently.  I have several shirts that are showing their threads.  I like them, so I thought I would replace one or two.  They are Kirkland brand (Costco).

As I walked between the tables of clothes, I found lots of short-sleeved shirts, T-shirts, and shorts.  The only long sleeve shirt (a choice of one) was limited to XL and 2XL sizes.  I need a medium.  I could not believe the large selection of short-sleeved shirts.  It is 40 degrees outside!  Nothing (in my size) appropriate for the season.  I know short-sleeved shirts or T-shirts, and short pants will be popular in a month or two, but not yet.

Community

I am back in the USA reconnecting with as many as I can.  I learned the value of this when I was hired for a job after college.  The job was in another state, two thousand miles away.  I missed family, but we stayed connected.  When I returned five years later, family was the only connection that seemed to be intact.  Every group I was part of in the community had grown and changed.  So had I.  We grew apart, because I had not tried to stay connected with them while I was away.  It made it hard to return.  I value my friends and I do not want to repeat the mistake of letting them slip away.

Pastoral Support

As a missionary with Commission To Every Nation (CTEN) I am blessed to have pastoral support.  Some support organizations focus only on the money.  I am happy to say the spirit is very important to CTEN.  They know missionaries come from sending churches.  They also understand that the clergy of the sending church is tasked with the administration of the church and the pastoral needs of those that remain in that locale.  This make it hard for them to attend to the pastoral needs of missionaries.  CTEN provides people that take on this role. 

My CTEN pastoral support couple were once missionaries themselves.  They understand my challenges and have made a point of meeting with me, remotely, every couple of months to talk things over.  They also visit the missionaries assigned to them – in the mission field.  I have been in Uganda 3 years.  Due to the Corona virus shutdown their 2020 travel plans to Uganda were canceled.  Their next visit is late 2023.  I am looking forward to it.  Until then, I am enjoying our periodic meetings on zoom and via email to talk things over.

Travel

I anticipated crowds at the airport.  That was not the case.  I do not know if that is because fewer people are flying due to the omicron version of the virus or because my friend, Sue, knew the best way to the airport during the morning rush hour.

I checked in two and a half hours before my flight instead of the two hours before for international flights.  No line.  I walked right up and checked in.

The attendants re-checked all the paperwork despite entering everything into the travel ready center the night before.  On the other hand, my boarding passes are marked “travel ready.”  Others did not have this mark on their boarding passes.  They had to represent documents at the gate(s) of each transfer airport.  I just showed my boarding pass and was waved through.

Coming to the US I had to pass through screening at all but one of the transfer airports.  Returning to Uganda I was able to stay in the secured area, no need to pass through screening repeatedly.

Travel Ready Documents

I keep seeing the words “travel has changed a little.”  In the season of CoVid, it has changed a lot, in my opinion.

No more book your flights, pay your fare and show up.  Now you must have a PCR CoVid test within 72 hours of flying internationally.  I stopped by my airline (since I was at the airport for my test) to determine how to enter the test result.  The attendant said just bring it with me.  Not the case, but I suspected that because she did not express knowledge of the airline’s travel ready center.

Now I must have access to a computer, a printer, a scanner, and an email address.  The process for me was:

1. Skip the smart phone because mine does not let me swap between these processes without loosing my place in the one I was working on.
2. Get my CoVid test.
3. Enter the airline travel ready document site with a computer not a smart phone (see above).
4. Enter my passport information.
5. Complete the passenger locator form for every country where my flight touches the ground, regardless of whether I get off the plane or not.
6. Receive my passenger locator forms (three in my case) in email.  Each one was in a separate email.  Print them because they are in-stream text, not attachments.
7. Swap applications and scan them.
8. Swap applications and return to the airline travel ready document site.  Go through the flights and upload documents in the correct places.  Some documents (the CoVid test) needed to be uploaded in multiple places.
9. Wait for the documents to be reviewed.  I received a good-to-go indication; however, not everything processed through the system instantly, so I could not check-in online.  There are notes on how to rebook if things are not good-to-go.

Gone are the days of buy tickets months ahead and then just show up when the day comes.

PCR testing

The testing for CoVid process at the airport is better than some of the alternatives in some ways, and worse in others.

The testing company that has the contract for SeaTac desires appointments, but they do take walk-ins.  The map on the website puts them between baggage carousel nine and baggage carousel ten on the non-door side (side away from the airport drive).  They are really on the airport drive side of baggage carousel nine.  They respond to people in the “I have an appointment” line first, but they do respond to both lines.  My wait in line time was about 10 minutes, those without appointments had longer wait times.

Their website said I would be receiving an email with a link to patient consent forms, and it was best to complete them ahead of time.  The only email I received was an appointment confirmation.  Talking to others while waiting in line indicated this was common among all of us.

It is currently hard to get appointments at other places.  Because I checked a few days ahead of time, it was easy to get an appointment here.  The other places are offering free CoVid testing with results in 2 to 5 days.  (The word I am hearing is the results are typically 4-5 days old before they are sent due to the current omicron surge causing lots of people to seek testing.)  Because results must be less than 3 days old to fly internationally (less than 24 hours old if seeking to enter the US), I selected the company at the airport.  They can produce test results in an hour, but they charge a significant fee for that privilege.  I suppose the adage is true, you get what you pay for.

Clothes Shopping

I went shopping for clothes to take with me to Uganda.  I like the Kirkland brand of dress shirt because it fits me well and the material holds up to many washes.  I also like their colors and designs.  When I stopped in at Costco there were no men’s dress shirts.  I did not realize it was a seasonal (Christmas) item. 

I also tried the local Fred Meyer.  They used to have a large clothing section; I should say three large sections (women’s, kids, men’s).  This Fred Meyer has been remodeled and is now mostly food and housewares.  Little clothing and nothing my size.

I am surprised how something that used to be so common has become a specialty item that you have to go to select stores to find (except during the holiday season).  Fortunately, Alderwood Mall was only half an hour away.